Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

If I ever had enough money, I'd love to start my own software non-profit, like the Mozilla Foundation. There's so many small bits of software that really make a difference in everyone's day-to-day life (whether you're an average Joe or a hardcore hacker) that don't ever get fully developed because there's no commercial market for them. With a few million dollars (which is enough to just work off of the interest), you could easily set up a scholarship program for talented students to do some part-time development on these projects, and it's sort of a win-win for everyone involved.

Safety-critical software. I've done some work on air traffic control systems and medical equipment and enjoyed it.

Writing interpreters using functional programming.

I'm actually doing this now -- writing interpreters for DSLs using Clojure at my current job at Health Market Science. Even though it blends in with all the other companies as another lame Java shop, I have actually had the opportunity to work on very interesting problems, and I have had enough freedom to use cutting-edge tools. I even prototyped a JRuby on Rails frontend that called into one of my interpreters written in Clojure. For some reason, I have always loved writing interpreters.

Computer vision for autonomous robots.

I've done a lot of 3D graphics and I think working on the inverse could be fun too. I think a lot of progress is going to be made quickly now that 3D depth-sensing cameras are becoming available. Most interesting to me are self-driving cars (e.g. the DARPA Grand Challenge robots) or dynamically balancing 2-legged anthropomorphic robots (e.g. Honda's ASIMO).

I don't know anyone in the field, so if I was really going to pursue this I'd probably start by going back to school.

Printmaking. It's meticulous, and I am not --- it stretches me, and makes me feel like I'm working. I love holding all the technical details in mind (how much ink, how much acid, how much light, this is toxic, that is flammable) while still maintaining the vision, trying to give an emotional, intellectual, physical experience to anyone who sees the product. It's people-hacking.

Also, I'm designing a programming language. But these days, who isn't?

Aircraft. In particular from the start to finish of designing a light two seater aircraft.

I think we could improve safety a lot with modern glass displays. For example, we have the weather report from XM, and we have the pilot's flight plan on computer. Why not warn them if this flight would be dangerous (or dangerous for their experience level).

Formal methods for proving timeliness, correctness, etc. Preferably in tools that mechanically verify those properties.

What frustrates me most* is hardware. I'd love to be able to work in a context where I can do something about its deficiencies.

* In terms of intensity: not frequency and maybe not averaged. The idea of being able to fix the software I use makes it more bearable, even if I rarely take advantage of that.

Incoming training manager at an expensive brothel chain.

Seriously though, seems like this question gets asked about every two weeks around here.

I love flying airplanes. From the first time I sat in a cockpit I knew that I would rather fly than anything else. But I also knew that making a career out of flying would be the worst thing in the world to do. Why? Because sooner or later it becomes a job, just like all other jobs. And when your passion becomes mundane and tiresome, you lose something. Wouldn't it be better to cultivate more things you love instead of just having one and beating it to death?

I've found that motivation comes after action, not before. That means that loving something in the abstract is usually much more fulfilling than the concrete. I've also found that once you pour yourself into something, the love will naturally come. Lots of folks wait around for some kind of epiphany when what they really need is the gumption to go out and start something.

If I had enough money to meet my current goals sorted out I'd study to be an osteopath at a good school. It's a lot like hacking, and it directly helps people who are debilitated in a way with which I identify.

Life is tooooo big to get stuck working on only one thing :P

I'm (technically speaking) working as a PHP and Common Lisp developer for my own startup.

I'd love to do more Lisp, or in another universe, I'd love to work on engines and wish that I knew more about their design, power, efficiency...

I'm working on a game in PyGame right now. It has a cyberpunk theme, and a little spirituality in the story. Of course it's open source. I also work on an another open source project, with my friends. It's a localization tool.

I don't know what I'd love to work on.

If you'd asked me a few years ago, the job I described then would be almost indistinguishable to the job I have now. But I don't enjoy it and feel:

a) I know this is a good job and I ought to be able to love it, there's something wrong with me.

b) If I feel this way about this, wouldn't I feel the same about any other job that seems good now, if I did get to do it?

c) Guilty that this is a good job and I'm not making the most of the great opportunities it's giving me.

I fear the kind of ant-in-a-massive-system job, such as "Legal Department E-mail Archive Storage Administrator" and I love the idea of "Independantly Wealthy Research Lab Owner" where I get to be involved in a lot of different things at a high level.

Comic books. If I had my druthers, I would somehow be working in comic books. At some point in my life, I had a good deal of artistic talent, though the years I spent goofing off in puberty seem to have killed it entirely.

It's something of a dying art form, as most print-based things are, but also seem to have resurged in many ways, especially as movie properties. I'm eagerly waiting to see whether or not TakeComics succeeds as becoming the iTunes of comic books, and whether or not it spawns any cottage industries or ideas as a result.

I'd love to work on putting an autonomous robot on an interstellar body.

Space industry

Games industry (but only the kind I like)

I am working on exactly what I want.

I have worked on business systems in many companies (mostly enterprise) and learned quite a bit. But the biggest thing I learned is that companies rarely have the applications software that they really need to compete.

I am building an environment and applications that I wish I would have had all those years. This is a great opportunity to put into software all the things that could have been along with all the things that were.

It's hard not to love working on what you really want.

I'd love to work on a generalized recommendation engine. After spending a fair amount of time tinkering on the Netflix prize, I now see countless sites and apps are in need of generalized recommendations--on the scale of being another layer we need on top of the web. And the topic pretty quickly drops you into the deep-end of mathematics, so developing that kind of challenging software is a plus.