[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What Are You Learning?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What Are You Learning?
Hey Hacker News, what are you learning? Personally I'm learning
Elixir, and it's such a pleasant language. It feels great to write,
and the packaging/build tools feel refreshing compared to the mess
of Python. Now, handing you the mic. Is there a new stack or
language on your mind?
Author : sergiomattei
Score : 167 points
Date : 2021-06-25 05:18 UTC (17 hours ago)
| evanb wrote:
| Group theory for condensed matter physics from Dresselhaus,
| Dresselhaus, and Jorio.
| dsies wrote:
| Elixir! I've got such a mixed bag of feelings for that language.
| It's elegant but it's build-times are pretty terrible.
| It has the RPC stuff built-in but I've never seen anyone use it
| in production and instead folks are doing redis or
| something else traditional. It has elegant process
| management but it's cloaked in magic (that you have to carefully
| learn).
|
| To your question - this weekend I'm learning kafka's client
| protocol (and maybe amqp protocol?) and try to write a
| transparent proxy of sorts.
| patrickk wrote:
| Managing outsourced content writers.
|
| I'm building up the side hustle gradually to escape the soul-
| sucking grind of the day job, and being a good manager of an
| outsourced team will allow me to take things to the next level.
| FlopV wrote:
| what are you working on? I'm interested in hearing more!
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Tig welding. I think being able to craft with metal will open up
| a nice chunk of the technology tree for me.
| bradrn wrote:
| Not learning anything just yet, but there's quite a few things
| I've been wanting to learn when I get the time:
|
| * I'd quite like to learn how to do 'low-level stuff',
| particularly microcontrollers -- I rediscovered an old Arduino
| which I've had some fun playing around with. I particularly want
| to get to the point where I can write low-level Forth code and
| flash it to the microcontroller. Also, I should learn assembly
| language at some point, but it's proving difficult since I'm on
| Windows.
|
| * Relatedly, I want to learn the basics of electrical
| engineering. My physics degree has given me a good overview of
| the underlying concepts, but I still can't even design a basic
| circuit for my Arduino.
|
| * I have very little knowledge of how the networking stack works,
| so I'm thinking of getting myself a Raspberry Pi and learning how
| to build and host my own website.
|
| * Wrt linguistics (a favourite subject of mine), I'd like to
| learn more about morphosyntactic alignment, specifically split
| intransitivity and alignment in person marking. I have a whole
| stack of papers stored up which I'd like to read.
|
| * Time management -- I feel like I have so much time but am
| wasting most of it.
|
| Luckily, university vacation started this week, so I may even get
| enough time to learn some of these!
| elliekelly wrote:
| Edit: I'm sorry, that EdX course doesn't seem to be the one I
| was thinking of. The cool website is https://www.tinkercad.com
| though. Definitely worth poking around and experimenting.
|
| There's a great ( _very_ low-level introductory) IoT course
| from Curtin University on EdX[1] that will teach you the
| absolute basics of circuitry and get you started building
| things with arduino. MIT also has almost all of their courses
| available for free (search "MIT OCW" or "MIT open courseware")
| if you're looking for something more technical, given your
| physics background. I believe their introductory circuits
| course for EE /EECS students is 6.002.
|
| The EdX course is cool though because it uses a site (I wish I
| could remember the name) that simulates circuits to let you
| build things with an arduino right in your browser.
|
| [1]https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-the-internet-
| of-t...
| bradrn wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendations! I was having trouble finding
| resources, so I'll have to check those out.
|
| (Further question: do you by any chance happen to know of a
| good textbook? I personally find that I learn better from
| textbooks than I do from online videos.)
| ileanaishere2 wrote:
| - DataScience. Just started a masters
|
| - PC Modding, Who would say that soldering and re arranging power
| supplies would be fun!
|
| - Gardering. Gives me mental peace.
| sawmurai wrote:
| Brazilian Jiu Jitsu aka BJJ. Physical problem solving under
| pressure.
| thematrixadmin wrote:
| I started training kickboxing now, after 2 years of mma and 1
| year break of physical activity. Martial Arts are the best!
| natmaka wrote:
| I agree. I learn Muay-Thai (Thai boxing), and this is
| incredibly useful, mainly because I have to (try to) switch
| from my usual "thinking for hours/days/months to a problem"
| mode into "flowing, neglecting analysis/systemics/... and
| letting whatever is left take control and act/react RIGHT
| NOW".
| jamestimmins wrote:
| Do you worry at all about taking kicks to the head or it
| damaging your body long term?
| jbaudanza wrote:
| Came here to say this. I trained for about 7 months before
| Covid shut everything down. I figured maybe I would just focus
| on lifting from here on out.
|
| Then, 6 weeks ago someone stole my laptop from me while sitting
| in a cafe in San Francisco. Without thinking, I chased him down
| and was able to wrestle my laptop back from him. Without the
| BJJ, I probably would have just yelled at him. Anyway, I'm back
| at the BJJ studio!
| superkitty wrote:
| leetcode(eat/drink/sleep) and system design, ML Infra
| herbata wrote:
| Sculpting in Blender
| binnyva wrote:
| Learning about Personal Knowledge Management systems. This
| includes Zettelkasten, PARA, Building a Second Brain and other
| systems. On the look out for more frameworks in this space.
| agentultra wrote:
| Digging deeper into Alloy through the Alloy book, working through
| Book of Proof, skimming through the introductory material to
| separation logic.
| Liveanimalcams wrote:
| ROS2 - currently following some youtube channels and their wiki.
| Trying to make my own robot to change the world, or rather clean
| it up
| amatic wrote:
| I'm learning to solve differential equations with analog computer
| techniques. I don't have access to an electronic or mechanical
| analog machine, only simulations, but I find simulations quite
| flexible and enjoyable. There are a lot of great books from 50's
| and 60's on the topic.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| napi, c and desktop gui development.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| How to start a business and Rails (the experience has been a
| surprising breath of fresh air after fighting Xcode for 10 years)
| PStamatiou wrote:
| Swift, SwiftUI, Node/Express - been building a simple stock
| holdings/portfolio tracker app after getting annoyed with the
| mobile experiences of all my banks/brokers: https://stocketa.com/
|
| hope to release in a few months
| listenfaster wrote:
| Great question - thanks for posting! Looks like most of use are
| blowing past the scope you introduce at the end :)
|
| Creative Focus: Since the beginning of the pandemic, I've been
| reducing the number of projects I take on to the ones that bring
| me the most joy. I manage an engineering org during the day and
| compose music by night, and have often felt I needed to --be- all
| aspects of each world. I felt I couldn't lead my team without
| being fluent in every language, framework, ideology that they
| employ. In music, I felt like I needed to run multiple bands
| reflecting my range as a player, book those, publish a podcast on
| a regular cadence, make noise about what I'm doing every 2 weeks
| on the socials,etc. Now I practice, work on the projects I love,
| and invest time in my next learning area:
|
| Teaching my team Conscious Self-leadership: I'm responsible for
| amplifying the superpowers of the humans on my team in an org
| that has a lot of 'old-world' patterns - expecting a parent to
| come in and solve your problems, expecting one person to issue an
| edict on technical direction without collaboration, expecting
| articulation of a goal to be enough, etc. I'm sure there are
| jargon words you can point me to for the patterns I'm seeing -
| I'm still on my first cup of coffee. In a remote-first world,
| people of all personality stripes need space to lead themselves
| where their most energized/joyful, and making that space can feel
| byzantine, but I don't think it has to. So: I'm sharpening
| patterns and techniques that I'm seeing work.
|
| Villa-Lobos Etudes: I've been a guitarist for just about 40 years
| (yikes) and finally dug into these last year. I feel I'll be
| exploring them for the rest of my life, finding new things to
| work through every week.
|
| Music Engraving: I'm publishing some pieces of mine (including
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmvI6H64SPI and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M7vOIHOeeU) and am learning a
| ton about how to make a beautiful page of music for guitarists
| with my mentor John Stropes.
| daveungerer wrote:
| Chemistry. I was never really interested in it, but recently
| discovered that it's one of the best (and enjoyable) ways to
| learn more about the workings of the physical world, purely for
| curiosity's sake. Doing the MIT 5.111 course on OCW and the MIT
| 3.091 course on EdX.
|
| Also re-learning modern JavaScript, and TypeScript too - I've
| been using JavaScript professionally since 2003, but always
| begrudgingly. And spending some time picking up Flutter (and
| Dart). We're doing more and more work on the front-end and on our
| mobile app, and as a technical founder it's good to have some
| idea of what's going on even if you're not writing the code
| yourself.
|
| Learning to be a better manager too, one mistake at a time, as
| I've been doing for the past few years.
| jeremyis wrote:
| 5.111 and 3.091 together? Seems like a lot! Hope you enjoy the
| Sadoway videos - he's the best.
| daveungerer wrote:
| I was actually just over halfway through 3.091, and it was
| going quite well, but I had a slight uneasy feeling about
| knowledge gaps (all my chemistry knowledge is from high
| school). That's when I started 5.111, and it's really helping
| to solidify things.
|
| I didn't know about Sadoway, the EdX course has a different
| instructor. But I checked some of his videos on OCW now, and
| I really like his enthusiasm!
| ranuzz wrote:
| Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
| (https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-
| thinking/home/we...). A foundational course on mathematical
| language and thinking, a great refresher course, at least for me
| after leaving school a long time ago
| bobochan wrote:
| Almost up to 365 days on Duolingo: French, German, Italian.
| ankit_it09 wrote:
| After spending a decade as a Backend Engineer, now started
| learning Kotlin, Android.
| truth_ wrote:
| I am going through SICP. I have just begun.
|
| I am learning more about Transformers architecture and modern NLP
| using the Hugging Face API.
|
| Building a computer from scratch using nand2tetris on Sundays.
|
| Learning to meditate following a detailed meditation guide. This
| has been working better than I expected.
|
| Going on and off with learning classical music online (with a
| piano).
|
| Learning German.
|
| I am primarily focused on learning deploying AI to embedded
| devices right now. Working with the TinyML book and the course on
| edX.
|
| As someone who does Computer Vision for a living, and always
| loved Electronics in college (no microcontrollers experience), I
| am finding it right at home with this. I wish I had started
| earlier. Really liking the experience.
| NickM wrote:
| Those are a lot of things to be learning at once, I'm impressed
| you're keeping up with all that. Do you mind if I ask what your
| time management looks like? I'm curious how many hours you
| spend a week on this stuff, and how much of you free time it
| takes up. I also like to learn a lot of different things on the
| side but I struggle to find time for everything that I want to
| cover.
| truth_ wrote:
| Well, I will have to write many paragraphs to fully
| understand your questions.
|
| Let me tell you that I am highly unsuccessul as a piano
| player. I cannot play much more than a few simple "pieces".
| Becaue I am highly irregular.
|
| And apart from work and reading SICP, I don't do everything
| everyday. I read SICP 7 days a week. But work only five. No
| Deep Learning on Sundays. On Saturdays, no work, only
| personal learning, reading papers, attending study groups,
| etc.
