21–25 of 25 posts
You have to be able to learn anything, fast and only do things the right way, the first time.
I guess if you design your code on paper first and write it all out by hand, calculate bottlenecks etc based on cpu timing manuals etc....
Most people take a more iterative approach afaik.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point. I suppose to elaborate, I want to become a skilled hacker and I want to push myself in a project that I care about with people who are passionate about what they do. :)
Then you will gather those skills based on what's interesting to you, not based on what's marketable to a startup. I have never gone out of my way to learn a computing skill specifically for a job (or even for a "dream"). All was always out of personal interest. By that method, I have accumulated a skill set (including Ruby/Rails programming) that has allowed me to start my startups when the opportunity was there. Yo…
I want to join an ambitious startup as a programmer. No you don't. This may be what you think you want, but it's not what you really want. Why do you want to join an ambitious startup rather than creating your own? Why does the startup you join need to be ambitious? Why does it need to be a startup? For that matter, why do you want to join as a programmer rather than, say, a graphic designer? If the answer to the abo…
Good point. I suppose to elaborate, I want to become a skilled hacker and I want to push myself in a project that I care about with people who are passionate about what they do. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you will gather those skills based on what's interesting to you, not based on what's marketable to a startup. I have never gone out of my way to learn a computing skill specifically for a job (or even for a "dream"). All was always out of personal interest. By that method, I have accumulated a skill set (including Ruby/Rails programming) that has allowed me to start my startups when the opportunity was there. Yo…
I agree with you, but I don't think it invalidates the OP's question. There are dozens of topics in computing I could learn right now that I would be interested in, and I think pretty much every HN reader could say the same. If some of those would help their career and others wouldn't, I don't think it would be fair to blame them for learning the one that would help their career.
I'm sure if Paul Graham had asked an equivalent of this community what he should learn to increase his market value, "Lisp" wouldn't have been the answer. At the time, probably C++ or Perl. Yet he used his knowledge of Lisp to gain a competitive advantage for his company, and it ended up making him rich. C++ and Perl may have helped him too, but that's actually less likely, since they wouldn't have given his company its competitive advantage of nimbleness and rapid changes.
You can't know in advance what will be worth learning. Except, you can: if you want to learn it, if you have a desire to understand how it works, and if that desire is storng enough to spur you to learning it, it's worth learning.
I'd add an extra indicator actually: if everyone tells you it's worth learning, chances are it's not. If everyone tells you it's a waste of time, chances are it's worth learning. Why? Because people in aggregate will point you towards popular options (duh) - and those will probably give you less of an edge. This makes the OP's question even less valid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point. I suppose to elaborate, I want to become a skilled hacker and I want to push myself in a project that I care about with people who are passionate about what they do. :)
Then you will gather those skills based on what's interesting to you, not based on what's marketable to a startup. I have never gone out of my way to learn a computing skill specifically for a job (or even for a "dream"). All was always out of personal interest. By that method, I have accumulated a skill set (including Ruby/Rails programming) that has allowed me to start my startups when the opportunity was there. Yo…