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.
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 also perhaps misspoke when I stated that comics are dying. I don't honestly know that they are, or what their current sales numbers are -- I just expect for print-related content in almost all forms to eventually die, or become more niche, which may well be naive of me.
There was indeed a lot of unit testing as well as very intense reviews of every single line of code. We used C and Linux as we needed an operating system that wouldn't kill people. You had to have a minimum of twenty years experience to work there. An upside was that there was no pressure at all about shipping the product before it was ready, even though we were well behind schedule. The downside was that you were allowed one mistake in your code. You were fired for the second one.
I am curious about why linux would be chosen as the OS instead of something a bit more battle-tested like QNX? (with the upside of the ability to go hard real-time if necessary...) I love Linux, but the thought of trusting my life to it gives me the willies?
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.
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.
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.
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).
My most beloved hobby is radio controlled helicopters. I would love to do something involving autonomous aircraft. Control systems and navigation. Should have gone to school, I guess.
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.
> I've also found that once you pour yourself into something, the love will naturally come.
Therefore, it's wise to choose something you love and that's going to pay off.
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.
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.
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.
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.