|
| Actually I can work for no more than five hours a day-
| proper, hard work, "deep work" if I may.
|
| I want to extend that to 8/10. That is my main motivation
| behind meditation. I am better than most in concentrating
| during learning and work. I just want that to last for longer
| hours.
|
| I studied Electronics and Computer Architecture (from the
| Mano book mostly) before, so I don't find nand2tetris very
| challenging. It is fairly challenging at times, but not the
| hardest thing that I do. It's more fun than challenge.
|
| SICP is challenging at times. But I spend time with it very
| regularly, say 1-2 hours a day.
|
| I have learned from my experiences that, when you are
| learning something fundamental, new, it is best to learn it
| over many days and months rather than bouts of short sprints.
|
| So, I am regular with it, but don't spend long hours.
|
| Being with a highly career focused partner helps a lot, too.
|
| I discussed my time management techniques here-
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356883
|
| I spend 30 or so minutes every day reading novels, poetry or
| about the culture and history of the Bengali people.
|
| I also exercise regularly.
|
| I like to swim, but pools are closed.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| What's the meditation guide you're following?
| truth_ wrote:
| You can look up "The Mind Illuminated" by Yates (Culadasa)
| and Immergut.
|
| It is completely devoid of run-of-the-mill pseudo-spiritual
| stuff, and consists of practical advice that you can follow.
|
| It is a complete guide that provides step-by-step
| instructions.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Ah, perfect, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking
| for, thank you!
| yewenjie wrote:
| Haskell and Elixir. Also thinking of trying out Gleam.
| truth_ wrote:
| I also started learning Elixir, really loved it.
|
| But I have wanted to go through the whole of SICP for a while.
| I realized that that is a better thing to do (grow core,
| fundamental skills) during the pandemic where I can get
| uninterrupted time.
|
| I can learn a language any time. But I was more focused towards
| learning the functional paradigm rather than the language
| itself. It's a fun language to code in, though.
| zigzaggy wrote:
| I'm taking an online cohort class about Rene Girard's philosophy.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| A friend of mine was big into Girard back in the day. He also a
| had thing for other Girardians like Eric Hans.
| cauliflower99 wrote:
| How to be a father...oh and mountain biking! (Though not at the
| same time) :)
|
| Also, in my free time during work I'm trying to improve my
| writing by creating technical and leadership blog posts...it's
| difficult!
| sterlind wrote:
| Classical AI planning in Picat, which is like a mix of Prolog,
| Python and Haskell. Following this book here: http://picat-
| lang.org/picatbook2015.html
|
| I think planning is extremely neglected and undervalued for what
| it is. The field is a mess, but there's real opportunity now with
| all the progress in reinforcement learning.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm working on a website for my honey business using Angular 8. I
| know it would be much faster and easier to something like
| Wordpress, but I want to build a basic competency with a relevant
| frontend language. I mostly work in Python and Java, but our team
| doesn't have any frontend members and we might end up with this
| type of work in the future (ie becoming a mentor would be my
| ticket to finally getting promoted to senior dev... if I don't
| get a low rating this year, which I was told I likely would).
| tunesmith wrote:
| Book design - really just the interior parts for now. I have a
| (private) website for writing branching fiction (kinda like CYOA
| but not in second-person present tense), and my friends and I
| have been using it to write a novel over the last year or so. So
| far it's about 250 chapters out of a projected 350, it should end
| up just under 1000 pages so I'll probably have to break it into
| two volumes.
|
| Ideally I'd like to press a button on the site and have it
| generate a manuscript - so far I've been looking at a combination
| of markdown, pandoc, and LaTeX for the formatted form. From what
| I understand that's frowned upon for Real Publishers, but works
| well for the DIY process (amazon, book baby, Ingram). I'm playing
| around with LaTeX templates now, and have a subsection of the
| book laid out manually now, using various guidelines I can find
| for font, font size, margins, etc.
|
| I'm also writing a separate book more having to do with how
| people can respectfully share reasoned conclusions with each
| other - for that, I'm also using a LaTeX book template and am
| just writing it in LaTeX, since it's kind of fun to see an
| approximation of what the actual book would look like as I write
| it.
|
| There's a long way to go on learning this though and I haven't
| found a lot of good resources, so I'm definitely open to
| suggestions for folks who have written good technical dynamic
| pipelines for book publishing - particularly anything that can be
| wired into a web backend that starts with markdown data.
| youshy wrote:
| SwiftUI, Kubernetes, Terraform and Elasticsearch. And from non-
| tech stuff, I finally got around to study acoustics and
| relearning the math behind it.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Learning Latin following this method:
| http://wcdrutgers.net/Latin.htm and also working on some mobile
| apps (iOS using SwiftUI, lot to learn but pretty pleasant
| experience) for personal use.
|
| Edit: In the past I've tried to do too many things at once and
| ended up making only limited progress on any of them as a result,
| so I'm trying to focus on just 1 or 2 things at a time now.
| divtiwari wrote:
| I'm currently diving deep into Compilers and Programming Language
| Theory. Have subscribed to the subreddit/Discord of
| r/ProgrammingLanguages. Also trying to implement/read these
| books:
|
| 1. 'Write a Interpreter in Go' by Thorsten Ball
|
| 2. 'Write a Compiler in Go' by Thorsten Ball
|
| 3. 'Crafting Interpreters' by Bob Nystrom
|
| 4. 'Ruby under a Microscope' by Pat Shaughnessy
|
| Also, I'm trying to learn Racket in my spare time.
| everythingswan wrote:
| I'm a marketer tinkering with Python. Since Python is so
| versatile, lots of uses for a marketer like me. I started off
| with a few Coursera courses going over the basics (Programming 4
| Everybody) and read the book with it.
|
| Then I tinkered with some basic functions: how to strip a list of
| URLs for a specific Product ASIN, automating some Photoshop image
| creation, and searching a 10k row Excel doc for specific phrases.
| All were bad at first, but they worked eventually.
|
| I then did the Automate the Boring Stuff course on Udemy, super
| fun and deepened my knowledge. Helped me improve some of the
| programs and start working on others. I started to work with the
| Facebook Ads API and Pandas to automate reporting. So fun. That
| program is just getting to the Excel/Sheets automation part which
| will save me a ton of time every week. I spend a solid amount of
| time manually analyzing data each week. If I can cut that down,
| it'll get me quicker insights so better for my clients.
|
| Again, nothing works incredibly well but it all works. And all of
| them save me time going forward. Automating image files will save
| a team member 3-6 hours/month and reduced errors by probably 90%
| (And their stress. We've already used it for 2 months so that's
| reduced their stress level from the errors they made manually
| doing it).
|
| I'm basically just carving out an hour a week at this point after
| shooting for 5+/week for the first 6 months. I might increase it
| if I slow down on client work or hit a blocker that needs more
| time.
|
| I subscribe to Always Be Learning, since that is a cornerstone of
| my own well being, so there is no real goal. I figure if I have a
| system for it then I'll make progress. And everything I learn is
| really a bonus for myself, my clients, or any developers I work
| with.
|
| There's no shortage of interesting ideas to pursue with it so
| that won't be a problem anytime soon.
| tmaly wrote:
| Have you run into any challenges in learning Python?
| jamil7 wrote:
| You're probably in a good position to figure out a business
| idea.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| C++20, as it contains myriad major things (e.g. concepts, ranges,
| and when cmake supports it modules too...) and minor things as
| well (e.g. lambda capture issues, the spaceship operator and sane
| inference for comparison to avoid boilerplate). Given that C++23
| is likely to be a very small set of changes, I think 20 will be
| the next "major standard" most folks move to.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| To sleep on my back. Being a life-long side sleeper has caused a
| lot of shoulder and upper back problems that sometimes make it
| hard for me to reach out and type. I wish I'd done this ages ago.
| It's one of the hardest things I've had to learn.
| elevenoh wrote:
| I sleep less deep when on my back.
|
| Believe there's studies on amyloid plaque clearance differing
| b/n different positions. And I believe back sleeping has less
| of such than side.
| rileyphone wrote:
| https://americanpostureinstitute.com/proper-sleeping-
| posture...
|
| Unfortunately for me I'm a coffin sleeper.
| omosubi wrote:
| I'd love to learn this but get sleep paralysis for 30-60
| seconds at a time for like an hour (i have no way of knowing
| how long the intervals are but that's what it feels like) every
| time I do - has anyone overcome this?
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| Consult some doctors.
| listenfaster wrote:
| My wife and I have tried this, but it causes each of us to
| snore intermittently. Did you contend with snoring as you
| learned to sleep on your back?
| tunesmith wrote:
| This is the main reason I don't sleep on my back, too. Not
| sure what the solution is if I want to sleep on my back - I'd
| hate to jump straight to a cpap machine if I don't need to.
| Maybe those nighttime breathing strips would help?
| nscalf wrote:
| Depends on the cause of snoring. For me, I've broken my
| nose a few times so it's a combination of that and mild
| sleep apnea---I can manage it by losing a little bit of
| weight. If you think your nasal passages have an issue,
| it's worth talking to a ENT about it. There are a number of
| different things that can be fixed with fairly mild
| surgery.
| codr7 wrote:
| I had to go the other way, learn to sleep on the side because
| of a spinal fracture since anything else was too painful. Never
| went back.
|
| Shoulders are very flexible but also extremely weak and
| sensitive, they should rarely be used out of neutral position.
| I've taught martial arts for a long time and most issues I see
| with people's shoulders is due to (improper) overuse.
|
| My point is that maybe the cause of the problem isn't in bed at
| all. My experience says that sleeping on the side makes
| everything easier, from breathing to offloading the spine.
| colecut wrote:
| I'm normally a side sleeper, but while/after lying on an
| acupressure mat I often fall asleep on my back. I use the cheap
| Amazon one.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| I've never heard of acupressure mats before. I might check
| that out.
| alexcnwy wrote:
| How did you learn?
| Anon4Now wrote:
| I stopped using a pillow under my head because back sleeping
| + pillow = neck pain. Then I got a thin, light pillow and
| placed it on my chest to mimic the "wrapped up in blankets"
| feeling I was used to.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Normal adult pillows are no good for back sleeping but I
| found having _no_ pillow wasn 't very comfortable. I ended
| up using a memory foam pillow for toddlers[1] that we
| originally bought for our son. It's perfect - provides just
| the right amount of lift for me.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004M3PS4O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_a
| pa_gl...
