
Ask HN: What are you currently learning in your spare time? - aprdm
HNers, what are you currently learning in your spare time? Some new js framework? Machine learning? New devops technics?<p>:)
======
shifte
I'm learning German. I've never learnt a non-machine language before and
having just moved to Berlin I thought I'd try not being that jerk foreigner
that only speaks english, even after living here for 2 years. So far it's been
quite fun. Last week I finally cracked the level where I understood a
conversation of a Couple passing me on the street.

~~~
Hockenbrizzle
Nice! I am also learning German. I've just moved to Heidelberg about 10 months
ago. It is a difficult language... :/

Did you take classes?

~~~
fallenhitokiri
Hey, I'm also located in Heidelberg, born here, if you ever want to get a
coffee and practice a bit let me know.

~~~
Hockenbrizzle
Hey that would be great. I am a bit new to HN, is there a way to PM someone?

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colund
I'm about to start the assignment for the 5th week of Machine Learning on
Coursera [https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-
learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)

~~~
pyvek
That's awesome! I hope to go through that course soon. I just finished 2nd
week assignments of Algorithms- Design and Analysis on Coursera -
[https://www.coursera.org/course/algo](https://www.coursera.org/course/algo)

------
robinhoodexe
Meditation.

Oh, and how to consume large amounts of ethanol without it tasting like
anything. That's mostly a weekend project with a couple of mates.

------
lewisl9029
Clojure! And I'm absolutely loving it so far. =)

I've been working through the HackerRank Functional Programming challenges
lately and have found it to be a great resource for getting accustomed to
solving problems in a functional mindset. I suspect it'd be just as useful for
any other functional language that they support.

[https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/fp/intro](https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/fp/intro)

Next step is to actually build something with it. I have a rough idea for my
next project but before starting on that I should probably release my current
project and get a job...

------
eccp
I've been reading bits about Erlang and Lisp-flavored Erlang
([http://lfe.io/](http://lfe.io/)). I ported Norvig's Lispy
([http://norvig.com/lispy.html](http://norvig.com/lispy.html)) to Java as a
weekend project and now I'm curious about Pixie ([https://github.com/pixie-
lang/pixie](https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie))

------
bradcomp
I've been digging into Haskell in the time I have to program at home. Im going
through the course at
[http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring13/lectures.html](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring13/lectures.html).

In addition to the classes, I've been trying to use it to write small programs
and whatnot.

While I can't use Haskell at work, I can say working with it more regularly
has definitely improved the JavaScript code I write on the job.

------
ThrustVectoring
I've been picking up a skill that's probably best described as "living as a
body" (as opposed to identifying with and being the thoughts in your head). To
borrow terms from Thinking Fast and Slow, it's deliberately acting more from a
System 1 kind of place.

Recommended reading - "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "Impro" by Keith
Johnstone. These are pretty easy reads and have helped me out tremendously in
unexpected ways.

------
HiLo
Although I already have my finance degree and wouldn't so much need it,
getting my CFA is a near-term goal.

Learning wise, trying to completely re-learn mathematics, starting with books
like the Mathematicians Delight and beginning with the most basic arithmetic,
hopefully up through diffy q's, linear algebra, and intermediate stat. If
anybody has any good tips on completely teaching yourself math from start to
finish, please send them my way!

~~~
JauntTrooper
Good luck with the CFA! It's a great program. I didn't expect it at first, but
the best lesson I got out of it was that it taught me how to study and teach
myself a subject comprehensively.

------
falcolas
After several years of wanting to play an instrument, and wanting to draw, I'm
sitting down and actually doing both of those. It's been a bit liberating,
doing something so different from my day job, yet it's helping me look at
programming in a new light.

------
virmundi
UML. Technically this is for a master's, but that's my spare time. I do find
it interesting to see why it's not really used. So verbose, but not detailed
enough for great communication.

