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Show HN: An Article About How I Starting Programming

This is an article I wrote recently about how I started as a volunteer programmer and how it progressed into a hobby and a career. I made this website and wanted to show it off. Thanks for any comments.

vunderba 7mo ago
Nice article. > This professor was collecting DNA from the archaeological site, sending it to a lab to be analyzed, and then was receiving the genetic sequences back listed as characters in a digital file (called a FASTQ file). In order to find out what organisms these sequences belonged to they needed to be input into a database to retrieve accession codes. I did some bioinformatics work back in uni parallelizing the inside-outside algorithm using C and OpenMP for long runs on Solaris machines related to adjusting the weights on a DNA sequence model. Quite fun work. Small bit of feedback: the font size you're using for the article is absolutely leviathan at 24px on a full desktop browser. The standard recommendation is usually 16-18px.
- ArtificeAccount 7mo ago
  Thank you for the feedback. Would you say the gigantic font is distracting? I have yet to add a proper mobile style, so it's even larger if you're reading on a phone, lol. Are you doing similar work now? I haven't returned to anything bioinformatics related, though I do miss it.
  - vunderba 7mo ago
    > Would you say the gigantic font is distracting? The funny thing is that I have Firefox set to default to 80% of the regular font size and my first thought was, "This article is using a large font size" - and then when I cranked it back up to what a normal person would see, it got kind of out of hand. I personally use 18px for both desktop/mobile on my blog to keep things consistent and find that it strikes a pretty good balance. I do like the font choice though - Montserrat is a solid choice for the web. > Are you doing similar work now? Unfortunately it's been ages since I worked in the bioinformatics space - I'd love to go back to it in an academic capacity at some point though!
    - ArtificeAccount 7mo ago
      Same, there's something magical about using computers to look at genes. And thanks for your honest review. I took a look at your blog and spent some time playing the Aladdin game, I liked that it got comically fast. One thing I really loved on your site is the changing profile picture every time you scroll away, that's a fun touch.
      - vunderba 7mo ago
        Thanks! I'm a huge fan of easter eggs so I try to put them in everything I develop. Glad you enjoyed the Aladdin game - I wanted to make a full version of it and release it properly on the Apple Store but didn't particularly feel like getting sued into oblivion by Disney. > The name was never changed because the "Actually Two Different Old Vero Women Ice Age site" was just too much. I forgot to mention - font size aside I really enjoyed the article. This line cracked me up. Gave me flashes of "Three boys in a trenchcoat" paleolithic exhibit / little rascals vibes.

vunderba 7mo ago

Nice article. > This professor was collecting DNA from the archaeological site, sending it to a lab to be analyzed, and then was receiving the genetic sequences back listed as characters in a digital file (called a FASTQ file). In order to find out what organisms these sequences belonged to they needed to be input into a database to retrieve accession codes. I did some bioinformatics work back in uni parallelizing the inside-outside algorithm using C and OpenMP for long runs on Solaris machines related to adjusting the weights on a DNA sequence model. Quite fun work. Small bit of feedback: the font size you're using for the article is absolutely leviathan at 24px on a full desktop browser. The standard recommendation is usually 16-18px.

ArtificeAccount 7mo ago
Thank you for the feedback. Would you say the gigantic font is distracting? I have yet to add a proper mobile style, so it's even larger if you're reading on a phone, lol. Are you doing similar work now? I haven't returned to anything bioinformatics related, though I do miss it.
- vunderba 7mo ago
  > Would you say the gigantic font is distracting? The funny thing is that I have Firefox set to default to 80% of the regular font size and my first thought was, "This article is using a large font size" - and then when I cranked it back up to what a normal person would see, it got kind of out of hand. I personally use 18px for both desktop/mobile on my blog to keep things consistent and find that it strikes a pretty good balance. I do like the font choice though - Montserrat is a solid choice for the web. > Are you doing similar work now? Unfortunately it's been ages since I worked in the bioinformatics space - I'd love to go back to it in an academic capacity at some point though!
  - ArtificeAccount 7mo ago
    Same, there's something magical about using computers to look at genes. And thanks for your honest review. I took a look at your blog and spent some time playing the Aladdin game, I liked that it got comically fast. One thing I really loved on your site is the changing profile picture every time you scroll away, that's a fun touch.
    - vunderba 7mo ago
      Thanks! I'm a huge fan of easter eggs so I try to put them in everything I develop. Glad you enjoyed the Aladdin game - I wanted to make a full version of it and release it properly on the Apple Store but didn't particularly feel like getting sued into oblivion by Disney. > The name was never changed because the "Actually Two Different Old Vero Women Ice Age site" was just too much. I forgot to mention - font size aside I really enjoyed the article. This line cracked me up. Gave me flashes of "Three boys in a trenchcoat" paleolithic exhibit / little rascals vibes.