For the last few years, I've been working on a self-checkout product similar to Mashgin that quickly identifies the items people place on a platform. I've really enjoyed work that involves stereo cameras and lidar, 3D scanning, surface reconstruction, and geometry more generally. I also get a lot of satisfaction from building libraries and other dev tools that make some of the more math-heavy tasks easier for non-experts. For more of a flavor of the kinds of work I especially enjoy, take a look at this article: https://andrews.wiki/spherical-mesh.
I've also been a manager and a tech lead, and I try very hard to establish priorities for my team that are simultaneously good for the product and good for the people who work towards them.
I'm currently looking into robotics companies, but anything that involves perception is welcome.
Curiosity, what do you mean by "Southern Pennsylvania"?
I am from Pennsylvania, attended Penn State, and I have lived in many different towns throughout the state including south-central ones. I've befriended yinzers and yousers. But I have never heard "Southern Pennsylvania" before.
My mind boggles. Is this some variation on "Little Washington"? Is this a Philadelphian way to simplify "Southeastern" and to therefore ignore, "SEPTA" notwithstanding, the hundreds of miles west of Philly? Are you near Chambersburg? Is this some way to describe commuting suburbs into northern Maryland? Is this some play on the Mason-Dixon line and you are actually in Maryland?
Stepping away from this particular case, what does a well-executed Associate's degree for computer science look like? At top-tier schools (at least in the US, which is all I'm familiar with), there's an expectation that most of the incoming students already have a reasonable familiarity with the basics of programming, but that's unreasonable to expect for everyone entering college. And since it's useful to have some practical familiarity with programming before taking an algorithms class, it further seems like getting some sort of software engineering two-year degree would be a good use of time before either entering the workforce or deciding to cover some theory in the following two years (algorithms, computer architecture, compilers, etc.).
What would a two-year degree like that cover? A variety of useful languages plus their most common frameworks? Basic data structures? Common industry tools (git, CI, docker, linux)? Even though it doesn't fit very naturally into the US college experience, I'm wondering if a well-executed two-year "bootcamp" (for lack of a better term) could actually fill a gap that exists right now. It at least allows people to choose if they're interested in theoretical computer science or not. Theory is quite helpful, but not everyone wants/needs to opt in to math, proofs, etc.
Finland has a model of high school alternate vocational programs. But standards and funding are so low it is mostly useless, places seem mostly day cares for students.
Applied science universities however are not as rigorous as traditional universities, but do offer suitable degrees with practise in actual software development with lighter load on pure computer science or advanced topics.
In the US there are technical high schools in many states. Not sure exactly what the curriculum looks like. I'm sure it involves programming but probably not CS topics.
I just started working on an engine for turn-based table-top games like Dominion, 7 Wonders, Catan, etc.
During university, I spent some time working on an AI agent to play Dominion, but a very large part of the work was building a way to simulate the game.
The goals are:
- Develop an engine that's efficient enough to use in simulations (for training AI agents or analyzing the game).
- Still emit events that can be used to visualize the current state of the game when real people are playing.
- Create primitives that are easy to distribute across a network for remote players/agents.
Some people live in their editor and occasionally drop into a shell. I've personally found a lot less friction in doing the opposite. Live in the shell, and occasionally drop into your editor.
I used to think that it would be better to have a lot of scripting and automation built into my editor, but there are so many well-built, connect-able tools already available in a unix shell that it's usually easier to write scripts in that context, instead. There are often easy ways to pull the outputs of those scripts into your editor or use your editor as a thin, pass-thru layer to run shell scripts on certain selected bits of text in a file.
This is mostly how I work as well, and has the advantage that when I need to poke around on servers and appliances on which I do not have my vim setup, I can still use a lot of my regular “tricks” because they are shell-based.
Sure, sure, I do miss tpope’s surround and repeat plugins, but I have shell muscle memory and am happy(ish).
+1 .. Came to say the same thing. My favorite IDE is the Unix shell. Multiple great editors to pick from, multiple and very flexible ways to hook all your tools together. Easy to use on remote systems. All of it free software.
Remote: Yes, but willing to drive to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia occasionally or fly out a few times a year.
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, Pants, Numpy, Mypy, Pytest, Ruff, Pydantic, C++, Rust, GitLab CI, Docker, Docker Compose, AWS (especially S3, EC2, ECR, Kinesis Video Streams), Terraform, New Relic, Linux, Bash, Nvidia Jetson, Triton, Intel RealSense, OpenCV, Open3D, Kafka
Résumé/CV: https://andrews.wiki/assets/resume-2025-01-02.pdf
Email: contact@andrews.wiki
For the last few years, I've been working on a self-checkout product similar to Mashgin that quickly identifies the items people place on a platform. I've really enjoyed work that involves stereo cameras and lidar, 3D scanning, surface reconstruction, and geometry more generally. I also get a lot of satisfaction from building libraries and other dev tools that make some of the more math-heavy tasks easier for non-experts. For more of a flavor of the kinds of work I especially enjoy, take a look at this article: https://andrews.wiki/spherical-mesh.
I've also been a manager and a tech lead, and I try very hard to establish priorities for my team that are simultaneously good for the product and good for the people who work towards them.
I'm currently looking into robotics companies, but anything that involves perception is welcome.
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