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Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

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Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#161

Post by neya »

faitswulff wrote: post #68
neya wrote: post #20

I'm going to say something out of the blue - Building speakers. Building speakers look complex from the outside, but are pretty rewarding once you know the basics (Thiele parameters, enclosure design and tuning). You can put together your own speaker with just a couple of parts from eBay or anywhere else on the internet really and sometimes can end up with really high quality boxes that can outperform much more expen…

Would the barrier to entry for making working speakers be significantly higher if the aux port goes away entirely?

If Aux port goes away, it's still going to be Bluetooth or Wifi and of course there are plenty of plug and play chips out there on the market that should do the job pretty easily. So, to answer your question, no, the barrier wouldn't be that high at all :)

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#162

Post by maroonblazer »

Learning a musical instrument to a high degree of proficiency.

What's a "high degree of proficiency"? Obviously somewhat subjective but I'd argue its one of:

1) being able to play intermediate to advanced pieces in the standard repetoire. In the case of my instrument, piano, it's being able to play Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Bill Evans, T Monk, etc.

2) being able to think of a musical phrase and then play it on your instrument without much/any guesswork.

My parents forced me to take piano lessons - classical - for 6 years starting when I was 9. I hated it. When they finally let me stop we moved across the country and I fell in with some new friends, one who played bass and the other drums. They would regularly get together to do something called 'jam', which I'd never heard of. They invited me and although I only knew one non-classical piece - a simple blues - the feeling of playing/making music with other people was electrifying.

I ran home and asked my mom if I could start taking lessons again - this time jazz. I went on to attend a music school for undergrad and have never stopped playing, picking up guitar, bass and drums along the way.

Playing/making music has been one of the greatest sources of comfort and pleasure. I don't often get depressed but on those rare occasions when I do, being able to sit at my piano and play something like [0] is the best medicine.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIGjguSEmcg

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#163

Post by matthewrudy »

yorwba wrote: post #92
faitswulff wrote: post #73

1. Learning Chinese characters with Anki. After a decade out of practice, I realize I would have done a lot better in my college studies if I actually studied. Wild idea, I know. One thing that prevented me from memorizing characters was the idea that it wasn't worth doing. However, this passage from the Self-Regulated Learning paper [0] that circulated around HN convinced me otherwise: "We need to understand, too, t…

For making Chinese flashcards in Anki, I can recommend this addon https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3448800906 (Anki 2.0 only, for Anki 2.1 there's a fork https://github.com/luoliyan/chinese-support-redux )

I need to learn the tooling around anki.

I was trying to edit the full hsk1-6 flashcard set to just show hsk5.

But I didn't manage to find the right tools.

Tried to manually change the file (it's a sqlite dB inside a zip file) but the db is not structured in a way I managed get my head round.

Should try again.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#164

Post by phkahler »

Flying. It's hard to put into words. Heightens your senses. Teaches discipline and planning. Requires and teaches concentration and assertive communication. Builds confidence. You'll meet interesting people and go places you never would have otherwise. It's forcing me to face some of my deepest demons.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#165

Post by mrcnkoba »

jtms wrote: post #119
mrcnkoba wrote: post #28

Learning English. It opened up a whole new area of the internet that I was excluded from simply because I didn't know the language. There are communities that I can actively participate in and learn from.

And, judging by your command of the grammar and structure, you learned it quite well!

Thank you!

Coming from a language without articles I find it very hard to properly use them though. I guess it comes with plenty of practice.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#166

Post by smaddox »

mrhackerpoland wrote: post #42

From my experience: After my startup got acquired, i ended up with lots of money (10s of millions, small start-up) and time. This created a vacuum in my life. I was very sad having finally made it. I had no purpose in life. Since then, Self Acutualization - walking the path devised by yogic culture of spritualism. Cannabis - The king of herbs, it helps me in self Acutualization and achieving state of trance aka ultim…

I'm glad you've found happiness. Have you found meaning? Personally, meaning is more important to me than happiness, though meaning often leads to happiness.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#167

Post by jobigoud »

smithmayowa wrote: post #126
jobigoud wrote: post #22

Blind typing on a keyboard.

I up-voted because of your keen sense of humor hurrah jobigoud, this made me laugh. jahbdcbf vmbfkv mfvrm ervj ewrm v,m erwhj v wer vj er,m vj we,m vkjljsdkhdugercrk xioeg opacxugseifcm elfrhf; ckrv sorry i blind typed that.

Oops, French idiom was lost in translation. I meant "touch typing".

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#168

Post by malmsteen »

leesec wrote: post #153
sridca wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend calisthenics instead of going to a gym. Far less chances of getting injuries with bodyweight exercises. This book is a good start: https://www.reddit.com/r/overcominggravity

I'll counterpoint this and say chances of getting injured can be pretty low if you take your time and study up on your form. I'll also say as someone who thought he didn't need the gym because I would do calisthenics/yoga/barbell exercises at home, my back pain never went away until I started lifting heavy weights. I'd say likely because it stregthened my core which supports the back, but I'm no sports scientist.

>>> I'll counterpoint this and say chances of getting injured can be pretty low if you take your time and study up on your form.

Yes absolutely ! And you build muscle WAY MORE FASTER with real weights versus calisthenics

The two rules of the gyms are basically : no machines, and 'form before weight' (i.e. master a movements at a given weight without feeling hurt before moving up).

The only two actually dangerous movements are deadlift and squats and it takes at least a PT sesion + a few "form check " on r/fitness to get it right but once it his mastered it's all good. Alsso bench press but it really start being possibly dangerous at 80kg and you are aready quite developped anyway so you are already supposed to master the basic of form an training.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#169

Post by paulriddle »

hoosieree wrote: post #137
msluyter wrote: post #127

Readline —- I’m sometimes amazed at the number of relatively seasoned developers who don’t know simple commands like ctrl-r. This one really pays off because almost all shells and repls like ipython or the mysql client implement it. Sample cheat sheet: https://readline.kablamo.org/emacs.html You don’t have to learn it all, but mastering the basics like moving to the end/beginning on the line, moving/deleting by word,…

Huge fan as well. What I really want is a terminal which has Vim's "normal mode" keybindings for scrolling back the buffer, selecting, find/replace... but then anytime you go to "insert mode", you get Readline. Best of both worlds.

I think that's Neovim's terminal mode. I personally don't use it because I use a tiling window manager, so it's easy to launch another terminal wherever I want and I'm happy with the key bindings. But some people swear by terminal mode.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#170

Post by buboard »

To answer this one could list things that lasted in time and thus the reward from compounds over time. For example , C, vim, touch typing, HTTP/Html/PHP/javascript/mysql , weightlifting, calculus/geometry , English (if not your native tongue), the piano.

OTOH what are the things i have avoided learning because of perceived short-term value: ios development, android development, toolshelves of javascript gimmicks that only google needs, ORMs, various javascript frameworks, R.

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