Ask HN: What new skills are you learning? - zuck9
======
kelukelugames
After interacting with a few lawyers I realized I am severely lacking in
communication and people skills. Their emails were inviting but not over the
top. My emails were either too curt or too verbose.

When talking to people face to face, I also work on adding value without
rambling. Breathing more helps a lot.

And for fun I'm learning how to draw. Here is some of my work.

[http://www.redbubble.com/people/kelukelu](http://www.redbubble.com/people/kelukelu)
[https://twitter.com/KeLuKeLuGames/status/553404094958694400/...](https://twitter.com/KeLuKeLuGames/status/553404094958694400/photo/1)

~~~
gknoy
How are you working on improving your written communication skills? I think
that's something that I and others have lots of room for improvement in as
well.

~~~
kelukelugames
I have three short answers for you.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonficti...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427304099&sr=8-1&keywords=on+writing+well)

2\. Watch the video at the end of this link:
[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/watch-me-write-this-
arti...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/watch-me-write-this-article/) The
take away is write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite some more.

3\. Pay attention to the people who write well in your life. When you read an
email that feels well written try to figure out why you like it. And use those
elements in your future writings.

------
owensmartin
Carpentry.

I thought I knew a bit about woodworking because of my middle-school shop
class. Turns out it's an extremely precise and technical activity, packed with
lessons in engineering, measurement, statistics, and physics.

I'm really excited to mention it to you guys because I found learning
woodworking is a great application of modern technology: I watch youtube
videos on it at 2x, and can basically google any problem I encounter. I often
say to my friends: watching youtube at 2x is my superpower.

~~~
pdevr
Thank you. What equipment/materials do you need to get started?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Some wood, a hand saw, a hammer, sandpaper and a box of nails.

If you have a Rockler Hardware or the like in your area, visit it for ideas.

I grew up around woodworking because my grandfather was a professional
furniture maker. I rediscovered it about 15 years ago by making jewelry boxes
from tree branches and cut off bits of exotic woods. It can be anything from a
fun, freeform hobby (making boxes), to an exercise in proper engineering
(building a pole barn).

I've been slowly building an 8x12 shed as time permits. I really need to get
it done by summer so I can move onto erecting a pole building from cut-down
trees.

------
MarcScott
I've finally decided that regular expressions are not witchcraft and that I
need to learn how to use them.

~~~
mercnet
Any recommendations on learning them, e.g. tutorials?

~~~
pc86
Not helpful at all for learning, but I've found RegExper[1] is fantastic for
visualizing existing expressions, particularly ones you haven't written but
need to understand or edit.

[1] [http://www.regexper.com/](http://www.regexper.com/)

~~~
tovmeod
I like [http://www.debuggex.com/](http://www.debuggex.com/)

------
winestock
Symbolic logic. Years ago, I did a paper in logic which my professors
initially took to be of publishable quality. They took a closer look and
decided that I needed to clean it up a bit.

I've finished reviewing Aristotelian logic and am now going deep into modern
logic. I don't know for sure, but I have a hunch that my paper will be of use
to mathematicians.

~~~
malux85
Cool! I would love to read it! When you release it, could you email a copy to
me? (email in profile)

------
xb
I've been watching and trying out different flux-like patterns, aided in part
by this repo: [https://github.com/voronianski/flux-
comparison](https://github.com/voronianski/flux-comparison)

I've re-implemented the same project using vanilla flux, fluxxor, reflux, and
baobab tree. I've come to liking baobab the best, with reflux in a close
second.

The flux pattern isn't some total magic and itself hasn't been a revelation,
but I've never been able to try out so many different rehashes of the same
idea so quickly and that process has yielded a lot of interesting knowledge.

~~~
arms
I'm considering using Baobab for a project and I'm curious if you've run into
any major issues or red flags?

------
malux85
Distributed computing using Python

Techs: HBase, MLLib and Spark (Most of my time)

Spatial SDR Reconstruction with NuPIC (1 day a week)

Spanish using Duolingo (20 mins a day)

Game development with ImpactJS (only 1 day a week)

~~~
kevinaloys
Hey could you provide some resources for learning Distributed Computing using
Python. I was thinking of using Go but since I know python to a considerable
extent, I wanna give Python a fighting chance for making distributed systems.

~~~
malux85
Sure thing -

I'm not one for reading books I think there's more value in just building
stuff:

Check out Prediction.IO - [http://prediction.io/](http://prediction.io/) it's
an out of the box machine learning server, it uses hbase, but hbase in this
configuration is sitting on top of the local filesystem, not HDFS -- so the
first task I assigned myself was to learn how to setup hadoop, and then
configure HBase to store data in HDFS.

