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Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

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Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#21

Post by canpan »

kenrick95 wrote: post #7

I want to learn driving. I live in a city with well-connected public transport (Singapore) so I don't feel the need to learn. However, this year I travelled to some rural areas in Japan and started to feel the pain of relying solely on public transport which is either extremely sparse, or sometimes non-existent which limits the places I want to visit. That's why I felt like if I obtain this skill, I can explore more…

Same here! I lived in big cities all my life and am used to the convenience of good public transport. Want to travel and rent a nice car, just when needed.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#22

Post by rewgs »

Technical:

Audio programming with C++. I was a professional film/game composer for the first 10+ years of my career, but when I started programming I was mostly interested in solving problems that required web and infrastructure skills. Also, I always looked at C++ as something to tackle once I was a better programmer -- I now think I'm a pretty okay programmer and am ready to take it on. I'd like to eventually do a deep dive into Rust as well, but I'm focusing on C++ first, as the vast majority of audio programming is still done in C++ and likely will be for the foreseeable future, and I think learning Rust will be more valuable once I've run into many of the pain points that it addresses.

Non-technical:

Improve my archery. I started this year and love it.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#23

Post by spudlyo »

I started learning Latin in 2025, and I'm pretty happy with my progress. I can read intermediate level pedagogical texts -- mostly adapted Greek and Roman myths. In 2026 I want to get my proficiency up to the point where I can comfortably read the first book of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. This is doable, many of the texts I'm reading now were designed to teach the vocabulary and grammar so High School students could slog through it.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#24

Post by AbstractH24 »

To expand my knowledge of product management and JavaScript enough to build a strong prototype of app/business i have in mind with the help of Lovable and other ai tools.

Already, I know enough to know that just prompting without a solid foundation is going to be unpleasant in so many ways.

And then, once I’ve proven it out hire real coders.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#25

Post by computerfriend »

swgeek wrote: post #5

I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand. Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways) I understand that means master of none, but this is a play around year for me. In theory AI should make it easier to try new things, we shall see…

Talk to a psychiatrist about ADHD.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#26

Post by pinkmuffinere »

- Do the splits!

- Climb a V8 at my local climbing gym! I presently project V5's, and I think the scale is super-linear (but personally it doesn't feel logarithmic to me). So that would be a significant increase, probably near the edge of what I could really achieve in a year.

- Get our business (mydragonskin.com) to a point where it pays us standard engineer salaries. So far we've been extracting significantly less than our market value.

- Acquire (romantic) partner that I believe will be my person; find "The One"

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#27

Post by AdieuToLogic »

kenrick95 wrote: post #7

I want to learn driving. I live in a city with well-connected public transport (Singapore) so I don't feel the need to learn. However, this year I travelled to some rural areas in Japan and started to feel the pain of relying solely on public transport which is either extremely sparse, or sometimes non-existent which limits the places I want to visit. That's why I felt like if I obtain this skill, I can explore more…

> I want to learn driving.

Two low-risk and cheap ways to develop relevant driving skills are bumper cars[0] and go-karts[1]. This may appear to be silly at first, but both involve the same hand-eye coordination and decision skills of vehicular driving (though the latter is no where nearly as fun as the others).

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_cars

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#28

Post by pan69 »

I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc.

So, 2026 is going to be the year I'm going to run this experiment on myself and see what I can accomplish with this way of working.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#29

Post by DontchaKnowit »

computerfriend wrote: post #25
swgeek wrote: post #5

I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand. Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways) I understand that means master of none, but this is a play around year for me. In theory AI should make it easier to try new things, we shall see…

Talk to a psychiatrist about ADHD.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#30

Post by kaizenb »

pan69 wrote: post #28

I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc. So, 2026 i…

"The decision of all decisions is to reject the default path. To answer the call to adventure. To finally begin writing the first chapter. To leave the tutorial and start level one. That's when your life starts."

Good luck!

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