Ask HN: What is the most surprising technical skill you possess?

Empathy.

It seems to be the basis for the small degree of mechanical sympathy I have because it makes me stop and think, 'why does someone else think this is the right way of doing things?'.

Good luck.

I don't think my skill is surprising but it is valuable nonetheless.

It is a willingness to see similarities instead of differences. This helps me write compact, clean code that is reliable.

Laziness - though of course when hiring you would bill it as efficiency or "expertise in software automation". A PhD taught me that often the best way to do things is the way that lets you press one button and have everything else happen automatically.

Mostly it's to make life easier, particularly when 2 months down the line you need to make a subtle code change and reprocess huge volumes of data. Being able to start a script and go to bed, rather than continually change the inputs, is a godsend.

I think this is likely a side effect of the "smart but lazy" geek trope, except actually taking advantage of it rather than procrastinating.

The ability to use Emacs with a decent degree of proficiency. I find its text navigation abilities beyond compare. This is huge for me since I write software and and the creation of software generally involves a lot of text manipulation. This is perhaps less of an edge now that other IDEs are better at autocomplete and jumping around the code than they were when I started learning Emacs.

On the other hand, the fact that I can write Windows applications, compile them using Microsoft's compiler, launch them, and follow their log files all within Emacs is wonderful.

So between the keybindings, 3rd party packages, and flexibility it not only makes me more productive but also helps me have more fun and stave off burnout.

(EDIT: Readability)