Comment by kator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kator | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how to answer this without saying "contact me".

Let me try hard to add something of value while also saying "contact me, my customers are hiring high-scale, low-latency, C coders by the dozens". :)

I started coding in C 30 years ago when we had machines with 768k of memory and processors that have less power then the cpu in the elevator in my building.

I have a theory that as cpu power, ram and other resources have scaled to amazing levels more and more problems can be solved with higher level languages without the need to eek every single cpu cycle or byte of ram out.

  "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time;
   premature optimization is the root of all evil"
            -- Donald E. Knuth

I think it's perfectly fine to approach many problems with PHP, ASP.NET, Python or any number of solutions as long as the problem is solved in a way that meets the requirements. Not every problem needs to handle millions of queries per second at the lowest latency and best cost possible. The speed from "problem" to "solution" can be many times faster offsetting the potential cost of running a couple extra servers to soak up the inefficiencies of the system.

That said in my field of work we see 40 Billion transactions daily with Million query per second spikes. In that world you can't afford to deploy 10,000 servers running a nice django server. You need to dive deeper and deeper, ending up with front-line servers written in C and optimizing with non-locking data structures and sweating over memory fences and cache lines. This however is a rare slice of the total problem set that programmers have to face every day.

IMHO it's the power curve of cpu power and resource availability that creates a wider and wider gap between low level, low latency, high scale programmers and many programmers who "get stuff done" perfectly fine every day of the week.

I have posted before on HN about the strange patterns that are emerging around the shift to "post-desktop" era, and this trend is also another topic of interest to me. I have to wonder as Moore's law levels out who will be contributing to solutions solved with 1,000's of cores on a chip and all the problems associated with adapting problems to massively parallel architectures.

I guess my answer is: Look harder, there are lots of low-level, high-scale jobs out there.

This is very much how I look at the industry, its just that everyone I seem to talk to at the minute is only interested in rails!! C coders, by the dozens? Is there any chance you can put me in contact with a few people? It would be much appreciated. If you like, I can send you my email address, and we can even talk a while so you know I am not just some kid who wants a better deal.

My linked in info is in my profile.

I'm in New York.

And my clients are Start-ups.

:-)

EDIT: And I AM NOT A RECRUITER.. :-)

Thanks! I added you on linked in.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Just a note: you're the one looking for a job. Shouldn't you at least, in addition to adding on linked in, send kator a message explaining your background and that you are AncoraImparo from HN? I don't know about kator, but I typically have 5-6 people who I have requested to be added at any one time, so without an additional message it might be hard to remember you.

yes please don't randomly link me with 'I'd like to add you to my network.' If I don't recognize you it'll never happen.

I prefer a message, if we get to know each other and find value in our connection I will link you later. :)

I get recruiters who will blind link me and I always respond back without linking them until I know who they are and if I want them in "my" network.

I try harder in Linked In to keep a good network not like facebook where random people I barely know are friends with me.. :-)

Unfortunately LinkedIn makes it hard to send you a message that isn't attached to a connection request. They have InMail, but it's a premium feature.

OK then add something to the link request.. Just make it clear you're not spamming and who you are.. :)

Offtopic: 768k 30 years ago? You must've worked in a rich place :) Trying to get an accountancy app in 128kb and that wasn't happening in C either.

Ontopic: programmers (good ones especially) are scarce they say and yet the market seems overcrowded. I'm not looking but have plenty of friends who are (not on location though, but they are very reliable, high quality and work hard) and they are having a very hard time here in the EU.

TRS-80 Model 16 with Xenix.

You could get upgrades to get them to 768k.

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/catalogs_extra/1984_r...

Nice! No-one I knew then had the cash for that then :) I have one of those here now but not with the 768k extension.

Funny but true I have a Model 16b but the foam on the keyboard keys failed so I can't use the console anymore.. :(

I was so sad when I found this out.. I could boot the machine but could not login to the console. It sat there waiting for me to type Control-D to go to multi-user mode.. And tears sort of welled up in my eyes as I hit the power button..

I love the days we live in, they seem like a dream from the days when I started in computers. But once in a while I wish I could visit those earlier days.

Sort of like a High School jock who's a security guard now and wants to revisit his High School "Glory Days".

Except I am still in my "Glory Days" and enjoying every minute of it.. :)

But I still often long for those simpler days when thinking about how many k Bytes I would allocate to solve a problem would cause swapping on the machine and how to avoid it.. ;-)

But technology like life progresses on and we must adapt or die.. Me I choose to adapt.. while thinking fondly sometimes about the simpler times.. ;-)

I just do both; I create web and mobile apps for my clients, games for my clients and myself (the infinite cpu/memory kind; i'm not yet good enough to pull everything from the metal on current computers) and, in my spare time, I work with old hardware and software. Soldering and programming on 80ties computers is relaxing and fulfilling just as I find modern tech to be.

AST Research used to manufacture memory expansion boards for the original IBM PCs that gave you up to 768K (128K of which was discontiguous, since ROM began at 640K).

The C compilers for the PC back then had different memory models (small, large, huge, etc.) that would make tradeoffs between code size and the size of the address space you could use.

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