
Ask HN: Some interesting that could be written on C++ - inlineint
I would like to develop an open source cross-platform application on C++ that could improve my CV and skills and would be helpful for lots of people. Something like BitTorrent or Blockchain client, but not this cases.<p>Any suggestions?
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laarc
C++ might not be necessary. It's possibly a harmful career choice. I speak
from experience, but others would disagree.

It could be good to focus on one axis: personal career value, or affecting the
world and helping people. They seem to rarely line up.

If you want career value, try Node or C#. Both will put you in a position to
get a high salary job for a long time to come. C++ won't unless you're willing
to move around the world.

If you want to do something useful for many people, one way is to find an open
source project you like and start trying to contribute. If your contributions
are rejected, move on and try a new one.

If you want to start something new, focus on what's fun for you and pursue
that. If you go into it feeling like a bunch of people are counting on
whatever you're making, you'll risk burning yourself out. That's just my
experience though.

Good luck.

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inlineint
In general I'm interested in development of high-performance network
applications or something connected with intensive calculations. In these
areas C++ is a reliable choice, and I want to improve my skills with it to be
able to apply for positions that requires experience.

~~~
laarc
Ah, I see. In that case, the financial sector may be the way to go. They're
always looking for people to improve throughput, and there are a variety of
fun tasks to do related to low latency market data processing.

I would say your best bet is to focus on skill. If you can dive into a large
C++ codebase and solve a crash, you're skilled, and people will find your
contributions helpful once you're there. So that's really not such a high bar
to aim for.

In terms of experience, this tends not to matter too much. Use a talent agency
to place you in the field. They will take a chunk of whatever value you would
have otherwise pocketed in salary. But it's a way of getting in to the
industry that I know from experience works. It's much more effective than
trying to send resumes or cold call managers, which is why it might have
seemed like "experience" is a necessary requirement.

Experience is just a proxy for skill, so if you have skill, you're fine. A
portfolio is helpful, and I'm sorry to say I can't think of specific projects
that you might like to work on. But I know that if you can optimize a trading
company's firewall-to-firewall time, you're highly valuable to them.

~~~
inlineint
Thank you, I understood your point.

The financial sector is what I'm thinking about, but I've always though
thought that it is hard to find a job in this sector without a solid
experience. So the idea about a talent agency seems to be helpful.

BTW I'd like to ask about a relocation. Is it right that it is easier to find
a position that offers relocation (I mean H1B visa) in some financial
institution rather than in an internet company?

~~~
laarc
I'm not sure, to be honest.

That would be an interesting Ask HN question. I think a lot of people would
like to know.

One reason the financial sector might be easier for H1B visas is that they
sometimes treat their employees very poorly. But I know of good companies as
well, so it depends entirely on the company.

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inlineint
Saying "could be written on C++" I mean a problem that's natural language of
solution is C++, Java or something like it.

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IndianAstronaut
Use Rcpp to help scale up data frames in R to deal with out of core data
(larger than RAM).