Once I have that, I'm going to use PySpark to use spark to query the data.
(Thats where the python comes in)

Another cool project (not related to the tech stack above) is Pyro
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pyro4](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pyro4) ...
this consumed a whole weekend of mine a few weeks back, building a small
distributed search engine for querying compressed DNA sequences ... think a
parallel boyer-moore. As a learning exercise try doing that, it's great fun!

------
ihaveajob
Haskell, and functional programming at the same time. In school I wasn't
properly introduced to it (learned some Lisp on paper, during half a semester,
and that's it). It's quite the steep road so far, especially since I can only
work on it during spare bits of time.

~~~
daniele_s
I'm also looking into learning Haskell and I know a very little about
functional programming (I'm still in university but I think no one will ever
introduce me to that), any advice on where to start?

~~~
actsasbuffoon
I've been learning Haskell for the last year and a half, though I've been
working with functionally inspired languages for 8 years. Haskell is
wonderful, easily the most fun I've had learning a language in 20 years.

I'd advise not getting distracted by monads and other glamorous parts of the
language. Monads are pretty abstract, and they won't likely make much sense
until you've written enough Haskell to feel the pain-points they address.

I've learned a lot by reading blog posts from these people:

* Aditya Bhargava: [http://adit.io](http://adit.io)

* Gabriel Gonzalez: [http://www.haskellforall.com/](http://www.haskellforall.com/)

* Joseph Abrahamson: [http://jspha.com/](http://jspha.com/)

* kqr (I don't know this person's full name. Avatar not withstanding, I'm pretty sure kqr isn't David Bowie): [https://github.com/kqr/gists](https://github.com/kqr/gists)

* Edward Kmett: [https://www.fpcomplete.com/user/edwardk](https://www.fpcomplete.com/user/edwardk)

Most of all, I advise not getting discouraged. Haskell has a lot of concepts
that seem intimidating. Many times I've spent days trying to figure out what
the hell a contravariant functor is, only to get really discouraged. At times
I've doubted my own abilities and whether learning the language was worth it.
I stuck to it, and a year and a half later I'm pretty damn capable with
Haskell (and I know what a contravariant functor is!) and I'm having the time
of my life learning more about it.

~~~
daniele_s
Thank you, I have seen a lot of interesting examples over there, I can't wait
to understand more about them!

------
Fradow
Electronics. I got started with a spare Raspberry Pi a friend gave me. I got
hooked and test as much things I can get my hands on. I now have a BeagleBone
Black, a few Arduinos on the way and lots of sensors.

There are a lot of interesting small projets you can do with small
electronics.

~~~
sanderjd
I've been (very slowly) working my way through "Art of Electronics" for the
last few years, and I highly recommend it for the next level of depth below
Arduino et. al.

------
iterationx
Passively learning survivalist skills by watching Survivorman.

~~~
luxpir
If that wasn't completely tongue-in-cheek, check out Lars Monsen[0] on NRK.no
if possible from your country. He's the real deal. Now to look up
Survivorman...

\--

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Monsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Monsen)

EDIT: DRM-free version of the great '365 Nordkalotten' available via
Bittorrent here:

[https://nrkbeta.no/2008/01/29/norwegian-broadcasting-nrk-
mak...](https://nrkbeta.no/2008/01/29/norwegian-broadcasting-nrk-makes-
popular-series-available-drm-free-via-bittorrent/)

Or the location-aware Norwegian TV site NRK might be good for you here:

[http://tv.nrk.no/sok?q=lars+monsen](http://tv.nrk.no/sok?q=lars+monsen)

------
bitwize
How to lift things up and put them down.

~~~
hashberry
Everyone should learn to lift weights. It'll improve physique, health, and
quality of life as you grow older.

------
tremendo
I'm working my way through the matasano crypto challenges and learning a lot.
[http://cryptopals.com/](http://cryptopals.com/) Also learning Racket through
HtDP
[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e)
I had started with Swift, but… not loving it. There's so much, it's
overwhelming sometimes just deciding what to go after.

------
Delmania
Learning.

I have some ambitious goals, including learning management skills and data
science, and I thought it wise to bootstrap this by learning about learning.

I'm going through Coursera for this: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-
how-to-learn/outline](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn/outline).

~~~
shicky
is the course any good? I've considered it but yet to pull the trigger

------
kregasaurusrex
VHDL. I'm planning on making an FPV quadcopter using an FPGA + using analog
signal transmission on a personal project.

~~~
sanderjd
Very cool. What tooling are you using? I've found the world of FPGA tools to
be bewildering to the point that I've abandoned my projects and my Nexys3
languishes in a drawer.

~~~
jck
I would suggest using myhdl (www.myhdl.org), and then plugging the
verilog/vhdl it generates into your vendor's tools.