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| I did the same thing! Works well, but I have some
| shoulder pain now and I don't know if it's related
| pkid wrote:
| Kundalini yoga works great for my shoulder-sleep issues.
| Perhaps it can help others?
| manjana wrote:
| The hard thing being to fall asleep or stay at sleep?
| Anon4Now wrote:
| Both, but the biggest issue has been reverting to my side
| while asleep. I've re-aggravated my rhombus muscle a number
| of times doing that.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I often wind up sleeping in contorted positions, and I've
| had a similar issue with my rhomboid muscles.
|
| About 6 months ago, I switched to a split keyboard and it's
| made a big difference for me. Sitting with my arms shoulder
| width apart has taken a lot of the strain out of my neck
| and back.
| pknerd wrote:
| I am having frozen shoulder issues for 2 months after heavy
| bowling. Sleeping on right shoulder gives pain. I'd like to
| know how are you practicing it and is there any side effect of
| it?
| codr7 wrote:
| Most likely you have a jammed nerve in there somewhere,
| switching sleeping position isn't going to solve the problem.
|
| I would suggest finding a good chiropractor and describing
| the problem.
| vfinn wrote:
| DevOps/GitOps.
|
| Need to build a stack consisting of Kubernetes (zero downtime,
| volumes), Docker for images, Django Rest Framework (backend),
| Nginx (reverse proxy for static files), Uwsgi (for Nginx-Django
| coordination), Next.js (front), Postgresql (db), Flux (for
| syncing with private docker registry images using maybe semver
| and for github repository polling), Ansible (for agentless
| initial configuration for test/qa/production servers), and Github
| Actions for CI (maybe later CD; servers allow only polling at the
| moment).
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Spanish. It's been the focus of most of my free time for the last
| 1.5 years and I've seen incredible results.
|
| I'm surprised by those who commented that they're learning
| multiple unrelated subjects at once. Are you learning anything
| beyond a superficial level? Or is the goal to pique your
| curiosity on a new subject and then decide if you want to make it
| your core focus?
| dorchadas wrote:
| I'm one of those doing multiple unrelated subjects at once. For
| me, it's because I have the time. I'm a teacher, and we're out
| for summer, so I've got time to focus on several different
| things. I can do an hour or so of math a day, alternating the
| various books I'm going through, and give myself an hour of
| Irish immersion a day (mostly reading) as I'm already at a
| comfortable B2+ (officially tested) so it's just a matter of
| keeping it going. Then I can read some in whatever textbook I'm
| doing of an evening. My other subjects are much more
| superficial, happening mostly from reading books while I
| exercise (walking and biking on a stationary bike are perfect
| for this).
|
| But, really, it's mostly because I have more time and few other
| hobbies currently (not starting anything new before I move
| countries in a few months).
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Thanks for the response and congrats on being B2 certified in
| Irish! I'm taking the B2 exam for Spanish this fall :).
| dorchadas wrote:
| Gracias. !Buena suerte!
| sesm wrote:
| I've made a deal with my friend: I'll be teaching him basic
| Analytic Geometry to support his interest in computer graphics,
| and he'll be teaching me UI design.
| andreskytt wrote:
| Swimming. Front crawl technique is a bottomless source of self-
| improvement and incremental gains
| elevenoh wrote:
| Likewise.
|
| Front crawl really seems to be one of the most beautiful &
| rewarding processes to master.
| mehphp wrote:
| Just finished a Udemy course on Rust, and now I'm going through
| the rust book.
|
| Just taking it slower this time, doing ALL the examples and
| trying stuff for myself.
|
| It's going way better than my first attempt about a year ago.
| tenkabuto wrote:
| I'm feeling out how, in my free time, to have fun again and still
| be somewhat productive. I've been kinda burned out for a while.
|
| I've been skateboarding more and reading my books about
| statistics in a no pressure, leisurely manner.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Figuring out how to debug third party application in Windows on
| event it crashes. Without source code or anything, I wonder if I
| will ever get down to the root cause.
| barcoder wrote:
| How to make beautiful 3D characters and scenes. I started with
| Blender and now I'm learning Substance for painting the models
| because the work flow is creativity focused. The possibilities
| are truly amazing with today's tools.
|
| Working in 3D has opened my eyes to new possibilities. I believe
| that having skills in 3D will become very important over the next
| five years with adoption of mixed reality hardware.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Totally agree. I'm working on a mixed reality app and have
| started learning Blender as well to set up asset pipelines and
| toolchains, so being sucked into the 3D modeling world also.
| I've been surprised to find a ton of overlap between 3D
| modeling and ML-based tools to assist in the process. Would
| love to trade notes if you're available to chat sometime.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| I'd love feedback too. I tried my hand at using
| scipy.optimize to tune Blender lighting and materials to a
| reference image that didn't turn out how I expected. Would
| love to hear other about other ideas in this space.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| I've picked up Blender in the past few months. Previously I had
| dabbled with 3dsMax in the late 90's in highschool, but the
| piracy and license cracks eventually turned me away. Until
| recently Blender's UX kept me away too.
|
| It's been fun seeing the world in a new way again. I like the
| nostalgic feeling of looking around and seeing the material
| nuance in everyday objects, how light behaves, and the
| uniqueness of everything around us.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I've been a private pilot for about 5 years and a couple of weeks
| ago I was out in crappy weather. I knew the weather would be
| awful and had the foresight to bring my instructor friend with
| me.
|
| We ended up in cloud, I handed over control to my instructor and
| spent the next 10 minutes wondering what I would have done if he
| wasn't with me (hint: not good).
|
| So I slept on it, text my instructor a couple of days later and
| told him I want to be able to do what he did. He told me I need
| an Instrument Rating (Restricted) rating, which allows me to fly
| in and above cloud.
|
| So that's my learning for the next 10 weeks or so. I've got to
| take one written exam, one flying exam, and then I'm cleared for
| flying cloudy days.
| mbrameld wrote:
| You make it sound like you flew VFR into IMC with an
| instructor. Is that what really happened? If so, I would
| suggest a different instructor!
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Not at all, he's an excellent instructor (and trust me I've
| met a few bad ones!)
|
| The chain of events were we were circa 2000ft VFR. Instructor
| took control to climb in to cloud to get on top of it. Got
| in, instructor realised we were not going to be able to get
| on top of it and so IFR'd us back to the aerodrome with an
| ILS landing just for show.
| mbrameld wrote:
| Maybe it's a terminology issue. VFR means visual flight
| rules where you just remain clear of clouds (unless things
| are radically different where you are). Were you on an IFR
| flight plan the whole time but in VMC (visual
| meteorological conditions) until you entered the clouds?
| randcraw wrote:
| And at night? Or is that another certification?
|
| It seems like an IFR cert would be really good to have if you
| were up longer than intended and had to land at night.
| zeroc8 wrote:
| The FAA doesn't require a separate night rating for the PPL.
| Which is kind of crazy, as it's too easy to fly into clouds
| at night.
| [deleted]
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Can't speak for FAA as I am in the UK and night flight is
| most certainly a separate rating. It's an additional 5 hours
| of training. Not much but essential given how many
| differences there are at night. It's night and day! #dadjoke.
|
| Edit: More info about night rating:
| https://www.caa.co.uk/General-aviation/Pilot-
| licences/Applic...
| zeroc8 wrote:
| The FAA written plus the flying exam are just the bare minimum
| to make you legal, but not safe. Buying XPlane plus some yoke
| and throttle quadrant is the best investment you can make when
| it comes to IFR. Make sure you invest in it.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Yep, totally agree. XPlane is a fantastic idea I'll look in
| to it. Better than Microsoft Flight Sim?
| ginja wrote:
| Yes, it doesn't look as nice but is much better for IFR.
| The G1000/GNS 530 are accurate enough that you can actually
| practice with them.
| atilimcetin wrote:
| Developing a gameboy emulator from ground up with zig programming
| language.
| incanus77 wrote:
| I've been playing with bare metal Raspberry Pi programming and
| really enjoying it. There are two great frameworks -- Circle and
| Ultibo. The former is in C++, but the latter is in... Free
| Pascal. Which is kinda weird but kinda fun. Having a Pi boot up
| and run your application in 2-3 seconds is pretty stunning.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Aside: I'll never understand why C++ immediately implies
| everything needs to be classes. In fact, deep class hierarchies
| that I've seen in other projects muddle the design and confuse
| extensibility.
|
| I much prefer a C++ lite, with stl library, interfaces instead
| of classes, and c++ syntax sugar + procedural programming,
| please.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I'll jump on your thread because it's similar in some ways. I'm
| learning Forth and more importantly, how to implement Forth
| from scratch. I'm targeting bare metal Raspberry Pi (especially
| the Zero at first). Looks like someone already combined bare
| metal Pi stuff from Alex Chadwick and an arm port of jonesforth
| (by Richard WM Jones which is in assembly but runs on Linux
| x86) but it also uses a lot of C libraries and stuff that
| they've added for USB keyboards etc and I just want everything
| to be a minimal assembly kernel and then build up from there in
| Forth itself. This is the branch that has taken things the
| farthest that I ran across:
| https://github.com/Avoncliff/pijFORTHos
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Hold up. Do all the peripherals work?
| incanus77 wrote:
| I mean, it kind of depends what you're looking for. But out
| of the box, you get:
|
| - HDMI video (I've only tried the first on Pi 4's)
|
| - HDMI sound, PWM sound, headphone sound
|
| - I2C controller/peripheral base classes
|
| - SPI support
|
| - serial logging
|
| - USB controller/hub PnP support, including mouse, keyboard,
| and gamepads
|
| - FAT support
|
| I haven't messed with networking or wireless of any sort yet.
| Not needed for my use case, but I believe ethernet is there,
| at least.
| ajyey wrote:
| Unfortunately(?) ds and algos + leetcode for interviews but I've
| been approaching it as an investment. Hopefully my future self
| making tons of money will thank me
| bckr wrote:
| Have you had a look at algoexpert?
| [deleted]
| yeppa wrote:
| Yes, though non-technical : Driving.
|
| I'm 31 and for whatever reason (financial, time etc), kept
| putting off need to learn and acquire this basic skill set until
| I felt helpless in certain situations.