~~~
contingencies
_UML - Unnecessary Management Lingo._ \- @iamdevloper

 _UML - I know next to nothing about UML - but what I do know is the language
was invented first and then people came around and tried to give semantics to
the language. Well, in other words what that means is that the language was
invented first and it really didn 't mean anything. And then, later on, people
came around to try to figure out what it meant. Well, that's not the way to
design a specification language. The importance of a specification language is
to specify something precisely, and therefore what you write - the
specification you write - has to have a precise, rigorous meaning._ \- Leslie
Lamport

 _UML: a language that was invented first and then people came around to try
to get semantics._ \- Leslie Lamport

 _UML: fuzzy pictures of boxes and arrows._ \- Leslie Lamport

 _People use UML, things like UML, to model programs, but it 's not clear how
to translate them in to sequences of states, for concurrency. If you cannot
translate them in to sequences of states, it means you don't understand them,
and it may mean that there's nothing there. You know, there are lots of people
selling snake-oil, drawing boxes and arrows that make you feel good, but
ultimately have no real meaning. If something is really meaningful you should
be able to express it in mathematics._ \- Leslie Lamport

... ie. it's not used much because it lacks precision of expression, and its
main competitor is informal diagramming: a couple of boxes and a line on a
whiteboard are 90% as effective as UML, and actually function for a general
audience. (Quotes from
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup))

------
contingencies
Nice thread. Gotta say, listing all this makes me feel a hell of a lot less
lazy! (In southwest China...)

1\. Classical Chinese, by translating old texts on Wikisource:
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Manshu](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Manshu)

2\. Just brushed up on technical drawing and woodworking to get new office
furniture built.

3\. Fatherhood.

4\. Event planning. I'm trying to set up a community event to take ~40 party
people down to a nearby lake to spend a day in the sun on the lakeshore and go
sailing on two Weta Trimarans I transported here last year.
[http://wetamarine.com/](http://wetamarine.com/) \+
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxian_Lake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxian_Lake)
... brushed up on sailing a year ago, it'd been 20 years.

5\. Winemaking. The focus is on arriving at a process and set of inputs that
result in a scalable and commercially viable range of non-grape based wines
(cider/perry type drinks, but not limited to apples and pears), then flip it
and registered IP to a large and established distributor, and use the
knowledge and cash gained to do some small-batch, higher-end organic type
stuff.

6\. Improving my poetry: I am part of a very international poetry group which
meets once every week or two and reads and discusses poetry in English and
Chinese, with occasional additional languages.

7\. Modern history. I joined a Marxist reading group and am learning a lot
about the history of late 19th century/early 20th century Europe as well as
various shades of communist/socialist ideology. (Previously, living in China,
I have stayed consciously ignorant of such things, which I had never found
particularly interesting.)

8\. Philosophy of mathematics. Currently reading _Pi in the Sky_ which is an
awesome book which I would particularly recommend as a very readable, tangent-
laden ponder for programmers without a significant background in formal
mathematics who like history, mathematics or philosophy.

9\. Documentary filmmaking + new software. Currently working on a social
documentary of foreigners living in this corner of southwest China. Although
I'd done some since analog days, this is my first major project and I'm using
the new Lightworks software on Gentoo Linux:
[http://www.lwks.com/](http://www.lwks.com/) .. also planning to finish by end
of year.

~~~
studentrob
Cool. Kunming? I am in south Taiwan =)

~~~
contingencies
Yep. Kunming. I cycled down the Taiwanese coast years ago -
[http://pratyeka.org/bike/eastern-
taiwan.html](http://pratyeka.org/bike/eastern-taiwan.html) ... very
interesting country, I've been back maybe 5 times, but not enough wilderness
for my liking. Almost forgot - starting a maker space
[http://cave.pratyeka.org/](http://cave.pratyeka.org/)

~~~
studentrob
Ah, I think you missed the mountains in the middle =). I spent a month in
Yunnan a couple years ago and hope to revisit. Not enough freedom of speech
for my liking.

Your maker space looks awesome! I have the same idea to open a shared hacking
space in Kaohsiung

~~~
contingencies
True, I only crossed a little of the mountains. Nice but nothing on Yunnan.

Freedom of speech is something I am quite skeptical about in many so-called
democracies given the very centralized state of media ownership how many
people can stand on the street protesting and still be profoundly ignored by
the government. It seems that while you nominally have the right to say almost
anything, reaching any size of audience is virtually impossible, and
influencing politicans is nigh-on rainbow pony territory.

Good luck with your hacking space! You are very welcome to come visit us next
year once we're set up. Email in profile.

