Ask HN: What technical skill should I learn to prepare for the next 10 Years? - alexjray
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chatmasta
It's a safe bet that if something was relevant twenty years ago, and still is
today, then it will also be relevant in ten years from now. Examples: OS
fundamentals, networking fundamentals, low level languages, embedded
development, shell/bash scripting, vim, emacs.

It's nearly impossible to look at a new technology and determine if it will be
around in 10 years. But you know for sure that these timeless fundamentals
will still be relevant, so the first step should be mastering all of those.

Example: Unix system administration fundamentals are not going anywhere and
are more important than ever in the age of containers and developers owning
more parts of the stack. It's funny to read blogposts like "check out this
problem we ran into with docker" that is really just a rediscovery of a long-
known problem in system administration. Example: the recent post from codeship
about running thousands of containers on one network. Surprise, they ran into
issues with an overflowing arp cache.

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baccredited
Learn about the magic of compounding interest and investing in index funds.

Oh yeah - if you save 68% of your earnings, you can retire in under 10 years.

The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-
sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-
behind-early-retirement/)

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dkarapetyan
Study the fundamentals. Learn some timeless science like physics or math.

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david90
Learn about fundamentals and underlying principles; equip yourself with fast
learning skills.

You may also push up your own technology and contribute in changing the next
10 years.

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dbrunton
Learn to be resilient.

Pick up an artistic or handcraft technique.

Make friends.

Comedy, music, drama, or something other performing art.

Know your means, live within them.

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nylonstrung
None of those are technical skills

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dbrunton
"Making friends" is more technical than "learning math." But more importantly,
having friends helps more with technical problems than, say, knowing some
technology that doesn't apply here. Same for resiliency.

This was an off-the-cuff response, but it's a genuine one, particularly with
skills "for the next ten years." I've hired a lot of developers over two
decades, and some of them have done good work for me for a long, long time.

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andrei_says_
I'd say survival-related technical and medical skills. Climate change will
likely cause mass migrations in the next 10-20 years.

First aid and basic understanding of common emergency medicine needs.

Building of shelters, basic carpentry etc.

Gardening, food preparation, water purification.

Community building.

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DannyB2
Practice decomposing problems in a way they can be solved on multiple
processing elements in parallel. Identify problems that cannot be decomposed
in this way and why. Good if you can make a certain problem run on eight
processors. But will it also run on a thousand processors?

Processor clock speeds will not rise much or any. Everyone has enough memory
for most every day problems now, so memory will only gradually increase. The
next bragging rights will be how many processing elements my box has vs. your
box.

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D1tt0
The amount of cores in CPU's is on the rise; get into functional programming.

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Bumerang
Not sure if exactly technical, more like a meta-skill.

Learn how to analyse and decompose problems. There always will be some.

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iLemming
If you're talking about programming - learn Lisp. Pick any. Clojure, Racket,
LFE, Chicken, Guile or emacs-lisp, etc.. Understanding Lisp will make you a
better programmer. I'm sure, even 50 years from now there will be a Lisp
dialect among 20 most popular languages in use.

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spcelzrd
20 is pretty far down the list for programming language popularity.

[https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) lists
Scratch in the 20th position. Cobol is 25. I'm not sure there's a Lisp dialect
in the top 20 now.

Of course, any ranking of programming languages is problematic. Learning Lisp
is always a good idea.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
I'm not sure I'd agree with the TIOBE Index as a measure of popularity. It
ranks languages based on search queries, which more than likely does not
correlate that closely with use.

For instance, according to the Index, Java (#1) is twice as popular as C (#2).
While Java is certainly popular, it seems a stretch, given the amount of code
written in C, to say that Java is twice as popular as C.

~~~
spcelzrd
You might like githut's rankings better.
[http://githut.info](http://githut.info)

For the purpose of what to learn for the next ten years, Java is probably more
relevant to the job market than C.

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Blackstone4
__* Tangent warning __* I used to be very focused on what I could do.... learn
how to code, how to write a report, stats, CFA, how to present etc.....

I've come to realise that it doesn't matter as much as I thought. You only
need to be good enough and what is really important is your emotional
intelligence and network. Being able to process and manage your own emotions
and interact with others in a positive, constructive manner is the most
important thing. Reading the book How to win friends and influence people
opened my eyes

~~~
Blackstone4
I should finish by saying that if you want to future proof yourself.... you
should focus on what I wrote above...