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| Complexity Economics
|
| I've been binging books on the topic as well as exchanging
| dialogs with a colleague over email. Books list:
|
| _Completed_
|
| The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What
| it Means for Business and Society -
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422121038/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
|
| Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics,
| Cognition, And Society) -
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472064967/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
|
| COMPLEXITY: THE EMERGING SCIENCE AT THE EDGE OF ORDER AND CHAOS -
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671872346/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
|
| Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's
| 2019 Fall Symposium -
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947864351?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_...
|
| _To Be Completed_
|
| Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy -
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/087584863X?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_...
| paulorlando wrote:
| Great to see this list. I started reading Origin of Wealth last
| week and wish I had encountered the book earlier.
| michelpp wrote:
| Great list, another one I would add is "The Misbehavior of
| Markets" by Benoit Mandelbrot:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Misbehavior-Markets-Fractal-Financial...
| barracutha wrote:
| You may like Why Information Grows by Cesar Hidalgo. The
| principal behind it is called Economic Complexity. It is based
| on the applications of network and graph theory using export
| data of a country, region or city as a proxy to its
| productivity and innovation. I find it pretty interesting.
| maCDzP wrote:
| Drawing. I want to express my ideas though drawing. I want my
| drawings to be beautiful. I work as a civil engineer.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Do civil engineers still learning manual drafting, or is it all
| CAD now?
| maCDzP wrote:
| Unfortunately my training didn't include manual drafting.
| wjossey wrote:
| I'm learning to fly. Working on my private pilot license in
| SoCal.
|
| I had spent a lot of time prepping before starting my training,
| so some stuff has been expected but other stuff has been a
| pleasant surprise.
|
| One of the things that crosses over to engineering is the concept
| of flows. This idea that you're constantly wanting to check on
| certain items throughout flight, and then at different phases of
| flight work through a flow.
|
| You have checklists that you use and reference, but certain flows
| you commit to memory. This is very similar to incident response
| work as someone who has been in infrastructure for the last
| decade. How I triage and work through a problem has a very
| specific flow to it that helps me quickly sort out where the
| issue is (even if it doesn't immediately tell me how to fix it).
| I always love seeing how two skills, like engineering and flying,
| can have correlated patterns.
|
| For anyone with a love of aviation, go take a discovery flight.
| General aviation flying is a wonderful thing.
| account-5 wrote:
| At work because I have no alternative I'm learning VBA, MS
| Access, and Excel/word automation.
|
| At home I'm looking at Common Lisp and APL (which are so far out
| of my frame of reference I can feel my brain hurting when I sit
| down to them).
| carlc75 wrote:
| Logic and Proofs. It's making me much more specified in my
| thinking, but man is it hard to find a learning community in
| northern rural England!
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Learning to teach. Teaching programming with python to my
| friend's kids over Google Meet. So much fun.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Figuring out how to make recurring revenue so that I don't go
| bankrupt if I end up in a hospital for an year.
| franciscop wrote:
| I've tried following the Donut 3D tutorial. Midway, I thought
| "wow my donut already looks better than anything I've ever done
| in 3D", and by the end of it I couldn't believe I actually made
| the donut (sure, following step by step, but anyway that was an
| amazing feeling). It took a few hours but the result speaks for
| itself:
|
| https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1402267525262491658
| masteruvpuppetz wrote:
| I'm learning donut too
| 3bodyProblem wrote:
| Drawing, Really enjoy just grabbing the ipad and creating things.
| It's amazing how 2d shapes can trick the viewer in actually
| understanding what you've drawn.
|
| Got a background in 3D and Programming, but I think the 3d
| industry has the same approach to problems as programming. Couple
| of frameworks and libraries and poof, you have an applications.
|
| In 3d you grab a render engine, a light setup, some assets and
| poof, you have an image/game/animation. I miss the days that I 3d
| was exploring and experimentation. The alternative would be to
| dive into 1 subject (modeling, rendering, lighting, FX etc). But
| in my experience that just made me feel like a factory worker.
| Piece of concept art, here you go.
|
| 3D can really trap you into polishing a soulless turd, so I'm
| learning drawing. where you can't cut as many corners and
| enjoying the creative process again.
|
| On the programming side I'm just enjoying work and learning on
| the job, also going back to the fundamentals like shell, sql and
| regex. It's amazing how much you can automate.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| - F# : I've learned basic concepts of functional programming
| through JavaScript/typescript, but have wanted to learn a more
| functional language. I do C# for work, so F# seems like a logical
| next step.
|
| - Databases : in the past I feel that I've learned too heavily on
| ORMs, so lately I've been trying to learn how databases actually
| work. Things like how to interpret execution plans, the data
| structures used for indexes, etc. Found some really cool tools
| like Postgrest & Postgraphile that are making me more interested
| in database-centric apps.
|
| - Math : as a self taught dev that studied English in college, I
| was never exposed to much math. But I love thinking about the
| underlying patterns and structures of anything, and math seems to
| be an invaluable tool in doing this. Not sure how I'm going to
| self-teach math (or where to begin), but the little bit of
| discrete math I've learned has been super fascinating.
| exdsq wrote:
| Math: if you're self taught, have you heard or looked at Open
| Universities maths degree? It's well regarded for an online
| course and around PS18k for the entire thing. I know a DPhil at
| Oxford who came from that course.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| I've not heard of that, is this a 4-yr degree? I'm on the
| fence about going back to school for something like this, as
| it would just be for personal growth (and I already spent 4
| yrs in university, albeit other fields). Math seems difficult
| to self-teach compared to software dev though.
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| Started playing Kerbal Space Program game and seems like I'd have
| to learn a lot of physics such as Orbital Mechanics to make the
| rockets fly properly. So much fun though!
|
| On a more relaxed note, also learning more techniques about how
| to do proper gardening to grow more veggies and flowers.
| shafyy wrote:
| Biology on Khan Academy. We're making plant-based cheese and are
| experimenting with enzymes to make better and new varieties of
| cheese. We already have one Ricotta-style cheese (fresh cheeses
| you often make with acids, so that works well with soy protein,
| too).
|
| Our hypothesis is that there must be enzymes that works similarly
| with plant proteins as chymosin (part of rennet used in cheese
| making) works with casein.
|
| So, I need to catch up on my bio basics to be able to better
| understand what's going on :-)
| null_shift wrote:
| this sounds really interesting. i am personally very passionate
| about this space (reducing the impacts of factory farming due
| to unethical treatment of animals), but as a systems engineer
| (with degree in mechanical/electrical/software) i don't really
| have the Bio background to get more involved.
|
| did you find that to be a hindrance for yourself?
| shafyy wrote:
| Thanks, yes it an important topic that's still underrated
| today I think.
|
| I wouldn't say hindrance, but it would probably be a bit
| easier if I had a biochemistry or food engineering/science
| background.
|
| My partner has an environmental science background, so that
| helps a bit and she is the one doing most of the
| experimenting.
|
| But in the end, it's about trial and error. That's also what
| an expert would need to do. I think if you're interested
| enough in the topic it's possible to acquire the necessary
| knowledge.
|
| We plan to hire experts later on once we have the cash to do
| so (we're not raising money, all bootstrapped).
| kidfiji wrote:
| As primarily a frontend developer, I'm learning SQL/relational
| databases to be able to fully realize projects on my own.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Programming-related: Full-Stack Web Dev through Harvard's CS50
| web (Django backend, JS/React Frontend). I only started learning
| to program about 3 months ago, and the regular CS50x course was a
| blast.
|
| Otherwise: Japanese for 2-3 hours a day (will hopefully pass the
| N2 exam in December), and have also been reading a lot of
| pedagogical theory lately, and will implement some of it in a
| curriculum that I'm proposing soon (My day job is teaching).
| orionhall wrote:
| In specifics, I'm learning about using AWS's CDK to set up API
| Gateways and Lambdas.
|
| On a broader level, I'm learning about creating
| APIs/microservices.
|
| On an even broader level, I'm learning how to make
| (architectural) decisions and run projects.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| What resources are you using for the first two?
| acutesoftware wrote:
| Unreal Engine ( + Blender ) - pretty big learning curve for a
| programmer, but heaps of fun.
| bckr wrote:
| What are you focusing on there? C++ scripting or the visual
| scripting?
| halotrope wrote:
| - Graphics Design because people really listen when stuff is
| pretty.
|
| - French which has to be done but is quite hard.
|
| - Some math because the more I work with computers there more I
| understand how it would be very useful.
|
| - Combat sports because it keeps me fit and its good for your
| posture if you know how to throw a punch.
|
| - Traveling. Never learned it, work too much and would like to
| see the world before being an old fuck.
|
| - Basic EE digital circuits and microcontrollers. One should
| really have a grasp how computers work on a fundamental level.
|
| - Cooking. Because it is social, full of culture and makes you
| independent.
| grp000 wrote:
| Is that all at the same time? If so, do you have concurrency
| issues?
| halotrope wrote:
| Yes but in small pieces and with varying intensity. Just
| sticking to something and making small incremental progress
| does compound.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And: unrelated skills and the act of learning itself _also_
| compound. Learning gets easier as you do more of it because
| you have more of a method to do so and more knowledge to
| help you integrate your new knowledge. So as you know more
| /have more skills adding new skills or more knowledge gets
| easier.
| dmhmr wrote:
| I have been "learning" French for 5+ years... what resources
| are you using that you would recommend?
| [deleted]
| sidmitra wrote:
| _For first timers_
|
| - Duolingo(don't do it for more than a few months)
|
| _For beginners_
|
| - https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#french
|
| _For all others_ , some sort of immersion approach is the
| only way if you don't live in the country. Figure out the
| general approach below and adapt for your target language.
|
| - AJATT http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-
| japanese-all-t...
|
| - TMW https://learnjapanese.moe/
|
| - Refold https://refold.la/
| omosubi wrote:
| I'd also recommend glossika
| dsiegel2275 wrote:
| Regarding French, I am learning it as well.
|
| I built a small site for myself to help in learning the 5000
| most frequently used French words. It is, and always will be,
| free and with no account sign up needed.
|
| Check it out, you might find it to be useful:
|
| https://cinqmille.app
| kochikame wrote:
| What do you mean by "learn" travelling? Isn't it just...
| travelling?
| halotrope wrote:
| I never traveled when I was younger. So I would say I never
| learned it. The mechanics of taking time off, not working,
| knowing where to go, where to stay etc. That all needs some
| practice. It is of course not something that you would
| "study"
| obiwanpallav1 wrote:
| Nice list! Can you share your resources for Graphics Design?
| pkid wrote:
| Curious, how are you learning graphic design?
| nsomaru wrote:
| I started a law degree and picked up the piano again.
|
| Given the decline of European culture, law is on really shaky
| philosophical foundations. I'd seriously like to figure out if
| Roman law concepts can be refounded upon something like Vedanta.
| haxername wrote:
| TCP/IP and the very basics of computing - Basically I want to
| understand deep down how everything functions. I also want to
| learn about blockchain just so I can improve my arguements and
| identify flaw's with more precision.
| champagnepapi wrote:
| Leetcode
| hizxy wrote:
| To chill.
| pknerd wrote:
| How?
| hizxy wrote:
| Not doing anything
| bckr wrote:
| That's really difficult. Do you find your mind just going
| insane until you start to do something?
| qq4 wrote:
| I've been learning Haskell for a few months now. I really like it
| and am looking to write a small compiler in it. Anyone have any
| pointers?
|
| I'm also smoking ribs for the first time today, that should be a
| fun learning experience.
| xfer wrote:
| You can do these small set of languages to get some idea:
| http://plzoo.andrej.com/ .
| serjester wrote:
| Brazilian Jiu Jutsu. Every single day I go through the same cycle
| of wanting to skip that days class, convincing myself to drag
| myself there and walking out incredibly happy I went. I don't
| know what it is, but I'm loving being a complete beginner at
| something again.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| BJJ was a ton of fun, I did it for 3 or 4 years before moving
| (just before COVID hit). I've been wanting to get back into it
| but none of the gyms with a decent reputation (let alone ones
| with a _good_ reputation) are within a convenient drive of our
| home. I had actually moved to an apartment in my old city
| partially to be near my gym (I was tired of driving 30 minutes
| there and 30 minutes back in the evenings, a 10-minute walk was
| more convenient; it was also a more interesting area in general
| though).
