
Ask HN: What do you look forward to doing in 2018? - atsushin
I&#x27;m particularly looking forward to sitting down and strengthening my understanding of computer science topics, including networking and operating systems. I also want to delve more into mathematics and understand its rigor better.
======
danieldk
1\. Do fun things with my wife and daughter.

2\. I switched to from Linux to macOS on the desktop in ~2007. I am now back
to Linux on my home machine. I decided to stop complaining about bugs/problems
and instead try to report every bug/problem that I encounter, when possible
with a minimal test case, and a patch. So far, I have reported a small number
of GNOME bugs and I hope to complain less and report/fix more in 2018. I am
looking forward to this, because it benefits me and may help other people.

3\. I work in a computational linguistics department and have teaching duties.
Next semester, I will be teaching a 'low-level natural language processing'
course using Rust. I have been using (and like) Rust for NLP-related projects,
so the course will be fun. Also, I am looking forward to see to see how much
students will like Rust.

4\. Meditating more. I used to meditate a lot, including doing retreats. With
a young child, it will be difficult to do full retreats, but it would be great
to sit 10-15 minutes per day again.

5\. Recently, an indoor climbing center opened close to us. My wife is
planning to do a course, so that we can climb together as a family. (I used to
climb ~twice a week for 5 years.)

~~~
mandliya
Rust NLP course sounds super interesting. I am dabbling in Rust. Could you
share details/course links when it is available. Thanks

------
RivieraKid
When planning how to utilize my time, I sometimes think in terms of these
three categories: make, learn, fun. So:

Make: finish a side project I'm working on. After that, start a new project
with a completion time of, say, about four months with the hope that some will
become successful or provide unexpected indirect value such as getting to know
interesting people etc.

Learn: continually learn stuff so that I cover roughly undergraduate
understanding of all of the major branches of science: physics, biology,
economics, chemistry, etc. For fun and because it's rewarding and useful to
understand the fundamentals of a wide range of fields. Useful because when
there's some specialized area of interest, understanding the fundamentals
makes it possible to learn about it relatively quickly.

Fun: travel more, maybe try LSD :)

Other than that, get a significant raise and/or start looking for a much
better paying job. The job market in my country is _extremely_ favourable for
employees right now, so I'm basically wasting a big opportunity out of fear of
change. Also, slack less in work (that's the reason I haven't asked for a
raise yet).

------
ianleeclark
I'm starting a new job. Full-time remote, so I'm very excited (even ordered a
Herman Miller, so my back is equally excited)! I'll also be working in Elixir
+ React, so both two technologies I'm very interested in.

I typically assign myself two large projects a year to delve deep into to
topics I'm ignorant in, so I'm going to attempt to build two low-level
networking services. One is a TOR router and the other is a userland TCP/IP
stack--I'm crazy excited to send a successful request to google.

~~~
jonnycoder
How did you get your remote job?

~~~
ianleeclark
Saw their post on weworkremotely or remoteok, applied, and interviewed :)

I have a few non-trivial open source projects (a torrent tracker and a
distributed key-value store) and two small side-businesses (one of which is
built in Elixir + Phoenix and the other went under a rewrite to that stack).
Showing that I can ship products tends to get me in the door, but a
combination of luck, personality, and technical know-how moves me forward in
the interview process.

------
0xcoffee
For 2017 I dropped all tech goals and focused 100% on relationships. I learned
a lot about myself in the process, and for 2018 I hope to correct some of the
social mistakes I keep making.

Also, starting my first real job.

~~~
hoodoof
I'd be interested to hear more about what's going on that has led to these
life changes?

~~~
0xcoffee
The short version is that loneliness is crippling me, whereas in the past I
used to find comfort in technology. For whatever reason this comfort is gone,
and I long for human contact.

However by nature I am very introverted. Not socially anxious, just I get
extremely tired around people, and in general can't hold a conversation about
any non-tech topic. Also I am a cold/distant person with relative little
emotions, not sure why. The couple of friends I had were similar to me, and we
can be comfortably cold together. However I work with very warm and caring
people from diverse backgrounds, and recognize that I love the qualities they
posses. Rather then be happy with who I am, I figured it must be possible to
'train' emotions, so that I become an overall more positive person.

However as a result I now attend around at least 1 social event a week, which
goes ok. But sometimes if there are multiple events planned close to each
other, my sociability drops off a cliff, but I have trouble recognizing when
it happens. Not sure if I should dial back and be happy with the progress I
made, or keep going and try to focus on breaking this sociability wall I am
hitting.

