I'd like to learn a little bit about electronics and hardware. At the moment, I have a child's mental model like you plug something into the wall and then it "powers on". I couldn't really tell you what properties make something a conductor or not, and I also couldn't tell you various components like capacitors do. It's actually quite fun in that I have a pretty clear plan for learning about this stuff but because I've never done it, it's all very new and novel with lots of "Aha!" moments for why things are the way they are.
Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
111–120 of 433 posts
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#112I want to draw again. I used to, when I was in a classroom or at a bar. Actually managed to get quite good at it through sheer boredom in grande école . Then life happened and that faded away, alongside my mental health. Recently I've rediscovered doodling while attending ACM CCS 2025 as an independent (long story) and I want to improve my mental health in 2026, to the point where I can draw regularly again.
That's awesome! I feel similar, I drew a lot back in the days because growing up in a small town I was bored so often. I did portrait art only but today I struggle because I just don't know what to draw and I'm just not good at doodling.
Best of luck to you!
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#113Sales - especially B2B.
I've got a strong technical background (PhD in Physics) and have been writing code for almost 15 years (most domains, with ML more recently).
I'm also comfortable with public speaking (talking a conferences, pitching etc).
I feel sales is the last piece of the puzzle I'm missing
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#114I want to learn proper programming. Maybe Go, then C(++).
I have never had a proper formal IT education, just learned everything on the go. I can write essentially everything in Python or Bash using AI. I know most (data)concepts and what data to move where in what fashion, I just don't have the hours in it to be able to do it from the top of my head.
I feel the AI is great, but it's also holding me back. Like how driving a automatic transmission is nice, but you'll never learn to drive stick from it.
Also Docker / k8s ecosystem seems to be mostly Go based. And it looks cool, the syntax.
If anyone has any courses that are interactive and can keep an ADHD mind invested in it I'm all ears.
Might be a bit of a tame goal for hckrnews but yeah.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#115Technical:
- Just anything more programming-specific stuff at work. When I get to do something, it's a stress-relief, because the typical day involves dealing with meetings, people, etc. and I can't have that much anymore, now with my health. Even when I can just focus, I want to shake the worry of other people's issues. The programming I do mostly is handling precise reporting requests, but since that is going to be offshored, I can move to something else at least. I am hoping that I can take on anything outside of Java or .NET. I work at a consultancy and those projects do pop up.
- Recreational programming: graphics programming, something to support my odd project (a "recreation" of the bad software from "a company" "I worked for"). I already wrote a hacky command language that is intentionally tedious to use :) Next is the user interface!
- I have a plan also to go through Wirth's Oberon Compiler Construction and his Algorithm text using Oberon. If there is a project in it, I want to maybe bootstrap a simple Oberon compiler in Pascal then rewrite in Oberon (without caps!)
Non-technical: - I want in the future to expand my range of project options from my employer, so I want to rev-up my mind again in this country's language and go through the thickets of folk's heavy dialects.
- Eat better. If I can help to avoid my gut issues at this point, I need to.
- Do more presentations, particularly in the more topics I have embraced (Pascal, compilers, etc.) as something pedagogical for others in my company of consultants.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#116I want to get better at Systems Thinking. I'm fairly certain that while AI is going to get better and better at most things, it's only ever going to be able to look as far ahead as the prompt it's given and the context available. Architecting a system that can be won't grind to a halt after years of prompt-based additions is going to be a key skill, and the foundation of that is building high quality systems on top of simple foundational systems. That is going to necessitate being good at Systems Thinking.
Also, 'systems' doesn't mean code here. It could be business processes, people processes, ways of working, etc. AI is eventually going to impact all of it (it has already really), and that means being able to think about how to build systems that work well, and especially how to describe systems so that AI can help improve them.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#117Get better at Spanish. Reading and writing, I’m hovering around an A2 with decent vocabulary. https://www.escuela-hablamos.com/en/understanding-the-common... I want to be able to speak and listen at at least a B1 by the end of next year. We will be spending a bit over a month in Costa Rica next year and I want to get as immersed as possible. Work related get better at pre-sales. Currently, I’m a staff architect at a…
My wife and hired a personal Spanish tutor
I hired my wife one too. She's really enjoying it [1]
[1] www.lacasitaspanishschool.com.au
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#118I've just started managing a team and would like to develop my EQ and think more before I speak.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#119SW:
- Architecting larger scale applications
- A project which is related to fundamentals (like compilers, OS) rather than run of the mill web development.
Not SW:
- Motorcycle internals and general repair skills
- Ancient sanskrit grammar
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#120SQL, Postgres, Pandas, Polars, Airflow, Duckdb, and whatever else shiny object along the way which distracts me from actually doing something productive towards my goals.