
Ask HN: What are you looking forward to learn in 2020? - Anon84
Hi everyone,<p>With the holiday break coming up, many of us take advantage of the time to catch up on our professional or personal interests, plan out the coming year, etc.<p>What are you going to be learning&#x2F;playing with during the break and in the coming year?
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diehunde
Started to learn Go this month. Turns out if you have been programming for a
while you just need to jump into coding challenges and surf the documentation.
No need to read giant books or 10 hr courses to get started. I've really
enjoyed the language so far. Next year I want to start learning more Go for
developing web services and also more complex topics such as concurrency.

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thoughtpalette
React. 80%+ of the job postings I'm seeing for Front-end or Full stack include
React in some way shape or form.

As an Angular dev (6+ years) it's clear the broader market is looking for
something different.

~~~
trumbitta2
I'm with you in this

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codegeek
Learn to Swim. My 5 and 6 year olds can swim but I can't. It's time for me.

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147
Me too, I’ve been putting it off for too long.

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whateveracct
Haskell gamedev. It can be used for most _everything_ .. game logic, graphics,
art & animation pipeline, sound effect generation, music composition, etc.

~~~
jolmg
Wouldn't the garbage collector be a problem?

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WorldMaker
Performance tuning in a garbage collected language is a _slightly_ different
skillset, but a lot of tools are the same (knowing how/when/why you allocate
memory, the space complexity of your algorithms, etc). Sometimes it is easier,
because generally a good GC _wants_ to help, and isn't just an opaque black
box but full of information about the memory usage of your app. There are
fewer "knobs" to tweak in a GC language, but that doesn't mean "no knobs", and
the focus on data structures, data usage, and (space complexity of) algorithms
is a shared problem in the performance world, GC language or not. It seems
well past time to stop thinking of GC languages as a "problem".

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marpstar
Getting back into audio production (which was my main hobby before starting my
career) by way of solidifying my understanding of music theory and piano
technique. I've "played piano" for years, but have never really _studied_ it.

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markus_zhang
Spark and do some data engineering projects on my own. I want to transfer to
BI and that's part of their job to maintain data pipelines. Plus it's further
from business which is a huge advantage to me. Going to spend rest of my
career life figuring out how to stay as far from core business as possible
while still making enough money.

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arya-k
Learning vim and reading "Competitive Programmer’s Handbook" by Antti
Laaksonen in preparation for programming interviews next year!

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theSealedTanker
you are going to have a lot of fun with vim. Check out drew neil vim
materials, if you haven't.

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peruvian
Go and React (re-learning, haven't dome frontend in a few years). Definitely a
career-focused choice, but not unhappy or dreading it.

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balladeer
Go.

Carpentry (get back at it).

Drawing/sketching (I’m planning to take classes).

And learn about fields of work, or higher education options that can help me
get into a mix of product and UX and slowly move out of full time coding. This
bit seems the toughest.

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grafelic
Feeling at ease being myself.

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blendo
I'd like to "gain" some knowledge of opamps.

~~~
Anon84
Horowitz's "The Art of Electronics" is excellent: [https://www.amazon.com/Art-
Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-
Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266/) I spent many a fun afternoon with it back in the
day.

~~~
blendo
Thanks for the "feedback". Here's Ladyada's interview with the co-author, Paul
Horowitz.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA)

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lmiller1990
Some biology and genetics. I’m interested in bioinformatics, and need to get a
grip on the sciencey stuff.

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karmakaze
Bass guitar. I rented one for $20/mo as a test and it's the most fun
instrument I've ever tried with drums in second.

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thorin
Interesting that you rented it first. I just got into playing the bass guitar
more seriously this year ( had played a little bit previously ). If you
actually play an instrument it is such good value for money. My main guitar
(maybe £150) was bought for me as a teenager over 25 years ago and still
sounds fine.

I'm also learning the piano and got a really good digital upright second hand
for around £400. This time I'm getting lessons after years of self teaching
the guitar. It's a very fun experience.

~~~
karmakaze
In the past I've started with buying before learning instruments (and sporting
equipment) with often goes unused after a season. This time I knew I didn't
know so I can learn if I like it and have a sense of what to buy for the long
term. The bonus is that even a small monthly amount is a reminder to use or
cancel (like Netflix).

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tmaly
I would really like to learn how to make good video, the kind that people
cannot stop watching.

I just finished teaching two elementary classes the basics of programming in
Scratch.

I created video so the kids could review it at home. But when I am watching
it, I realize it is super dry and boring.

I am not really where to start to find a way to learn this.

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PascLeRasc
I'm taking an EMT training class as part of my transition out of software into
medicine. I'm very excited for it!