~~~
kregasaurusrex
Thank you! I'm looking on the internet for help/books also.

------
hzhou321
For middle aged person, how about "what new skills are you growing?"

One of the dilemma in learning new skills is there are so many new skills out
there and how do you know that spending effort in learning the new skills are
more worthwhile than strengthen your old skills? Every person is unique, and
depending on popular votes from outside is risky ...

On the other hand, focus on the problem you are trying to attack and work from
your existing skills and only learn new skills when it become apparent that
old skills are not sufficient, at which point which new skills to learn will
no longer be a question.

More often, I find myself developing new skills that are grown from my old
ones. In fact, look around, all existing skills were grown from somewhere.

TL;DR Focus on the problem, not the skills.

------
dunstad
One belief I hold is that I can become proficient in any skill if I put the
hours in. While maybe not 100% true in every case, it certainly helps more to
think this way than to not.

I first became really convinced of this idea while studying Japanese using
Anki. I've been doing that for over two years now, and have reached a
comfortable level of comprehension. No plans to stop soon.

I've also started learning the violin recently. It's nice to be able to look
at my other skills and realize that if I just put in the hours, I can become
as good in this, even though I'm terrible right now.

------
Rmilb
I'm learning a handful of construction skills while building my own tiny home
on wheels. I think everyone should have the basic skills to fix things around
their home and or do simple renovations. I installed the last window last week
:). Also diving into Python with my girlfriend. Images of the build.
[https://plus.google.com/photos/117374232859136026472/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/117374232859136026472/albums/6116503462518711297)

------
artmageddon
I'm trying to decide whether I want my future to steer toward mobile or web
development. I've completed the Codecademy JS course but feel like I need to
do certain parts of it to really cement my knowledge of it. I'm also trying to
build some basic apps in Xamarin.iOS since C# is my bread and butter. I feel
like I might struggle with this for some time :/

Outside of development, I'm studying Farsi, getting back into running, and
hopefully renew my private pilot currency. Oh, and Arduino :)

~~~
kelukelugames
For JS, have you seen this?
[http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)

~~~
artmageddon
I haven't, but I'm going to check this out - thank you so much!

------
andyjohnson0
"Mathematical thinking", on this course:
[https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink](https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink)

------
BaptisteGreve
VR Development (Unreal Engine and Unity) and 3D modeling (Blender)

~~~
csmattryder
Fellow game developer, hi!

After becoming annoyed with how hampered I was with acquiring 3D art assets, I
too am trying to get into 3D modelling with 3DS Max.

I think I've got the hang of it, found out about edge loops yesterday, and
I've created a small 'office room' for my game!

------
gknoy
I'm slowly making my way through the Microcorruption puzzles. The first three
seemed easy, but I feel completely stuck on the next ones. It's very
satisfying, though, because I feel like I can learn my way through it, and
then those will feel "easy" as well.

My biggest gripe now is that I can't rearrange the code + memory windows to be
side by side for a large-monitor experience. I feel like that would make it
easier to trace program flow.

------
sergiotapia
I'm trying to dive into EmberCLI. I want to get into the whole the 'web via
API' mindset and separate things into logical applications.

So I built my Rails 4 API, and Go API, and they're really really fast.

I'm also building my web client with EmberCLI. It's a blast so far as well. I
really enjoy the benefits a framework like Ember brings to the table.
Structure structure structure. 3 years from now, I want to know my way around
the project.

------
franze
Kickboxing

I'm 36. It's time to take this whole body thing serious.

------
alxmdev
Some basic music theory so I can write my own chiptunes :-)

Also planning to give Haxe a try one of these weekends, to see how pleasant it
is for coding small browser games.

------
noir_lord
Technical (at various stages)

    
    
        Python more deeply (used it for years but it's a surprisingly deep language)
    
        Few different open source libraries
    
        Some "big data" stuff (using open government data).
    
        Ada
    
        Javascript properly
    

Non-Technical

    
    
        Learning to manage pain (recent diagnosis of degenerative spinal condition)
        
        To be a more positive person

~~~
niche
Try yoga, go to an easy beginners class at a studio that seems bent on
spirituality and not fitness, helps with pain and positivity, programming
benefits are more discrete

------
sea-shore
Squeak Smalltalk, the computer revolution is coming!

------
midnightmonster
Learning how to build a product business alongside my consulting via [the
latest version of] Amy Hoy's 30x500 course.

------
api
On the coding front, I'm considering learning Go. Otherwise I am looking at
something soon where I'm going to need to learn better management, promotion,
networking, and general people skills (in a biz context).

