Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

After trying a few different options I have ended up on the (seemingly very uncool) Pimsleur program (available for cash lump sum or monthly. I am paying monthly). For me, one of the biggest challenges in French is how a lot of words get blended together and are spoken very fast. It's easy to hear what seem like new words, but they're actually things I know, but spoken as native speakers do. This listening concept is extremely important for me with French in particular. To contrast, I speak Swahili too and learned it differently, where I wouldn't say there's as much of a demand for emphasis on listening to native speakers.

Some other alternatives I tried first include: Chatterbug: Nice combination of tools/methods, but expensive and I'd need to pay a much higher price to get the kind of listening I need. A side note on these guys that's relevant for this site: they do a lot of ruby/rails stuff and have a nice graphql gem called cacheql.

French Uncovered: Interesting idea and fun method of learning, but the "book" material wasn't as long as I'd have liked and I would have liked to do a lot more listening. The self-study written materials are decent, but felt slow and like a forced way of trying to cram information into my head, where I personally do better getting that stuff naturally.

Language Transfer: Great free option, but doesn't have native French speakers and the French course doesn't good too far.

I've also done the apps like Duolingo, but the listening and speaking isn't what they do best. I basically get great at Duolingo, but not at being able to use the language.

One of my favorite web 1.0 sites that's still kicking it old school: https://exrx.net/

Detailed workout guides and clear, simple visuals of proper form on hundreds of exercises.

this https://www.livinglanguage.com/faq/downloads/french/complete

?

> "Hi , my name is .. . What you've been up today?"

...why is this guy randomly talking to me? Are they selling something?

> - Start conversion with something you notice about the other person, the event, the surroundings ("the color of your watch matches with your sweater - stylish!", "is this stuff boring or is it just me?", "you know why they put that thing over there?")

...oh god, this is boring...

> - Topics: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams

...this is wildly veering _super_ boring and way too personal.

> Repeat the last few words of the other person and look asking. The person will continue the subject s/he's talking about

...okay, they're not selling me anything, they're an axe murderer.

> Connect and imagine the other guy. "I am a writer" - "A writer! I always wanted to be one but always stop after one page of writing. I imagine you must be very disciplined"

...at least they seem sloppy, maybe if I leave the venue quietly they'll forget I was there.

> Avoid RAPE (Religion, Abortion, Politics, Economics)

1. Avoids topic that involve materialised ethics. 2. Uses _rape_ as a funny acronym.

More evidence of axe murdering tendencies.

> You can always say nothing and just stay there. Often the other person picks up the conversation once you're past a few minutes.

...I don't think standing silently in the corner and staring is going to diminish the axe murderer impression you just made.

> Try looking people into the eye while walking around, and force yourself to not look away. This is a nice training for looking strangers in to the eye in a cold approach. Once you got that, talking to strangers becomes much less intimidating.

...what did I just say about staring? Because now you're _staring people right in the eye and not looking back_. Fun thing you learn early as you learn masking autism, people _way_ overrate looking others in the eyes.

> Eventually people will ask you what you do for work / or what you did today. Have something ready that sounds interesting.

"I kill people. With an axe and/or facial recognition."

I echo what others have said about a real trainer. If you can find a gym specializing in powerlifting or olympic, it’s not a big deal.