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fegu
Functional programming, especially a language focusing on purity such as
Haskell.

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true_tuna
Tensorflow. We're going to be offloading a lot of pattern matching to machine
learning. Knowing when and where (and of course how) to apply machine learning
will become increasingly important.

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tboyd47
There is no technical skill that will prepare you for 10 years.

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londondev45
C#, JavaScript, Python.

Honestly, i can't see them going anywhere, especially Python.

Might as well learn Clojure, you have ten years..

C seems to not be going anywhere ever. Will there be that many new
technologies??

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rusht
Machine learning, especially deep learning.

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Dowwie
decision making through empirical research

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id122015
Political science. Its like techical. It changes faster than technology.

~~~
nylonstrung
As someone with a degree in political science, it absolutely does not change
faster than technology.

What massive political science paradigm shifts have happened in the last 7
years, the same timeframe that has seen the advent of cloud computing,
containerization, hyperconvergence, agile, ect?

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behnamoh
The world is going WWW, so I'd recommend stick to it.

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AlexAMEEE
Algorithms and SQL.

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wirddin
Why specifically SQL?

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popey456963
Even if you don't use the language specifically, the ideas it provides on
creating queries applies to pretty much every database I've used, with the one
exception being Redis.

It also doesn't hurt it's the most popular language at the moment and judging
by the amount of applications using it, won't be disappearing anytime soon
(especially not in just ten years).

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nicomfe
VR and self driving cars should do ;)

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matthewleehess
I built a self-driving car, and am launching a VR-based startup. Figured I
should chime in here.

I personally don't see much opportunity for people to get involved directly
with autonomous vehicles, from a tech/development standpoint. The vast
majority of work is focused on highly specialized subsets of development.
Computer vision, embedded systems, network infrastructure, cellular networks,
robotics, artificial intelligence, yada yada yada. The only meaningful work
being done right now, is mostly by engineers with Masters, Doctorate, or post-
Doctorate level education in niche fields.

Personally, I don't have that kind of educational background. I still managed
to piece together everything to make a working prototype, but there is not a
snowball's chance in hell that I would be able to contribute anything into
this field.

Not to say it's useless, though. This is about to unlock a need for UI
designers/developers on a level that is hard to fathom. Sit down and think for
a while about what the hell people are going to be doing, while being
chauffeured around. Entertainment options (Netflix, Youtube, News, etc.) will
be in massive demand. Gaming of all different kinds (especially multiplayer
experiences, that involve the vehicle's environment.) Advertising as a whole.
(And goddamn do I wish I could be an investor in PornHub right now.)

While Oculus, HTC, Microsoft, etc. all have (or will soon have) consumer-ready
products available for the VR market, I still feel like this technology is
barely entering it's infancy stage. The financial barrier to entry is holding
back 98% of the world from getting into it (for now). There isn't enough
meaningful content beyond some decent games. (Once again, goddamn do I wish I
could be an investor in PornHub right now.) For the most part, still tethered
to a computer (or using a watered-down phone-based experience). It's cool tech
for sure, but it doesn't feel (to me, at least) like anyone has really figured
out what the hell to do with it yet.

3D development isn't terribly different than any other kind of development. A
few more thoughts and considerations, but still the same principles of
traditional console/pc game development. WebVR (and ReactVR) are still just a
novelty. Because of the sheer scale and intricacy of most 3D environments, and
my own predictions of an explosive growth pattern in this industry, I'm
thinking that some form of automation (A.I., etc.) will have to be taking over
most of the grunt work for development. Thinking that most dev roles are going
to evolve into mostly architect roles, and that the real need is going to be
for UI/UX (particularly thought leaders, as opposed to designers).

~~~
throwaway29292
Thanks for this insightful comment. The current VR status irritates me as
well. It has only affecting gaming till now, despite the remote working/AR
implications. What do you mean by an 'explosive growth pattern'?

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edimaudo
Learning how to learn is the key.

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v01d4lph4
Javascript?

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ParameterOne
Sales.

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AnimalMuppet
Android.

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yulaow
Design Patterns.

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kwoff
digital electronics, hardware programming

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Const-me
OOP, OOD

~~~
cholantesh
I found it amusing that the comment directly below this was recommending
functional programming.

