
Ask HN: What (obscure?) areas of tech are engaging, sane, and incredibly stable? - i336_
I&#x27;d like to know where to look to completely sidestep the breakneck rat race to the bottom of mainstream technology.<p>Where would I find technical environments defined by the following qualities?<p>- Stability in the long term: 90% of the mental models being taught today will still be being leveraged 10 to 15 (or more - 20? 30? :D) years down the track, possibly even using the same stack&#x2F;systems&#x2F;operational techniques<p>- Operational sanity: technical and business practices don&#x27;t distractingly violate whatever would contextually make common sense and impede natural flow; and political issues, if they must occur, are managed well<p>- Genuine engagement: a careful balance of tooling and policy means that only minimal overhead is necessary to achieve visible improvement and change, meaning enough time and mental energy are available to make a meaningful difference somewhere many times per working day<p>See my comment &quot;It seems to me that the technology...&quot; for more info (it wouldn&#x27;t fit here)
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innertracks
This is a really great question as was the 'unfashionable' language thread. My
intuition is that those quiet legacy country roads are out there. Slower paced
may also be found in modern industries. I would like to be ready to offer
interesting solutions or services in niches where most people don't think of
working.

Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your
criteria. It's been a while since I've worked in HC but things don't appear to
have changed much. It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a
little SQL and TCL for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA. Lots of
opportunities to make people's day to day lives easier, too. No need for the
latest language either.

Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I've decided to do is
start learning things that sound interesting. I've almost finished Little
Schemer, for example. I'm working through Coding the Matrix to get my math up
to speed. The Machine Learning course on Coursera was inspiring. After Little
Schemer the rest of the "Little" books, Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are
on the agenda.

I'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting opportunities.

~~~
i336_
> _I would like to be ready to offer interesting solutions or services in
> niches where most people don 't think of working._

This is a really good point; I was actually coming from the perspective of
knowing where to look to find a[n existing] predictable work environment, but
standing alone (or with a small group) and offering a stable service might be
an even better balance, thanks to the more malleable culture. Hmm...

> _Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your
> criteria._

If I can avoid the corruption (sadly inevitable, with the boggling financial
scales involved) and I was in a clearly politically defined environment that
might work.

> _It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a little SQL and TCL
> for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA._

Wow, cool. High-impact limited-radius work sounds like a lot of fun :D

> _Lots of opportunities to make people 's day to day lives easier, too._

Yeah :D especially in the UI/UX area: [https://medium.com/tragic-design/how-
bad-ux-killed-jenny-ef9...](https://medium.com/tragic-design/how-bad-ux-
killed-jenny-ef915419879e) [https://medium.com/swlh/designers-healthcare-
needs-you-stat-...](https://medium.com/swlh/designers-healthcare-needs-you-
stat-cdeb1ca7f9b9) (even just
[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amedium.com+healthcare...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amedium.com+healthcare+ui+ux))

> _No need for the latest language either._

Which is great - if I'm not _required_ to hold on and keep up, I can learn
stuff on the side at a comfortable pace, and onboard useful tech in situations
where it would really count, when I have enough competence to architect with
it well. (That's my main fear with a mainstream job - being expected to
continuously sign off on designs I don't fully grok.)

> _Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I 've decided to do
> is start learning things that sound interesting._

We're all at a different place mentally, etc; you're completely right,
following the pack to learn the latest language is inefficient. (And "I need
to learn the latest language" sounds ridiculous on the surface!)

> _I 've almost finished Little Schemer, for example. I'm working through
> Coding the Matrix to get my math up to speed. The Machine Learning course on
> Coursera was inspiring. After Little Schemer the rest of the "Little" books,
> Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are on the agenda._

TIL about CtM and ML, I'll look into those! I've actually been looking at
Forth myself; its philosophy
([http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm))
and operational model ([http://toddbot.blogspot.be/2014/01/the-ide-called-
forth-or-f...](http://toddbot.blogspot.be/2014/01/the-ide-called-forth-or-
forth-i-wish-i.html)) are the most interesting I've yet found in a language.
[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html)
is a fun, oddball anecdotal intro (and a site worth browsing as far as it will
go - gems inside :P), and you may also be interested in [http://thinking-
forth.sourceforge.net](http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net) and
[https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako). (I
have about ~20 more Forth bookmarks so far.)

> _I 'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting
> opportunities._

That might be interesting to explore. There was a thread on here recently that
noted that developments are badly needed to help implement theoretical and
research work, and while some of that would probably be quite fast-paced,
something like this (depending on the work on a case-by-case basis, really)
could be a pretty predictable work environment.

~~~
innertracks
Thanks for the links! I'm intending to get Thinking Forth in hard copy one of
these days. Though I've read and enjoyed the pdf.

------
i336_
It seems to me that the technology industry is increasingly focused solely on
rapidly moving targets that constantly change specification at dizzying (even
infuriating) rates, and my perspective as a hobbyist outsider is that
developers are expected to figure out how to handle the breakneck pace and
keep up, or go home because there simply isn't anything available if you can't
make 65mi/h work for you.

The Web is easily the worst offender here: it seems to be stuck
architecturally in a perpetual super-tight loop-the-loop of the "initial
client design refinement" phase. It's as though nobody thinks it's possible to
have forward change unless _everyone_ maintains a constant state of being
tensed and ready to pounce on and adapt to the next big thing. (Imagine if Web
standards had to go through the RFC process and the bureaucratic noise was
rate-limited out of the equation because nobody had time for it. That would be
nice...)

This is in part due to the frenetic, rabid competitiveness the Web enables,
but regardless of the cause(s), developers are ultimately running themselves
raw in a breakneck race to "nirvana" driven by the speed of the technology
industry. The most upvoted comments on "Ask HN: How happy are you working as a
programmer?"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11009956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11009956))
strongly suggest that burnout is widely resonated with. (That thread also
provided valuable insight on how to articulate my own thoughts.)

I've been wondering for a while now: surely there are some some slower-paced
quiet country roads to be found out there...?

As one example, for a few months I've been considering studying FORTRAN,
COBOL, APL, Forth, etc, so I can position myself to work on legacy systems.
Looking at "Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming
language?"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001693)),
that would seem to be a good idea, if the unilaterally positive opinions in
that thread are anything to go by. (Oh, add Object Pascal to that list!)

PS: I ask the above soley out of general curiosity for my own part, but FWIW,
the rules
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html))
say that job ads cannot be submitted as stories... there's no such restriction
on comments :)

PPS. My OP is exactly 1000 chars, the title exactly 80 chars. For some reason
I think this is really neat. lol