| aeoleonn wrote:
| Learning the basics of Computer Vision and Image Recognition via
| Machine Learning by following along with this book:
|
| "Learning OpenCV 4 Computer Vision with Python 3: Get to grips
| with tools, techniques, and algorithms for computer vision and
| machine learning"
|
| by Joseph Howse, Joe Minichino - 2020, Packt Publishing
|
| available here (library genesis):
| http://libgen.lc/item/index.php?md5=9208FA33E5C1F93918E128F8...
| randcraw wrote:
| Cool. Another book you'll want to check out is Richard
| Szeliski's free draft of "Computer Vision: Algorithms and
| Applications", second edition, https://szeliski.org/Book/
| aeoleonn wrote:
| This looks choice! Seriously-- looks like just the guide I
| need. Plus the author is a professor of the topic material. I
| am super grateful to you for making me aware of this
| resource.
|
| Thanks for recommending it! Just this week I started a
| sabbatical devoted to putting together a computer vision + ML
| project. So this will be useful. Adding it to my learning
| journal.
| np32 wrote:
| If you are interested in more maths and 3D Geometry, the
| bible of the field is "Multiple view geometry in computer
| vision" by Hartley and Zisserman. Szielski's book is very
| hands on, but is it more of a formulas + litterature review
| book than a clean derivation book.
|
| A lot of 3D Geometry algorithms are based on clean
| derivations and estimations, thus depending on your math
| fluency, you will find great enjoyment in that book too.
| The proofs flow really well.
| floxy wrote:
| Thanks for the book recommendation. I've also got a machine
| vision project I've been meaning to tackle one-of-these-days,
| and hopefully this will be enough of a nudge to get me started!
| bart_spoon wrote:
| - Data Engineering. I'm a data scientist looking to make the
| switch.
|
| - FoundryVTT. My friends and I have tried a couple of times to
| run some remote DnD games over the last several years on Roll20
| and Virtual Table Top, with mixed results. Discovered Foundry and
| am very excited to try it out, though there is a bit of a
| learning curve to get a game up and running.
|
| - Procreate. I almost majored in Graphic Design as an undergrad
| but since switching to STEM haven't done much artwork. I've been
| using Procreate on my iPad to create isometric assets for the
| above-metioned Foundry VTT DnD session.
| dsiegel2275 wrote:
| I plan to learn Gleam. I write Elixir for work and to have access
| to a statically typed functional language that can compile to (as
| of just recently) both the BEAM and to JavaScript fits an actual
| use case that we have.
|
| For non coding related stuff: acoustic guitar and French.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Solidity, Ethereum & Blockchain development
| elevenoh wrote:
| likewise
| cpufry wrote:
| screenwriting
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Capacitor. We had a project that was on Cordova, but it's likely
| time to switch.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| That was my first foray into app development when I was making
| an app for my BlackBerry back in high school. Fascinated that
| it is still around as I assumed the use case died when mobile
| coalesced around two platforms.
| kragen wrote:
| This week I've been learning a lot about PDF file format
| internals, which are a staggeringly complex mix of brilliant and
| totally boneheaded. The annotations spec alone is more complexity
| than the whole document format ought to be. I'm working on one
| PDF parser in C and writing another one in Python to facilitate
| easier exploration and prototyping. This has led me to think a
| lot about the serialization/deserialization problem and the
| closely allied schema upgrade/downgrade problem. Maybe some of
| the resulting ideas will yield something useful. We'll see.
|
| For that PDF parser I wrote a Packrat parsing engine, which I
| think might end up as a useful way to explore some of the
| possible optimizations that could be applied to Packrat to reduce
| its dismaying constant factors in both memory and time. So I've
| been learning a lot about Packrat too.
|
| I've been learning about the Imp language, which is a sort of
| followup to Eve, and it has a lot of really interesting concepts
| in it. But I wouldn't say I'm "learning Imp" yet.
|
| This weekend I learned to use an old Arduino with Sigrok as a
| logic analyzer and get Sigrok to decode the PS/2 keyboard
| protocol.
|
| I've been learning about the history of political philosophy and
| social movements, much of which is very unsavory.
|
| I've been learning about economics and current events. Did you
| know that China now produces more than half the world's cement?
| Or that their electrical power generation has doubled over the
| last decade? Or that in tropical and subtropical countries
| photovoltaic power plants are not only cheaper than building coal
| or nuclear plants, they're cheaper than keeping existing ones
| running? Or that the Federal Reserve permanently stopped
| publishing M2 monetary supply data in February, after updating it
| monthly for 41 years?
|
| Last night I melted glass with a torch for the first time, but I
| don't think I can reasonably say I'm "learning glassblowing" yet.
| I didn't cool it slowly enough and it cracked as it cooled. I did
| learn vermiculite _will_ stick to glass if the glass is soft
| enough for long enough.
|
| This month I learned about Melisa Orta Martinez's brilliantly
| simple "Haplink" design for a two-degree-of-freedom mechanical
| actuator and encoder, originally designed for haptic user
| interface research, but in my view much more broadly applicable.
|
| I've been learning about planetary roller screws, which with
| modern advanced digital fabrication technology could plausibly
| replace a lot of existing linear actuators with significant
| improvements in precision and achievable reduction ratios. Also I
| think you can use them as a worm gear to get these benefits and
| more for rotary motion. I haven't built one yet.
|
| I've been learning about the RISC-V instruction set and some of
| the issues that go into designing and implementing such a thing.
| But I haven't written a RISC-V simulator yet.
|
| I've been learning about exotic mineral cements like
| "geopolymers", aluminum borate, and aluminum phosphate, which can
| be precipitated hydrothermally as well as with high-temperature
| reactions. But I haven't synthesized them yet, just calcium
| phosphate.
|
| I've been folding origami from strange materials. Aluminum foil,
| aluminum window screen, corrugated cardboard (must precompress
| your crease pattern), aluminum cans, plastic coke bottle walls.
|
| I've been learning how to keep my potted plants alive and deal
| with insect pests.
|
| I've been learning more about abstract algebra (the conventional
| kind, with rings, lattices, and semigroups, not category theory)
| and how it relates to algorithm design.
|
| I've been learning about food-product rheology, and how
| thixotropic flow isn't quite the same thing I thought it was, nor
| is it caused by the same causes. Thixotropy is super important
| for digital fabrication.
|
| I've been reading about filled polymer systems, especially the
| kinds of surface treatments used to adjust the adhesion between
| the matrix and the fillers. I wouldn't say I'm _learning_ it yet
| because I haven 't been able to get much of anything to work. But
| I will, if I can stay alive a bit longer.
|
| I'm learning how widespread outright fraud is on MercadoLibre.
| The last thing I bought there was a "1600x1200" USB microscope
| which turned out to be 640x480 (from DUAITEK). I also got a "600
| watt" immersion blender that turned out to be 300 watts. I'd like
| to take "Origins of Persistent National Poverty" for $800, Alex.
|
| I'm learning that HN doesn't value people like me, and I'd be
| better off spending my time elsewhere.
| podiki wrote:
| I've been getting obsessed a bit with guix (and learning a little
| Guile, of course), mixed with trying to sort out the Haskell
| stack/cabal situation for some complicated projects to package in
| Guix. Guix is very cool, and looking to build my next system with
| it. Any excuse to do more things with anything Lisp. In the
| meantime I've already submitted a few patches to fix bugs in some
| packages and the Haskell build system, first time I've done that
| in such a large project. A good learning experience so far, just
| hope those patches get picked up!
|
| (I know it is supposed to be pronounced 'geeks' but I can't help
| but want to say 'goo-eeks')
| msci100 wrote:
| Taking a break from learning this summer to enjoy the world
| opening up again (American).
|
| Will hit the books on how Data Clean Rooms work once the fall
| comes.
| fierro wrote:
| VIM!
| bckr wrote:
| How are you learning Vim?
| pknerd wrote:
| - Solidity and writing about it on my blog as I am getting more
| inquiries about work related to it.
|
| - Exploring Manifestation and subconscious mind.
| yodelshady wrote:
| I'm a postgrad, in an interdisciplinary field, so probably too
| much:
|
| learning quantum-resistant crypto - Learning With Errors and
| variants. Because they interest me, however, little direct value
| to work.
|
| Generally how to provision a server and deploy an app on it.
| Mostly to migrate slow-and-steady workloads off my laptop, but
| also as a skill in its own right.
|
| Language learning: Julia. I tried porting some models to Rust, it
| has its strengths, but if you need matrices as a first-class
| feature - just don't.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Back-end development! It's quite a paradigm shift from front-end,
| a lot of known unknowns and even more unknown unknowns, I'm
| trying not to panic too much as I'm deploying my Sass in
| production. I'll get good eventually (but the anxiety might never
| go away).
| rpmisms wrote:
| I was going to say this, but you already did, so yeah, me too.
| I'm enjoying it a lot more, so far. I don't like the pixel-
| perfect demands of front-end, and actually find back-end more
| of a creative exercise so far.
| morty_s wrote:
| Probability theory with Jaynes.
|
| Computer org and design (risc-v) with Patterson
|
| Digital signal processing
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Been reading up on DAOs and asnyc collaboration models and
| learning a little Solidity too.
|
| Feels like there is potential for something interesting to emerge
| in the knowledge + social graph layer/squad/studio operating
| models.
|
| Particularly with everyone moving around now and the increasingly
| fine lines between legal corporate entities, co-living, creative
| work, and intellectual property.
|
| Open to any recommended readings on the topic, or just to chat
| about tangential spaces!
| [deleted]
| vivab0rg wrote:
| Elm and Colemak.
| giansegato wrote:
| Recently, I tackled Genetic Algorithms to solve some specific NP-
| hard problems, and Zero Knowledge Proofs. Now I'd love to pick up
| Elixir and some frontend development.
|
| I routinely keep a web page updated with all my learning
| projects, both the ones I did and the ones I'd like to do [1]. I
| found that it keeps me accountable, plus it might be useful for
| some.
|
| This thread is a gold mine of ideas to expand it!
|
| [1] https://giansegato.com/learning/
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| Shibari.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Kinky
| dineshsonachalm wrote:
| Learning and experimenting about building a highly scalable
| streaming service using golang. Also learning about microservices
| and currently working in a company where we are migrating from
| monolithic Java code bases to scalable Go microservices.
| susam wrote:
| Analytic number theory.
|
| I began reading a book on analytic number theory on my own
| sometime last year. While re-reading some chapters of the book
| again, I decided I might as well do the re-reading with a group
| of other folks who are interested in this subject. So I began
| hosting book club meetings for analytic number theory since March
| this year. I had made a Tell HN post about it back then.
|
| Those meetings are still going on consistently. We have a tiny
| but regular group of participants who meet daily for 40 minutes
| to read the book together. In fact, we now have a small community
| around it. We call it the Offbeat Computation Club. See
| https://offbeat.cc/ for more details about it. We plan to add
| more topics of discussion, such as Common Lisp, SICP, etc., soon.
