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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?

#271

Post by bartvk »

exasperaited wrote: post #249
bartvk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you develop your CAD and 3D printing skills? Did you use any online courses?

No courses on the 3D printing side really — I think I did go through one of the Prusa ones after getting enough free "meters" on Printables but I don't remember it telling me much I hadn't already learned. There is a blog post that has been posted here before that really covers almost everything important about design for 3D printing: https://blog.rahix.de/design-for-3d-printing/ I really just ADHD'd the hell out of…

Thanks so much. Going through some of these motions... installed OpenSCAD, made something basic which was easy. But I found out that making something more complex forces you to invent your own layout system. Last month I looked on Udemy and did part of Mango Jelly's course. It's a good one, I actually found out later that he has a bunch of stuff on YouTube.

I'm still reading the rest of this and your other comment, thanks so much. Inspirational.

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

#272

Post by kukkeliskuu »

imron wrote: post #198
jstummbillig wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing: Maybe you are not used to or comfortable with delegating work? You will certainly understand a program better where you write every line of code yourself, but that limits your output. It's a trade-off. The part that makes it work quite well is that you can also use the LLM to better understand the code where required, simply by asking.

I’m perfectly comfortable and used to delegating, but delegation requires trust that the result will be fit for purpose. It doesn’t have to be exactly how I would do it but at a minimum it has to work correctly and have acceptable performance for the task at hand. This doesn’t mean being super optimized just that it shouldn’t be doing stupid things like n+1 requests or database queries etc. See a sibling comment for…

> It was so impressed with its new performance it started adding > rocket ship emojis to the output summary.

I laughed more at this than I probably should have, out of recognition.

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

#273

Post by grep_name »

I've spent a lot of the last four years accumulating tools and building out infra in my home for my hobbies, to an extent that it's blocked me from actually doing things due to being bogged down from meta-work, learning, and research. This year I'm going to put a hard stop on spending and building up new things so that I can:

- Continue to take old-time music classes at the folk school, play more music with people that way

- Finally run some water through my hydroponic setup

- Finish electrifying part of the basement

- Play some noise shows with my friend and the synths I've built over the years (and make some recordings)

- Make a dating profile, setup instagram (which seems necessary for a successful dating profile these days)

- Actually catalogue, export, and post the extensive photography I've done of the last years and continue my black and white development processes

- Get back in the swing of eating from-scratch bread, fermented sauces, mayo, saurkraut, ginger ale, and home-cooked food in general

- Actually make blog posts, improve my web presence

- Finish my woodworking bench, tackle some of the woodworking projects I've had backed up

That's a lot of things, but I already have every piece of the puzzle to tackle all of them stored neatly in my house and the experience to do it all, which cuts down on a lot of it. I also really need to save money, so all that should dovetail nicely. I'm at a point where tech projects crop up and sort themselves out on their own regularly in my life so I'm not mentioning that here. Really, the 'skill' I need to learn is having the mental energy and drive to get things done as I go about my work week, or maybe to realize that I don't need perfect energy / motivation / clarity / whatever to work on something in the afternoon.

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

#274

Post by PaulHoule »

serf wrote: post #260
PaulHoule wrote: post #222

I’m interested in a subject that, I guess, could best be described as Jane Houston’s work, see https://www.amazon.com/Possible-Human-Enhancing-Physical-Abi... but involves martial arts, eastern religion, character acting, Ericksonian hypnosis, and all sorts of things. In my case it I use to express myself-as-a-fox [1] but outwardly as social artistry that functions as a form of ‘witnessing’. I will certainly not advo…

this comment has a lot of words I find interesting; and I like the book -- but I can say that I have no clue what you're talking about. As someone interested, though : care to explain in a bit more detail for a layperson?

Try

https://www.jeanhouston.com/Social-Artistry/social-artistry....

I put on my hood and people see my ears and I wait a beat and then say or do something fox like (comment on smells, a compulsion to chase after squirrels, or raise a paw glove) and it is like the set up and punch line of a joke and they laugh with me and they are in my field -- but it is not a comedy act.

If I have to explain something or do the work of myself-as-an-engineer or talk about my personal history I put the hood down and the detransformation can be startling as I shift from a voice patterned after Michael Jackson's speaking voice (always trying to be as soft as I can and still be legible) to my old booming voice that raises in pitch as emotions get high.

I practice distinctive gaits (collected trot, walking quietly, ...) with an eye on my heart rate monitor to keep my cardiovascular load low to keep it sustainable. It can take a lot of energy, one trot across campus to the Arts & Architecture school [1] I came back to my office drenched in sweat despite it being a cold day. My photo backpack became an essential part of my kit because it functions as my "tail" giving me more control of my center of gravity and a place to put my hood and other parts of my kit if I need them out of my way. When I first went out-as-a-fox with my camera I found I couldn't hold my adjustments but with the counterweight of the backpack it was easy -- but I have to pack lightly to control my cardiovascular load.

To speak in the register of the fox I need to think in the register of character acting but it is not really an act, not really a costume, but an expression of my own liminal nature as a person who has always crossed boundaries wandered between worlds.

If I am against anything it is the trauma theory, when I started looking into the "human potential" movement in my area I found so many people inclined to build an identity and discover meaning by licking their wounds. I think people should "get over it" [2] but telling them to "get over it" will only bring about backlash. I begin by being an example (witnessing as Christians would put it) of getting over it with courage and heart and authenticity in expressing myself but behind that is a vast toolbox of trickery and seduction applied to the greater good.

Does that make more sense?