I'm a "just dive in and do something" learner, so that's the approach I'll
take with both.

------
dirtyaura
Swift, React, long-distance running (surprisingly, there are things to learn
about endurance running)

------
lnk2w
In the Technical part : I'm learning full stack web development with
Ruby/Rails for my personal projects, and Android Development for my job.

Also I'm doing English Classes and I'm thinking about starting German on
Duolinguo, and there is the Aikido lessons too.

------
himanshuy
Go Language. After working with Java for 10 years, it seems to provide a good
alternative.

------
partisan
Bouncing between non-MS technologies including Node, Django, Dropwizard,
PostgreSQL, NoSQL, etc. I've done this in the past and came out with a decent
understanding of Rails and Play! with Scala, but I just haven't found love
yet.

------
kidlogic
Javascript and Node.js

I am going to create a Google Voice clone with some additional features. I've
been getting spam-called for the past 2-3 months now and it's pretty
frustrating (especially if some of those calls are legitimate customers)..

------
yiqi
Right now, I'm Programming iOS app with Facebook
ComponentKit.[http://componentkit.org/docs/component-
api.html](http://componentkit.org/docs/component-api.html)

------
dnroberts
Openstack. Singularly the most frustrating experience of the last year. It's
been 2 solid weeks of poor documentation, failing example code, out of date
tutorials, and obtuse error messages.

------
kenbellows
Processing. Too many times I've spun my own little mini-library just to play
around with some basic animation on the canvas.

------
ironlady
Past 6 months I was learning Go, but I started looking into Rust yesterday and
am tempted to give it some attention.

------
gtt
Mandarin Chinese

~~~
eitally
Me, too! My whole family (wife + two young kids) started private tutoring
about 6 months ago. What kind of resources are you finding helpful?

~~~
Kronopath
I learned a bit on my own time last year. Check back on this thread in a few
days—I'm writing up a post detailing how I went about learning it with links
to a whole bunch of resources. It'll probably be useful to you, so I'll post
it as a reply to you here once it's done.

~~~
Kronopath
I don't know if you're still watching this thread, but as promised here's the
article: [http://kronopath.net/blog/impossible-to-
learn/](http://kronopath.net/blog/impossible-to-learn/)

------
sea6ear
I'm trying to finally give Erlang, Scheme / Racket, and JavaScript the
attention they deserve in my life.

~~~
sanderjd
I've been really enjoying Elixir – I always liked the idea of Erlang, but
became frustrated in practice, and Elixir feels like it has been designed
around my frustrations.

~~~
sea6ear
I've also been meaning to try out LFE (Lisp Flavored Erlang). Basically Erlang
with a lisp front-end (originally started by Robert Virding).

------
kentt
Ruby on Rails. I'm moving from a PHP product to a RoR agency. Start dates in 2
weeks and I *can't wait.

------
brudgers
Optimization of NP problems via Coursera, Clojure in conjunction with that,
and a wee bit of C all on its own.

------
selleck
"Hacking", which has led me to start learning more about C, Assembly, and
Networks.

~~~
artmageddon
Where did you start?

~~~
selleck
Started with Hacking, the Art of Exploitation. Finished, but realized I was in
over my head. Taking CS50x through edx for C programming + a Udemy Assembly
class. Ultimate goal is to make progress on
[https://microcorruption.com](https://microcorruption.com)

I have a 9 month learning plan worked out with books, online courses, and
other Hacking tutorials/projects.

~~~
artmageddon
I bought the first edition of it years ago and I realized I was in over my
head too :(

------
lasermike026
Management, Budgeting, Cloud/AWS, SaltStack, Python, Perl/Mojo, and JavaScript

------
haidrali
on skill which i love to master is "How to build a good design" it can be web
page, mobile screen. whenever i look at web page or apps by Google it always
exit me because they do everything so perfect

------
niche
Haxe, coding and mindfulness

------
joekinley
I started learning erlang in february and am still improving on that

------
lukaslalinsky
Trying to get into analog electronics and slowly learning Spanish.

------
mping
Meditation, and Clojure.

------
siegecraft
Reading this thread to find interesting things to learn.

------
sreitshamer
Business development, product distribution

------
leekh
All new skills are worth learning.

------
will_lam
Swift and Olympic Weightlifting

------
gdiocarez
Design Pattern on PHP and Ruby

------
pvaldes
Beekeeping

------
rifung
Piano!

Also, Haskell

------
luisehk
Puppet

------
synaesthesisx
Swift....it's the future.

------
jeffnv
React/Flux of course! Who isn't at this time?

~~~
ryannevius
Lots of people aren't drinking the koolaid.

