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What would you be writing software for if it wasn't a production service?

• learc83 6y ago
  The OP said production internet services. If you write desktop software that only runs locally it tends not to require someone being on cal 24/7.
• whateveracct 6y ago
  Video games, CLIs, data analysis tools, desktop apps. Pretty much anything that doesn't require a fleet of servers with many 9's of uptime. The list goes on.
  • manquer 6y ago
    The grass looks greener on the other side. Every field has equally complicated problems. Writing distributable applications (desktop apps) or high performance ones (data analysis tools) or combination of both (video games) comes with a ton of problems equally complicated problems too. There is lot you take for granted in the server world that is simply not true anywhere else. - the control you have over hardware (CPU/RAM/Disk) and OS environment where your service runs. You can very easily throw more resources at a problem, if there is memory leak you can kill and restart your dameon, specify the exact combination of dependencies your application can have down to the patch level, update and change your applications at whim 10 times a day, none of this easy or even possible outside the web service context. - Typical performance challenges are more horizontal than vertical, i.e. to able to support more users is bigger concern than per user/ API call performance, most web service apps are CRUD applications of some sort, while there are performance challenges for a single computation the path to fix or mitigate is not difficult to see. In the systems programming world performance and concurrency for a single user application is very very different beast, you will end up doing lot more math,algorithms than in the web service world.