Ask HN: Any programmers here who work for cruise lines?
What's that like if so? I imagine it isn't your standard Rails development, maybe more focused on IT infrastructure or something but was just curious to hear people's experiences.
Your surprise is interesting to me, because I would have predicted it, and would have found the reverse surprising.
To me, hard drives in this context make sense. Slow, unreliable scaled, very expensive Internet, abundant space and power for the hard drives, demand for entertainment media (as distinct from news and sports) all lead to "cache content locally".
I expect limited real-time media (sports) can then be added using the limited external bandwidth available.
Ship/shore environment is interesting, the network is very hostile, lots of interesting problems to work on.
Princess Cruises and other lines are implementing a fleet wide mobile-app driven experience that uses Bluetooth Low Energy beacons in concert with a mobile app to enable all of the commerce that takes place on their cruises. Everything from unlocking your cabin door, to ordering room service, scheduling spa services or shore excursions and paying for a beer at one of their bars - it’s all driven by the app.
I was on basically the maiden voyage when they rolled all this stuff out, and it was pretty rough. The app, in particular had the vibe of being slapped together by offshore contractors. That said, it worked well enough but I would not be at all surprised that cruise lines want to continue investing in this infrastructure, especially given that it enables social distancing by default.
I can’t imagine it would be fun to work for a company that doesn’t understand tech outside the context of high priced contractors though, just from a culture perspective. Hospitality companies in general are very old-school in their approach to workers.
It's insane counting the number of APs for wifi networks on ships due to this. I was on the Queen Elizabeth a few weeks ago. A lot of Aruba gear.
I'd be tempted, but the salaries aren't great compared to what you can get elsewhere.
Princess are doing a pretty good job with e.g. the Princess Medallion and quicker internet access. Other lines (e.g. Cunard) are stuck in the Stone Age a little (although I once got 7Mbit whilst on the Queen Mary 2 and doing a speed test)!
They might have some special infrastructure but that would be abstracted away from most people who interact with it so existing technology can be used without needing to recreate everything.