~~~
dhubris
Have you considered that you may fall into the ASD range of Asperger? I
mention this because what you described ticks a couple of the common traits.
Understanding yourself better can help with your goals. Best of luck.

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

------
wcarron
I've been wondering if adopting an agile framework for my life will help me
accomplish my goals. So I have. Starting a little early for resolutions but in
this sprint I hope to establish stronger flossing and exercise habits.

Larger goals for the year include establishing a stronger financial base,
learning to weld (and perhaps getting my certification), to cook the vast
majority of my meals at home, and finally breaking the habit of biting my
fingernails, which has plagued me since I could talk.

Oh, and go to Yosemite again. I've wanted to go back for years, ever since I
went there as a child on a family vacation.

~~~
cpeterso
Getting Things Done (GTD) is probably the most popular personal agile-like
process. I highly recommend reading the first book. It was a real eye opener
for me, but beware: it is easy for people to get too focused on optimizing
their "perfect" GTD system and tools. Just keep it simple. :)

------
allenliuzihao
1\. reading books across all areas (humanities; science) 2\. getting to know
myself better 3\. continue journey in theoretical CS 4\. achieve good impact
at work

------
on_and_off
I moved to San Francisco from France recently.

So I have a very long list of things to do :

\- finish furnish my apartment so it starts feeling like home.

\- start working out

\- take cooking lessons

\- volunteering : the gap between the poor and rich leaves a sour taste when
you arrive here. It also exists in my origin country (France) but it is just
so much worse here.

\- I am not really looking forward to anything tech related. Tech work starts
looking like more of the same to be honest.

------
alexnewman
I have sold two companies and am not super rich, but now I can live off my
investments. I have dedicated my life to helping the world with OSS. This year
I intend on releasing a project which will enable academics to have access to
labeled image datasets more than 100x

~~~
cottonseed
How did you decide to work on image datasets? What else did you consider?

------
w0uld
I'm looking forward to contributing more code to open source projects. I
haven't prioritized it as much as I feel I should in years past, and many of
those projects play an integral role in my life.

------
tomcooks
Start a few companies to fix what i don't like about my homecountry, starting
from public healthcare and smuggling.

~~~
jstanley
What don't you like about smuggling?

Smuggling is just free trade without waiting for your government to negotiate
free trade agreements.

~~~
tomcooks
Let's say it depends on the goods you smuggle.

If it's food, like my grandmother smuggling cheese and rice across borders to
feed her family, i'm 101% happy to support free markets.

If it's corporation money and weapons whom do you think gets a bribe? Spoiler:
the government officials you despise.

------
avenoir
1\. Buy land & build a log cabin. I've been planning this for a year now.
Finally have some money saved and now looking for land bordering a National
Forest in my area.

2\. Deploy my SAAS project on AWS. I've spent last few months learning how to
script out stacks in AWS and run an ECS cluster. Just need to wrap this up.

~~~
jitl
Note that you don’t need to run a cluster anymore with AWS Fargate

~~~
avenoir
I know! However, the price is a little out of my budget.

------
notamy
Finding a job. I'm in that awkward stage between "finishing uni" and "finding
a job" and I'm starting to get (overly?) anxious about it.

~~~
ghrifter
In my final semester at Uni I applied for jobs, and for half my second
semester I worked a flexible 15 to 30 hours a week and still finished with all
As.

~~~
notamy
I've been applying, but waiting to hear back is killing me :<

------
neeleshs
Move back home from US to India. Build a small ginger beer plant, build a
company around a half-ass data product, build a house!

There is a never-ending supply of things I'm looking forward to do on any
given day :)

~~~
ahussain
Sounds like you're living the life - I would love to build my own house one
day

------
busterarm
I'm switching jobs to a similarly-paying, but less demanding role with no
commute (vs 3 total hours daily right now).

At the same time, I'm establishing a business entity on the side. The goal for
this entity is to use my extra time and focus my learning in a way that
generates income. I initially plan to do part-time consulting and I have a
client lined up, but long term my goal is to develop a stable income working
on open source software in areas where I'm interested.

If I am shrewd and lucky this will become my primary source of income.

------
spicymaki
Doing more recreational math.

~~~
dev1n
Love this one. I picked up euclid's elements over the summer and it has been
awesome to just pick up a proof when I have minimal down time. great way to
redirect my mind.

------
globe1337
Focusing on learning more about tech in general, dedicating myself to some
coding projects (right now I'm looking at Crafting Interpreters -
[http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/introduction.html](http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/introduction.html)),
getting back into music and being more social overall.