|
| We will begin reading a new chapter (Quadratic Residues and the
| Quadratic Reciprocity Law) on Monday. This is a pretty self-
| contained chapter and quite accessible to someone who has not
| read the previous chapters but has some basic knowledge of
| modular arithmetic. If this sounds like fun, you are very welcome
| to join us. See the link in the previous paragraph to find our
| IRC channel location, meeting link, and other details.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Having a group to go through math books and check each other is
| always the best. Glad you were able to find one.
| codegeek wrote:
| Learning how to do better SEO and Content Marketing as a Tech
| Founder. It is fascinating what people do in the SEO world to
| continue to keep up with Google.
| tmaly wrote:
| Video production for educational purposes.
|
| I have wanted to produce some useful tutorials on coding and
| robots for kids. I taught some lessons at my daughter's school.
| This gave me some great insight, but I want to reach a bigger
| audience online.
|
| I am finding that thumbnail, title, and how well you structure
| your cuts into a story makes a big difference. I am mostly trying
| things out and seeing how an audience responds to a video in
| terms of average view duration.
| yeswecatan wrote:
| Event streaming/multiple views into your data based on whatever
| the listeners care about. It sounds nice, but it's a lot
| different than the usual CRUD apps I'm used to. Still wrapping my
| head around when it's best used, how to generate the event (do
| you just generate the event, or do you save to a db and then use
| CDC to emit the event) etc.
|
| Think of Facebook. You create a post and see it on your wall
| right away. The rest of the world doesn't need to see it right
| away, but you should or else you think the post wasn't saved.
| Does that post get saved in some db/cache specific for you, and
| _then_ an event is emitted?
|
| But yes, I'm learning things like that.
| dsies wrote:
| This is cool - I love this space and it's indeed pretty
| complicated. And not that you asked for it but I'll try to add
| some additional insight.
|
| It depends on what you're trying to achieve - are you trying to
| increase reliability by going fully event driven? Are you
| trying to improve just one particular flow? Are you wanting to
| expose certain data for data science?
|
| Unfortunately I don't think there is a good prescriptive answer
| to this - it all "depends" on your situation. If this is a
| publicly exposed service - you probably would want to
| commit/record that a user signed up or posted something and
| THEN emit an event which will start the chain reaction of other
| services reacting to the event.
|
| If the user created a post - it probably has an ID and you
| would probably want to communicate that in your event - but if
| you did not commit anything to the DB, then what are you
| exactly communicating?
|
| Your goal should be to try to be as async as possible - but in
| some cases, it just doesn't make sense. For example - receive
| an HTTP request to do something is a 100% synchronous
| operation. But _after_ you've handled that event - most, if not
| all things, can be async.
|
| Contrived example: 1. User signed up -> UI hits
| public API which is backed by "Main API service" which commits
| to DB -> emit USER_SIGNUP event 2. Billing service
| consumes USER_SIGNUP event and creates a subscription in a 3rd
| party billing system (and maybe emits another event)
| 3. Metrics service consumes USER_SIGNUP event and starts
| recording metrics for this user 4. Audit service
| consumers USER_SIGNUP event and creates an audit log trace
| 5. --- Finally, the "Main API" service listens to all kinds of
| other events that causes it to update its "view" of the user.
|
| What this is hopefully illustrating is that the source of truth
| is the event and not the DB - DB is just a "view" - by
| reconstructing the events, you will be able to get back to the
| current state.
|
| Finally, some non-abstract advice - if you're building an event
| driven system from scratch, I would probably avoid doing CDC as
| the primary event emission mechanism and instead have your
| application emit events instead. You'll have a lot more
| granular control over what is in an event and not be tied
| directly to the DB schema. Your event schema will evolve and
| maybe it won't fit what's in the DB.
|
| I would lean towards CDC if you are trying to retrofit an
| existing system.
|
| Anyway, hopefully that's a bit helpful! I've been working on
| this sort of stuff for a while (and actually have a YC-backed
| startup that focuses on event driven: https://batch.sh).
|
| I recently presented on event driven design at a few local
| meetups and made some slides, it might be useful:
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1j6Cyid88Ca1shwEN6uyI...
| wenc wrote:
| * I've been studying Brazilian Portuguese for a couple of years.
| It's the first Romance language that I've studied in depth (I
| took French in high school but never progressed very far). I've
| become fascinated by Romance language grammars, and Portuguese
| has grammar in spades, e.g. tons of conjugations like the future
| subjunctive, personal infinitive, imperfect, etc. The great thing
| is that once you've studied one Romance language, you almost
| always get an automatic headstart in another. (except for
| outliers like Romanian). For example, through my study of
| Portuguese I've found that I automatically gotten (written)
| Spanish for free. I can now read simple Spanish texts even though
| I've never studied the language (though I still have to beware of
| false cognates; also, more complex articles like those in El Pais
| still stump me.)
|
| * The other thing I've been investigating is meta-learning
| techniques for predictive modeling, like ensembling, stacking and
| boosting (the kinds of techniques used in ML competitions) --
| basically ways to combine statistical models to extract more
| signal without overfitting. At some point individual statistical
| models are limited in their ability to extract signal from data
| (even though the signals are there) -- and neural networks are a
| step too far because of the data volume requirements -- so
| learning how to combine multiple models is the way to go. None of
| this stuff is new and I'm a few years late to the game but better
| late than never.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Probably interesting because meta: I plan to research better
| sources for information access by vetting the YC/HN www sites
| linked by the submitters. This, in order to find new good and
| reliable sources of information and similar, which are currently
| extremely scarce in my pool.
|
| This is not learning a skill, but it is an enabler for learning:
| first, using the correct sources for studying which will be
| identified, and first, because it will be projectedly a time-
| saver (processing bad information is very time consuming, a
| waste).
| iwebdevfromhome wrote:
| Gamedev! Last year I tried Godot and really liked what I was
| learning but felt like something was missing from the community
| or product, I wasn't really sure what. I tried Game Maker Studio
| 2 this year and was fascinated with how easier it was to create a
| prototype real quick. So I might stick with GMS2 for now.
|
| I hope that I can meet an artist some day and participate in a
| game jam.
| touisteur wrote:
| Been learning eBPF bytecode slowly. Feels strange to go back to
| 'assembly' after 20 years of x86. I wish there was some kind of
| sandbox/unit-test environment.
| badhabit wrote:
| practical common lisp
| toomanyducks wrote:
| Stenography (typed) - maybe it'll be a useful skill in the
| future, maybe not. It's an excuse to spend an hour a day
| dissacosiating and developing muscle memory, and I need that
| dissacosiation a bit too much.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Brazilian music. Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento,
| Joao Donato, Toninho Horta, Yamandu Costa, Joao Gilberto etc etc.
|
| There's a great youtube channel with hundreds of videos of
| guitarist Nelson Faria chatting and playing music at home with a
| different Brazilian musician each time, a lot with English
| captions. https://www.youtube.com/c/umcafelaemcasa/videos
| diego_moita wrote:
| From your website [0] I see you like jazz a lot.
|
| So I'd suggest you Egberto Gismonti, a Brazilian musician that
| released some very good work on the excellent ECM label (same
| as Jack De Johnette and Keith Jarret). My favorite of his
| albums are "Sol do Meio Dia" and "Carmo".
|
| I'd also recommend the Argentinian Astor Piazzolla, I love the
| album "Cumbre-Reunion" that he made with Gerry Mulligan.
|
| [0] http://www.adamponting.com
| pedrodelfino wrote:
| If you like Funk, and Soul music you should check out Tim Maia.
| He did a creative job mixing up Brazilian music (samba and
| bossa nova) with American black music. He is one of my
| favorites Brazilian musicians. His voice is also outstanding.
| Check it out [1] "Sossego":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St7ID7vHHs4 . [2] "Azul da cor
| do mar": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9kTV-wpiWk
|
| "E boa sorte nessa aventura, meu amigo!"
| personlurking wrote:
| Check out the lesser known Marcio Farraco's album Ciranda [1].
| The title song features Chico. If you like him, you might like
| another singer-songwriter, Pierre Aderne, too [2]. Both Marcio
| and Pierre have a French connection, with the former living
| there and the latter being born there.
|
| And if you want to virtually travel to Portugal, check out
| Antonio Zambujo. Here he is singing a song [3] written by both
| Marcio and Pierre, as luck would have it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QRdaL3GEiQ&list=OLAK5uy_lCU...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr2qTlFkytk&list=OLAK5uy_n3k...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlZcTFBxWVY
| KLVTZ wrote:
| Be sure to check out Hermeto Pascoal. Especially his Som da
| Aura technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUlbU6CMx0
| petercooper wrote:
| Going to add Egberto Gismonti to the list as well, my
| favorite Brazilian musician to listen to, even if not
| necessarily the most well known.
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Spanish - more relearning at this point and getting practice.
|
| Running - also relearning, which happened quickly this time. I'm
| already back to running 5ks after just a few weeks (though I also
| spent 6 months building up my cardio with a rowing machine).
|
| How to be offline and focused. Computers (and smartphones) are
| fantastic tools of distraction. I'm trying to regain my focus
| overall. Reading physical texts is helping immensely with this.
| I've mostly reinstated my personal "no tech in the sitting room"
| rule, aside from my Kindle Fire which is sufficiently anemic to
| be useful as a reader and not as major distraction with other
| media.
| reidjs wrote:
| I don't know your background, but be careful ramping up long
| distance running too soon. Especially if you're running on
| concrete. It feels good till it doesn't lol
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Well, I was only out of it for about 2 years at this point (I
| ran for 2 months last year, but an unrelated injury pulled me
| out of it), and before that I ran for about 6 years 2-3 times
| a week, never less than a 5km (once I got up to doing 5km
| distances) and did a lot more training during that time too
| (which often incorporated shorter runs or sprints).
|
| I already took care of the weight I'd gained through improved
| diet and 6 months of rowing five times a week (got up to 30
| minutes of moderate to high intensity). So my cardio
| condition is great, not where I want it, but great overall.
| It's really my running form I have to improve, and getting my
| feet and knees used to the impact again. I'm now back under
| 180 (versus 210 this time last year) which is a much
| healthier weight to be running at.
|
| I'm being deliberate about adding distance slowly to minimize
| the risk of injury (from running). Recovering from an injury
| at 26 wasn't too bad, at 36 it took a lot longer, and now I'm
| about to hit 40 so I'm being more deliberate than I would've
| a decade ago. I'm doing 2x3km runs with a 5-8km run once a
| week. I plan to add 1-2 total extra kilometers a week and
| only if the runs have gone decently (don't need to be great,
| but need to be complete). I have no intention of pushing the
| short runs past 5km or the long run past 10km. Then I hope to
| find a soccer league and team I like to get my extra running
| in on weekends.
|
| When I said I'm running 5ks, it's just the one a week. But I
| can actually finish it, which was a pleasant surprise (I
| thought it'd take longer to reach that point).