------
krapp
Trying, and mostly failing, to learn some game development methods for
collision detection. Currently, working on a SAT implementation, quad trees
and GJK.

I was taking game development courses at Coursera but they decided to lock
everyone out of being able to actually finish the courses without paying for
them (which is their right - but still annoying) so i'm also looking for some
good 2d tutorials for Unity.

------
pandaFish
I've been learning more about lease-option contracts. My goal is to understand
how to determine interest rates for lessee's who lack a formal credit history.
But have a year or more of lease payment history.

Also, studying the growth of suburbs in Santa Clara and Alameda Counties
during the post war period. It really helps in understanding some recent urban
planning policies.

------
greydius
Working through MacLane & Birkhoff's Algebra. I used to study Japanese, but
Ive been slacking on that pursuit.

------
Ch_livecodingtv
I'm watching a lot of videos and tutorials trying to learn how to build social
networking site. [https://www.livecoding.tv/video/enfrbuilding-a-social-
networ...](https://www.livecoding.tv/video/enfrbuilding-a-social-network-with-
laravel-150/)

------
personlurking
Improving spoken Spanish, learning Cryllic script, post-structural philosophy,
contemplating dance lessons. Learning to run without getting tired or dizzy
quickly, and trying to learn a better game of tennis but there doesn't seem to
be indoor courts where I live and it's rainy season.

------
awshepard
There's a coursera session on digital signal processing going on right now,
figured I'd take a crack at it:
[https://www.coursera.org/course/dsp](https://www.coursera.org/course/dsp)

------
TDL
Not really in my spare time since I took a couple months off from working
(have to go pound the pavement this month,) but machine learning (UofW
Coursera's specialization) & pandas. Also, spending time in the mornings on
math (currently probability.)

------
akbar501
CockroachDB. I've been writing about it as I learn:
[https://www.grockdoc.com/cockroachdb/alpha/articles](https://www.grockdoc.com/cockroachdb/alpha/articles)

------
sdogruyol
Learning Crystal and making useful stuff with it. E.g a Sinatra like web
framework with 10x performance
[https://github.com/kemalcr/kemal](https://github.com/kemalcr/kemal)

------
ribs
I've been taking chemistry courses, online, with some labs in person. Oregon
State ($$) and Coursera. I've finished general chemistry, took a little
analytic, and now I'm making my way through an organic chemistry sequence.

------
rndstr
I'm digging into Android Wear and writing an app. It's nice but it needs a lot
of boilerplate code to set up communication between mobile and wear. Once set
up and understood it's pretty straightforward

------
charlieegan3
I've been doing the [http://open.kattis.com/](http://open.kattis.com/)
problems in Go.

------
mondoshawan
Rust, and base system call interfaces that Linux provides. Hoping to write up
a simple composable user land someday.

------
deeteecee
reviewing japanese (after living there for 2 years, don't wanna forget it :) )

looking up bitcoin and finding it hard to see what I can do as a developer, it
just seems like there's a lot to learn before I can even get through the
basics. Reading a cryptography book though, pretty interesting.

------
BjoernKW
Improving my Dutch language skills.

------
captn3m0
Learning to solve more twisty puzzles. I recently learnt the Megaminx, and it
was awesome.

------
thinkvitamin
Doing what I can to learn Java.

------
AkshayD08
Shell scripting. I did not realize how powerful it is until I only started
with it.

~~~
hanniabu
I've been planning on taking the plunge to learn that as well. Do you have any
useful links I should check out?

------
grouphugs
Clojure

------
mazsa
converting political order into set theory
[http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html](http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html)

------
nlawalker
Rocket League skills :)

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veddox
C, and taking a course on algorithms and data structures.

------
arisAlexis
Udemy courses about business and lean startup method

------
Lordarminius
Ruby. And some days I feel like a complete idiot

------
floating_cloud
Elixir and Rust, and brushing up on C++11.

------
AndrewKemendo
Sales and Marketing.

Close.io has been really useful.

------
ldarcyftw
Handstands

------
timroy
Calculus and chemistry.

------
athrowaway27
Javascript and golang

------
jags-v
AWS & Ansible..

------
keane
metaethics and the thought of John Wesley

------
scottmcdot
Tableau

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miguelrochefort
lojban

------
modafinil
Learning to solve more twisty puzzles.