[1] where i feel least comfortable as-a-fox because there creativity is something you do for a class or a job and needs slotting into a social hierarchy

[2] enjoy the pleasures of the moment, find joy inside themselves, raise their spiritual pressure, increase their "gong" as Falun Gong would put it, etc.

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

#275

Post by 946789987649 »

dcel wrote: post #203
pdimitar wrote: post #182

- MANDATORY: Re-learn focus. I will not self-diagnose but I exhibit ADHD symptoms and I started actively fighting them back (they mostly come from the phone). I am not going to just deny myself access to apps on schedule -- my brain never clicked schedule, not even once in my life -- but through a persistent and sustainable self-change from deep within. It's slow but it's beginning to work. - MANDATORY: Get more inti…

I feel like I could’ve written exactly this myself. The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement. What’s your plan? How is it working?

For me personally, it's certainly been an iterative process. I like to think of focus as any other habit that I want to form, so from that:

- Schedule time for it

- Understand that I will have slip ups and that's okay

- Make it hard to do the bad things (in this case, I have domain blockers to stop me redditing, I move my phone to another room etc.)

- Make it enjoyable. For me it's finding a particular energetic DJ set and just bopping along while I do the focused work.

And so on.

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

#276

Post by volk45 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #136
volk45 wrote: post #66

Scheduled for Fire 1 (basic Fire academy) in 2026. Looking forward to developing basic fire fighting skills and strengthen my knowledge in this new volunteer undertaking I started in mid 2025. As for tech skills in 2026, I’d love to develop a photogrammetry pipeline mixing shoulder mounted SLAM scanner, DSLR terrestrial photography, and aerial LiDAR data sets. I’m lucky to have access to these data sets, just gotta p…

> new volunteer undertaking Is your town/village fully volunteer fire fighters, or a mixed bag of paid pros combined with volunteers? Personally, I always thought a first aid course could be very useful in real life.

Town and county fire service is all volunteer. We all however have to go through pro board accreditation (for classes) which is nationally recognized in the USA.

Check with your local department to see if they offer CPR and basic first aid courses. If your local FD (fire department) doesn’t offer any, neighboring town stations may.

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

#277

Post by welshwelsh »

rkuodys wrote: post #127
imron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you using AI and what sort of software are you building? I have similar years experience and regularly try out AI for development but always find it’s slower for the things I want to build and/or that it produces less than satisfactory results. Not sure if it’s how I use the models (I’ve experimented with all the frontier ones), or the types of things I’m building, or the languages I’m using, or if I’m not sp…

I am honestly curious about your point on productivity boost. Are you saying that you can write tests at the same speed as AI can? Or is it the point that tests written by AI is of much lower quality that is not worth using them? I am at the role of solo-preneur now and I see a lot of benefit from AI. But then I read posts like yours that experienced devs don't see much value in AI and I start to doubt the things I d…

Try giving this prompt to your favorite LLM:

"Write unit tests with full line and branch coverage for this function:

def add_two_numbers(x, y): return x + y + 1 "

Sometimes the LLM will point out that this function does not, in fact, return the sum of x and y. But more often, it will happily write "assert add_two_numbers(1, 1) == 3", without comment.

The big problem is that LLMs will assume that the code they are writing tests for is correct. This defeats the main purpose of writing tests, which is to find bugs in the code.

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

#278

Post by ipcress_file »

doom2 wrote: post #251

I want to learn two languages in 2026: * CW (also known as Morse code) - I'm not able to have an amateur radio station at home, so I have to work portable/QRP. Given current band conditions, CW is one easy option to make contacts * Learn a "low level" programming language, likely C - I never had any kind of formal CS education and kind of fell into the field, initially doing web development and then data engineering.…

I am also not a professional programmer, but learned enough C to do some programming on hobby projects a few years back. I started with Ashley Mills' videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCNJWVn9MJuPtPyljb-he...

If you've already programmed in Python you'll know enough to recognize that he makes a few logical leaps in the later videos (where you have to read up on topics to fill in the gaps), but overall I thought they were really good.

I also liked NASA's "The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code" and their C style guide from 1994, both of which helped me achieve the simplicity and clarity I was after.

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

#279

Post by saimiam »

level09 wrote: post #196

Here are mine: - Build something boring that makes money. Excitement is optional; users are not. - Use AI less like a chatbot and more like infrastructure, background processes that think while I sleep. - Go back to fundamentals that compound, graphics, systems, taste. - Experiment selectively; curiosity without commitment. - Invest in people, not “networking.” Fewer pings, more real conversations. - Protect focus li…

If you want users, the requirement is sales skills, not product development skills.

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

#280

Post by sqircles »

Paper Credentials: I'm going to stack on a masters degree and some more certs. As a kid I was into development and anything tech, but for some reason resisted formal education or even working in the field. I spent my summers and school breaks working different construction trades as my entire family was spread out amongst the trades. After the military I did an entrepreneurial stint, then I took the comfortable, "guaranteed" route, in regard to career- wherever I could land in the US Fed. Govt, where I did about 12 years in 5 or so different positions... I was raised to, and had always worked hard - but I never really had much risk in regard to losing my job until recently.

Preceding wall of text to explain how hard the realization hit, for practically the first time in my life, when stuff started going crazy in the feds: "damn... I really could be ~6mo away from losing it all." As many of you know, the market was and is ridiculous. Thankfully a few years back, even when I "knew" I didn't need it, I finished my BS:CS before my GI Bill dried up. And then as another challenge took the Security+ exam before I started applying for a job in the private sector. A lot of people in this industry like to say none of that matters-- which might certainly be true, but I can say without a doubt that those pieces of paper are the main reason I was about to get out of the hole I was in. I'd rather not be in that position ever again, but I'd like to be well prepared "on paper" if I am.

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