| [deleted]
| polygotdomain wrote:
| After nearly 13 years out of it, I picked up a 3D printer. I did
| a fair amount of printing and modeling in my last years of
| college, but since transitioning into programming not long after
| graduation it's been something that I hadn't had the time for, or
| the avenue to apply it.
|
| So far I've had more failed prints than successes over the last
| week or two, but I'm still excited to be doing it. I'm learning
| the ins and outs, which were different from the last printers I
| worked with. The wheels are churning as to what I can make, and
| I'm very excited to continue exploring and "resharpening" the
| skills that I once had.
| squintychino wrote:
| The main thing is to level the bed. Once you do this, it
| shouldn't require releveling except maybe every 1-2 months.
|
| Upgrade the bed to the glass bed. Get yourself some hairspray
| and spray the bed every few prints. You'll never get failed
| prints again.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| "Circuits and Electronics 1: Basic Circuit Analysis" from EDX.
| Was attracted to it by great names participating in the
| curriculum.
| antognini wrote:
| Lately I have been diving deep into ancient astronomy, Babylonian
| astronomy in particular. I have a PhD in astronomy, but I've
| found that a lot of astronomers tend to have a somewhat
| superficial knowledge of the history of their field. To motivate
| myself to learn more about it I started podcasting what I learned
| with the schtick being that I release episodes every full moon to
| force myself to keep it up.
| dorchadas wrote:
| I've got a book you might like then. I recently discovered
| there was an 'Astronomy Across Cultures' book, as
| ethnoastronomy is something I've been interested in for a while
| (It's always neat to see how other people interact and describe
| the stars and sky. Shame a lot of this info is being lost as
| languages die and peoples assimilate). The book focuses on non-
| Western methods of astronomy, and is part of a series titled
| 'Science Across Cultures'.
|
| Full reference is: _Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of
| Non-Western Astronomy_ ed. Helaine Selin and Sun Xiaochun
| (ISBN: 978-94-010-5820-9, DOI: 10.1007 /978-94-011-4179-6)
| antognini wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check that out! I'm starting to transition from
| Babylonian astronomy to Greek astronomy, but my plan after
| that is to go through the astronomy of non-Western cultures:
| Indian, Chinese, Mayan, Aboriginal Australian, among others.
| That looks like a really helpful resource for those cultures.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| Very interesting. I enjoy both astronomy and history, do you
| know any books/materials you would recommend to someone who is
| just an enthusiast? Also, would you share the title of your
| podcast?
| antognini wrote:
| I've found a couple of books that have been very good:
|
| A History of Astronomy by A. Pannekoek has a reasonably
| detailed and readable history of ancient astronomy, though as
| I've been diving into it I've found that parts are a little
| dated. But it's really good to get a high level overview of
| what the main problems early astronomers were trying to solve
| and how they were trying to solve them.
|
| Episodes in the Early History of Astronomy by Aaboe is really
| good, too, though it's more from the perspective of a modern
| astronomer trying to put the ancient methods into modern
| mathematical notation. It's very valuable if you're not
| intimidated by equations.
|
| Exploring Ancient Skies by Kelly et al. is by far the most
| detailed and contains the most up-to-date scholarship on
| ancient astronomy, but it's pretty hard to read casually. In
| some parts it's kind of like a review article that's just a
| bunch of pointers to other references.
|
| My podcast is Song of Urania and you can find it here:
| https://songofurania.com/
|
| The full moon was today, so naturally I'm procrastinating
| here on HN rather than editing my latest episode. :)
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| Thanks, glad to see you're on Spotify. I'll definitely
| check it out!
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| The reason we have a 7 day week, the names of the days, and the
| reason those names are in their particular order stem from
| Babylonian astronomy. It's one of my favourite stories.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Piano. I've decided that more programming languages or web stacks
| are a complete waste of time. Piano is for life and I wished I
| had started doing this in earnest long ago.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I've been astounded by the number of _free_ pianos I see on
| Facebook marketplace. I totally get the allure (and used to
| play a bit myself), but I fear it 's a dying art.
| gandalfgreybeer wrote:
| Mind sharing resources you're using to learn? Also do you have
| background in music theory or is this from scratch?
| ketanhwr wrote:
| Not OP but I'm going through "Alfred's Basic Adult All in One
| Course" book series. It assumes no prior piano/theory
| knowledge and is one of the most recommended books on
| r/piano.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I built pianojacq.com to help me practice sightreading and to
| keep track of where I'm making mistakes. It is still far from
| perfect but quite useful. The main problem is to get the
| pieces I want to practice into MIDI format, but there is a
| wealth of MIDI files out there that can be used with a little
| editing.
|
| I have this pipeline where I take a youtube video, download
| it as an MP3, convert that to MIDI and then edit that midi to
| split left/right and to ensure it is all set to time and of
| the proper length so I can show it as sheet music.
|
| I knew next to nothing about music theory when I started this
| beyond the very first basic stuff, but after watching many
| youtube videos on the subject and reading a lot of stuff it
| is starting to make sense. This is a subject that is
| overcomplicated to the point that it seems much harder than
| it really is, there are only very few good teachers out there
| to make that which looks complicated but it ultimately
| relatively simple simple again.
|
| If you want I can do a write-up of all the resources that
| I've used over the last year and a half.
|
| Currently practicing Ennio Morricone's "Chi Mai" arranged for
| piano.
|
| Progress is still slow but if I compare my sightreading
| spead, accuracy and general quality of play with a year ago
| the difference is huge even if you can't see it day-by-day.
| Each new piece brings new challenges, and teaches me
| something that re-inforces the pieces that I already know how
| to play which then all get a little bit better.
|
| Overall I'm having a ton of fun with this and the joy I get
| from playing a piece end-to-end without mistakes, at speed
| and in a way that is nice to listen is hard to describe.
|
| It's obvious that an experienced pianist would probably laugh
| at the level of my accomplishments but that's fine with me,
| I'm enjoying this and that's what counts. It's also one of
| very few things in my life that I've done without any
| commercial goal, and which is just for myself. Overall if I
| could do this life over I'd tone down the business career in
| favor of making more music. And the programming skills came
| in handy while making pianojacq.com, so in a way this allowed
| me to combine two things I love.
| kian wrote:
| Piano has also been my go to this pandemic. I've also been
| finding a lot of joy in applying my programming skills to
| music as well. What are you using to convert MP3 to MIDI?
| How accurate is it?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Either this: https://piano-scribe.glitch.me/ or my own
| cobbled together piece of software. Depending on the
| content anywhere from 80 to 95% accurate, good enough to
| get you started and typically the errors are reasonably
| easy to deal with because of repeating patterns.
| outside1234 wrote:
| I'm on the same journey with the guitar, highly
| recommended, was one of the key things that improved my
| life during the pandemic -- and still excited to keep at it
| afterwards.
| yboris wrote:
| A fun tech-related project is hooking up an addressable LED
| strip to a digital piano and making the strip respond to your
| key presses - via a Raspberry Pi.
|
| My repository for this (code finished, just need to add photos
| and add a write up about how to use):
|
| https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED
|
| I added a feature that the left and middle pedal buttons
| navigate through sheet music (PDF left/right button). And I'm
| also running Pianoteq which makes any (even dinky) digital
| piano sound like a $100k grand piano (or any piano you pick for
| that matter) https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq
| tmaly wrote:
| This sounds really cool, looking forward to your pictures.
| coldpie wrote:
| Same, but classical guitar. Less tech in my life please,
| thanks.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| ooh! I'm doing exactly the same! I purchased a Casio and
| started taking lessons. So happy to learn!
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Use a metronome.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Currently working on textbooks in:
|
| Topological Manifolds (Lee: Topological Manifolds)
|
| Abstract Algebra (Dummit and Foote)
|
| Geometric Algebra (Doran: Geometric Algebra for Physicists)
|
| Differential Geometry (Fecko: Differential Geometry and Lie
| Groups for Physicists)
|
| Though I'm less invested in these last two currently, as the diff
| geo's a prep for the masters I'll be doing and the other is
| something I'd really like to pursue but can't motivate myself to
| start working the problems out on.
|
| I play around with some tech stuff, but nothing major -- just
| doing FreeCodeCamp and trying to keep my Python skills from going
| too rusty.
|
| I'm fixing to start an Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
| Physics masters, so might review QM and CM as well as it's been a
| while since I've done them in school and I need a refresher, even
| if I hope to lean towards the 'Applied Math' (which is mostly
| numerical algorithms related, etc.) side of things in the
| masters.
|
| Otherwise, I've been continuing working with Irish (Gaelic), and
| keep dabbling in some other languages, ranging from Spanish to
| Latin to Japanese. I also try to read widely in various topics
| from religious studies, philosophy to linguistics, psychology (I
| know...), sociology, pop science, etc. I've also bought an
| ocarina I need to try to practice since I'm off for the summer
| and don't have to worry about disturbing my roommate. But this is
| all mostly dabbling at this point, as I'm fixing to move
| countries for (at least) a year, so...
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Are you aware of bivector.net, a new Geometric Algebra
| community? Join the discord https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Yep, I'm actually in the discord server though I've got it
| muted because I'm not focused enough on it yet. Hoping to get
| back into it more deeply next month and be more active.
| Thanks for the invite!
| DreamScatter wrote:
| I've been on the bivector discord since the beginning (aka
| chakravala), you can find my geometric algebra library
| Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Finally getting around to learning full stack JS. Been doing
| Angular/React on the frontend for a while, but never did much
| beyond that.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| I am looking for ways to improve communication (and hence also
| negotiations). Far too many times I have been too very direct - I
| really envy typical HR's soft-spoken language, even if it is to
| deliver something horrific. I don't know if this is just how I am
| build mentally or not. The only way to find is to learn and try
| to adapt.
|
| So, not sure if this fits the question - spent a lot of time
| learning new tech, focusing on non-tech for a short period of
| time. I feel that I have been overlooking that side of skill-set.
| goostavos wrote:
| I've been working on this, too (admittedly... for years)! I
| similarly have a 'very direct' style of communication. I've
| received formal feedback on more than one occasion calling me
| 'abrasive'.
|
| fwiw, two books helped me massively in this area:
|
| 1. The Field Guide to Human Error. This book I read on a whim
| just because I thought it would be useful for software
| development. The first few chapter's ended up being kind of
| life altering. It felt like along personal attack on my
| character. In short, it was about perspectives we take when
| dealing with other people, and how viewing from our vantage
| point is not only frequently wrong, but it's lazy.
|
| Even with things like CR comments. I now ask myself "_why_ do
| they think that's the right approach?"
|
| 2. Never Split the Difference. While it's about negotiations,
| it deals a lot with how humans think, and despite what we tell
| ourselves or want to believe about we being rational creatures,
| emotion dominates almost all interactions. It gives all kinds
| of useful advice for framing conversations and using language
| which avoids being confrontational or accusatory.