------
mbrock
Cooking, cleaning, meditating, and generally making sure my life and home are
peaceful and promote baseline happiness.

Taking time to study some beautiful theory that is also applicable to my
interests in programming: category theory, logic, and proof systems.

Continuing my daily work with fun technologies like Nix, Haskell, Ethereum,
Racket, and so on.

Going away for a work retreat with some remote colleagues.

------
imrat
In 2018 i will learn how to program & write transactions for bitcoin.

~~~
protomok
I’ve also been learning about crypto currencies lately. One thing I found
helpful was implementing the popular proof of work algorithms. I did a sha256
python implementation , it was quite fun.

------
drivingmenuts
Getting a job. 6 months of interviewing and nothing.

I'm starting to feel like I've been blackballed.

~~~
hailk
Same boat. Nearly 3 months now. You are not alone :)

------
catchmeifyoucan
I want to read more books. Bought a kindle

------
MattGrommes
I consider learning new programming techniques as a normal part of my career
so my personal goals are usually more about crafting and non-coding side
projects. My main goals for this year are beefing up the skills needed for
making cool stuff on my laser cutter, learning to sew and learning welding. My
family is also working on building our crafting business, finally putting
things online to sell and going to craft fairs.

------
sudshekhar
I recently transitioned from a Software engineering to Product Management
role. So, learning these new skills(design/communication/planning) and
improving at the job will be my top priority.

My current plan is to read a lot of books and focus on my writing skills.
Other goal is to keep my tech chops up to date (so I can easily move back if I
don't like this role).

------
bambataa
* Start contributing to open source projects. This feels quite overdue.

* Try and buy no new books until I read all the unread ones I already have.

------
mherrmann
Working on my file manager and passion project:
[https://fman.io](https://fman.io)

------
dzink
Experiment with different ways to accept and process multi-layered "needs" for
users. From text strings, to visual interface, to autosuggest. Trying sentence
breakdown structure, with word2vec, topic breakdowns, graphs. Do you have
suggestions on the most accurate NLP or best UX interfaces, or best storage
architecture to try?

------
codebolt
I'm enthusiastic about finishing a project I helped start at work, which
involves migrating tens of thousands of lines of complex and undocumented VB6
code into a functionally equivalent C# program. I get a kick out of doing
things that seem against the odds and others would deem hopeless.

------
alexissantos
Making my consulting company sustainable for the long term. 2017 was about
getting up on our feet, 2018 is about figuring out how to keep work coming our
way. I'm particularly looking forward to it because it finally feels like I'm
doing work I'm uniquely able to do.

------
brian-armstrong
I'm looking forward to releasing documentation, creating proper release
versions and fixing some various bugs for my open source project Quiet Modem.
I'm also hoping to blog a bunch about how it works. Hard to believe I started
working on it over 2 years ago.

------
protomok
I’m hoping to keep learning more about parallel computing and Deep Learning
both from day job and some side projects. Planning to take a stab at a crypto
currency algo implementation like Equihash as a fun side project.

------
ninjavis
1\. Learning Hebrew

2\. Launching my own blog to teach others how to make an income from crypto
currencies automatically like I do.

3\. Spending way more time outdoors and on adventures.

4\. Improving my relationship skills.

5\. Finishing my SaaS side project and launching it.

------
module0000
Trade more [futures], write less code. I've been slowly transitioning out of
IT and into a full-time trader. It would be great if 2018 was the year I
didn't bill a single hour in the IT world.

------
danielecook
I’m finishing grad school. Looking forward to having a little more time to do
whatever I want. I’ve got a bunch of projects I want to work on and a long
list of books I’d like to read.

------
bewe42
Going full-time with my cloud security and compliance service offering. The
big goal is to bring someone on board and shift my focus to the
business/strategy side.

------
ryanmarsh
Launching a few very small software products to begin replacing my consulting
income so I can quit being an agile coach which I have grown to dislike
greatly.

------
sjrd
Publishing Scala.js [1] version 1.0.0 final, obviously. ;)

[1] [https://www.scala-js.org/](https://www.scala-js.org/)

------
SirLJ
To go spent the summer vacationing in Europe with the family and meet with
some old friends... Usually it's a blast!

------
swlkr
Less code time and more outdoors time

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matte_black
In 2018 I hope to master the full planche pushup.

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igotsideas
Start a side hustle and learn Golang

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pentium10
more speaking opportunities about coversational gui, bigquery etc...

