

Ask HN: What do you wish you were better at? - aduric

For me it's 3 things: regex, regex and regex.<p>EDIT: my social life
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yan
Focusing my efforts, managing my time, and figuring out what my priorities in
life are.

regex, on the big scheme of things, is a pretty easy problem to solve. If you
think about them in terms of state machines, they become easier to grasp your
mind around.

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davidw
Doing nice visual design stuff. I'm apparently not all that great at it, but
frankly don't really notice (I like the look and feel of this site, for
instance) so it's not like I have anything to benchmark against.

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kamme
My personal top 3 is:

\- getting into shape (it's needed, but I'm starting that tomorrow)

\- persisting (in everything, 2years ago I was getting in a better shape, but
see #1)

\- live greener (we already use 1/2 of electricity a normal family uses, but I
know we could do better)

That's it. And the best part is I can do all 3 things, it's not something I
will never be able to do. Better start working on them!

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weaksauce
Making money, overcoming presentation anxiety, selling, art.

Edit: If you need help on the regular expressions you might want to pick up
the mastering regular expressions book from o'reilly. It's a great book for
that: <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126/>

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yannis
Keeping money. I actually find it easier to make money than keep it in the
long run.

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maxcameron
Writing. I'm not a bad writer but man it'd be great to be better.

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bgnm2000
coding from scratch, not procrastinating, eating more

~~~
aduric
eating more? Now, that's something I'm really good at.

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throw_away
now you've got six problems :) (<http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247>)

~~~
aduric
see I don't know why people hate on {perl,awk,sed}. To me, these are the best
tools available for data munging and they're just too damn convenient.
However, I always get the feeling that my efficiency takes a hit when I try to
be too clever.

~~~
throw_away
don't get me wrong. I love perl. and I use awk almost every day (mostly
because I can't be bothered to remember the syntax for cut). I just find it a
little weird to say regex regex regex is the only thing to improve about
yourself. regexes are powerful things, but they aren't the answer to all
problems. I cringe when people brandish a zero-width negative look-behind
assertion when a simple index() will do. there is an interview problem I like
to give that involves string prefixes and when perl people start off down the
regex path, I know that they've been lured into a quagmire.

btw, if you haven't read it, the friedl book is great and I consider it the
definitive text on at least the practical matters of regular expressions (and
it even covers a good chunk of the CS theory behind them as well).

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zck
Being confidant in myself or my work.

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Mz
Making money.

~~~
eam
Using my time wisely, as time is money.

~~~
Mz
I'm already good at using my time wisely. I have some specific things I need
to work on in terms of translating that into increased income. I think it will
all come, eventually. (However, I was born without a patient bone in my body
so I'm not very content about my expectation that "it will come, eventually.")

~~~
aduric
It will come, eventually. But probably not in the form you expect.

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pasbesoin
Keeping fear and anxiety in their place -- not banished, but in perspective.