|
| This was another huge one for me, as it shifted just about all
| of my conversations from starting with "you're dumb and here's
| why" to "let's make sure we agree on what the problem is" and
| then making finding the solution a collaborative effort, rather
| than a top down directive.
| bfors wrote:
| You might want to checkout out NVC:
|
| https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/2019/03/06/want-to-impr...
|
| I found it through HN and for me, personally, it has helped.
| fitpolar wrote:
| Roku, and their strange world of SceneGraph and BrightScript!
|
| It's actually quite similar to React meets Ruby or something, but
| without the nested dependency breakages you get with node in
| React. Anyway, client wanted so client gets.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| What I'm actually taking steps to learn vs the huge pile of
| things I want to learn is something quite different.
|
| Right now I suppose I'm semi-actively learning Erlang & OTP (I
| vastly prefer the syntax compared to Elixir).
|
| In the future I want to learn more about the BEAM (how it's
| implemented, my basic details are good but I'd like to get to
| internals). I want to learn about compilers too, to be able to
| for example contribute to BEAM. Oh, and I want to learn lisp +
| work through SICP.
|
| edit: oh also just the small matter of Mathematics (from like
| half way through GCSE to A Level). Russian would also be
| interesting.
| terio wrote:
| Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Good stuff about randomness and how
| to benefit from it.
| masteruvpuppetz wrote:
| I am thinking about changing career from accounting to
| IT/programming. Been a hobby programmer for 20+ years but I think
| the best way to move forward is to go for functional consultant
| kind of a role. MS Dynamics certification is what I'm serious
| about right now.
| 2_ghosts wrote:
| 6502 assembly language for the Atari 2600 (which actually uses a
| 6507). I've always wanted a lower level understanding of
| computers, but it took childhood nostalgia to finally motivate
| me. I also enjoy reading about the original engineers from Atari,
| Activision, Commodore, etc, so it's been rewarding to dabble in
| that world.
| veganjay wrote:
| Sounds interesting! What resources are you using to learn?
|
| In case you haven't seen it already, http://8bitworkshop.com/
| provides an online IDE.
| 2_ghosts wrote:
| Thanks! 8bitworkshop is a great resource.
|
| I am currently working through this online course by Gustavo
| Pezzi called "6502 Assembly Language for the Atari 2600".
| https://courses.pikuma.com/courses/atari2600 It has been
| excellent. Just the pace and level of detail that I need. I
| am lucky to have stumbled upon it.
|
| I am also reading "Making Games for the Atari 2600" by Steven
| Hugg. Previously I was simply exploring what is available on
| http://www.6502.org/, working through the Easy 6502 tutorial
| https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/, and checking out
| YouTube tutorials.
| ariosto wrote:
| iOS development. I've been backend/infrastucture for a while now
| and want to be more well rounded.
| claytoneast wrote:
| I'm building a sauna in my parents backyard. I've framed and
| sided a couple houses, but always with someone who knew what they
| were doing. Building even a small insulated shed (which is what a
| sauna basically is) from scratch w/ no plans, whole other world.
| Lots and lots of things I have to figure out along the way.
| koilke wrote:
| Chinese, piano, and Starcraft 2
| karimf wrote:
| I'm on the first and second book of Teach Yourself Computer
| Science curriculum [0].
|
| https://teachyourselfcs.com/
| bobbydreamer wrote:
| From this weekend. Jenkins, Groovy and BitBucket
| csomar wrote:
| Lately, I have been catching up with the latest web dev tools:
| Wasm, React, Redux, NextJS and Serverless.
| dnadler wrote:
| You'll probably get tons of people pitching their favorite
| tech, but I was recently doing the same thing and Redux just
| wasn't clicking for me. I think MobX is way more intuitive and
| it's also quite stable. Worth taking a look if you don't like
| Redux
| alexcnwy wrote:
| Jump rope - it's great cardio and really fun.
|
| It feels good to be a total beginner and then slowly learn
| different tricks/moves.
| firefoxd wrote:
| As a web developer, I'm often ashamed to admit that I knew very
| little about AI. Especially because I worked on a AI product on
| my day to day. I was perfectly fine debugging our python code and
| updating spacy, but had no clue what it was doing internally.
|
| So 6 months ago, I quit my job, published a short book, then
| studied AI. It's funny how so many material makes the vast
| assumption that you already know so much. They gloss over
| activation functions, loss functions, vanishing gradients, or the
| most fundamental things like properly loading your data. No one
| even tells you how to load the data!
|
| Anyway, I got my Deep Learning Specialization certificate, I
| watched all 3blue1brown videos, I built a smart assistant that
| runs on raspberry pi in my car. The goal is to have it Assist the
| driver, with blind spots and keeping the eyes on the road.
| obiwanpallav1 wrote:
| I took the Coursera's Machine Learning course in 2017 just
| because I had some time then. But I didn't work on any related
| project, back to square one now. A few weeks back I started to
| revise the course but it's appears to be boring because I know
| that I've done it already and I feel that I'll forget it once
| again.
|
| Can you please share how you started and the projects you
| worked on?
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Funny you should mention this, as I'm on my way there. I'm just
| at the Data Analytics with Python portion of my studies, but
| with time I want to learn the Machine Learning and AI (baby
| steps, I suppose). I like to know the behind the scenes
| sections and the inner workings, so I tend to get side tracked
| on occasion and deep dive into parts that interest me...
| Probably not good for forward momentum, but better for my
| interest, I suppose =/
| nandaja wrote:
| Was in a rut for way too long. Slowly getting back to learning by
| doing https://www.nand2tetris.org/. So far it has been enjoyable.
| levi_n wrote:
| This is really cool, and I can really relate to being in a rut.
| Thank you so much for sharing.
| Flex247A wrote:
| I am learning how the audio stacks in Windows and Linux work. I
| plan to create a simple library to play sound on both platforms
| (like RTAudio/PortAudio but simpler).
|
| I am using C/C++ to program the library while learning essential
| concepts.
| neolog wrote:
| Nice post yesterday about the next generation Linux audio
| system. I've been using Pipewire on my desktop for a while and
| it's been working well.
|
| https://venam.nixers.net/blog/unix/2021/06/23/pipewire-under...
| Flex247A wrote:
| His previous blog on Unix Audio Systems cleared up a few
| concepts I had in mind.
|
| BTW I use Fedora 34, and PipeWire works flawlessly for
| screen-sharing and Bluetooth audio :^)
| questionQuest wrote:
| Been reading about CI/CD and testing best practices.
|
| I'm an SRE and my company has had these as pain points for
| years... Might need to learn how to advocate for adoption next
| XD.
|
| Also looking into ML for time series data (metrics). Greykite and
| Kats seem to be interesting candidates.
| elias94 wrote:
| Clojure. Is a complex language but it seems really speeding up
| your programming when you learn how to use it properly. And the
| community is really addicted to it.
| millerthomas wrote:
| I started on Clojure a few months ago and I'm pretty obsessed.
| It's really reinvigorated my love of programming.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Hey congrats! I have been using Clojure professionally for 9
| years and absolutely love it. A really important concept I tell
| all the new Clojurists at work:
|
| Clojure is simple.
|
| Nearly everything is just (function arg1 arg2 ...), even at a
| fundamental language level. It's actually our background
| experience in complex languages with all kinds of wacky syntax
| that makes Clojure seem hard at first. But it's very simple. So
| if you can't remember the syntax or why something is the way it
| is, step back and you'll realize it's just (function arg1 arg2
| ...).
|
| For example:
|
| (defn add-these [x y] (+ x y))
|
| is still just
|
| (function arg1 arg2 arg3)
|
| Where:
|
| function = defn
|
| arg1 = add-these (a symbol)
|
| arg2 = [x y] (a vector)
|
| arg3 = (+ x y) (an expression, which itself is just (function
| arg1 arg2))
|
| You may already know all that, but regardless I hope it's
| encouraging because the bottom line is Clojure is easer than
| you think and you can do it! :-)
| raspasov wrote:
| Been using Clojure for 8 years or so. It's a very productive
| language.
|
| Clojure is actually simpler (and eventually way, way easier)
| than most mainstream languages. It's just a bit different from
| what most people are used to and what is commonly taught as
| "programming".
| [deleted]
| aneeshnl wrote:
| Micromasters in Statistics and Data Science - MITx. I didn't
| realize that it involve this much maths when I started. It is
| really pushing my boundaries by a huge margin.
|
| Machine learning - how it works behind the scenes was really
| insightful.
|
| (Currently working as a PHP backend developer, Drupal.)
| cknight wrote:
| I'm sure many here on HN did this long ago, but for me: Learning
| how to get by in a large org for the first time.
|
| 1 month ago I was responsible for the entire IT function of an
| SMB. I was the guy who knew everything required to get stuff
| done, and I reported directly to the CEO. A lot of processes were
| not formalised because the overheads of doing so weren't worth
| it.
|
| New job, now working for the government in a skyscraper full of
| colleagues. I know virtually nothing, there is no onboarding to
| speak of, and I am second from the bottom in a huge hierarchy
| strangled by red tape. Every day I find out that there is another
| whole team dedicated to doing something I thought I was going to
| have to work out myself - which has pros and cons. I haven't even
| seen an org chart yet, but I've just been told "those teams over
| there are getting outsourced next month". So I think I know why
| there is no up-to-date org chart...
|
| It's different. But it's a pay rise, and I'm not bored anymore.
| The level of coordination required to get anything done here is a
| learning exercise in itself. After my first week I was worried I
| wasn't cut out for this sort of thing, but after a couple more
| weeks I'm finding it... fun? Still weird though.
| sli wrote:
| That sounds in every way like my nightmare and the reason I
| want to cram tech back into the hobby pile and switch careers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good luck with that. Keep a sharp eye on the door and have a
| 'plan-B' in case you need it.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| A couple of things I've learned over time:
|
| - Soft skills matter, but performance (against your metrics) is
| still what matters in the end. Group dynamics only comes into
| it when you have a bunch of people at the same level of
| performance.
|
| - You'll be ahead of a lot of your peers if you stay positive
| and don't gossip and don't do office "politicking" (in a bad
| sense).
|
| - Plan your career around three year stints. At the end of each
| stint, evaluate your career progress against your long term
| goals. Don't be afraid to transfer jobs or take time off for
| learning (e.g., by getting a graduate degree).
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| > You'll be ahead of a lot of your peers if you stay positive
| and don't gossip and don't do office "politicking"
|
| This is important. I've worked with people who are constantly
| criticizing the company/other people, and while they are
| usually right, it undermines the morale of everyone else.
| exikyut wrote:
| This hit the frontpage a few weeks ago, and may be interesting:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414443
| daliusd wrote:
| I'm looking forward to build my own keyboard: printing pcb,
| parts, doing soldering and etc. There are a lot of things I have
| not done before so I had to learn some.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Parameter tuning for deep learning models.
| truth_ wrote:
| What resources are you following? How are you _learning_ this
| in general?
|
| In most cases, it's just a big and elaborate grid search done
| manually.
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