
Ask HN: Good niches to get into? - bxttxr
I’ve been coding professionally for 10 years and have always claimed to be a quick learner, looking to first be handed a challenge so I could learn on the job.<p>I need a change, so I am instead taking 6-12 months of my own time to get good at something new before looking for projects in that area. It’s obviously just a start, but I expect it to  count as a couple of years of experience since I’m cutting out the overhead.<p>What are some tech niches, currently short of knowledgeable people, that would have a good above average return on investment for this kind of self study?
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owebmaster
Ad tech is hot right now with programmatic and header bidding and the future
looks brighter with programmatic TV ads.

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brudgers
Curious what you are interested in because being interested in a subject might
increase the amount a person learns.

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bxttxr
Bonus points for anything that directly touches the real world (interfacing
with hardware, automation, some parts of finance) and for stable fields (e.g.
more like embedded C, less JavaScript).

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brudgers
Conceptually, I separate embedded from C because:

1\. Embedded systems are increasingly less subject to the constraints that
require C.

2\. Embedded systems are increasingly used for tasks where the difficulty in
writing correct robust code in C produces life safety failures.

3\. Gaining above average professionally applicable knowledge regarding
embedded systems is likely to be more easily acquired in a short timeline than
professionally applicable knowledge in C for reasons 1 and 2. Particularly for
a self study course.

4\. Building stuff that touches the real world is more a matter of embedded
systems than choice of language. Building such systems is as easy as buying an
Rpi or Arduino and some wire and some sensors.

