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Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#281

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mkl wrote: post #161
arvinsim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember learning these before but due to not finding any use case for them, I already forgot how to do them properly. Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces. EDIT: Grammar

> Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces. For that, in much less than an hour, you can learn the Ian Knot: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm It makes shoelace tying very fast and secure (the GIF at the top is how long it actually takes!).

IIRC it's just "Ian's way of tying a reef/square knot".

Make sure you're not tying a granny and you're golden. If you have problems with long laces, or ones that come undone, then a surgeons knot can help.

I tried Ian's method for a couple of weeks and reverted back, it was too fiddly for me.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#282

Post by unicornmama »

unglaublich wrote: post #269
tempestn wrote: post #144

How, and why, to invest in a simple portfolio of index funds. Split between equity and fixed income based on your risk tolerance, and diversify equities globally. This will give you a low-cost, set-and-forget investment portfolio that you can add to over time without ever having to worry about what you should buy or what the market might do. Just add to it regularly over time, and end up with solid retirement savings…

Switzerland makes it very interesting to follow your advice: you can deposit into a 'third pillar bank-account' which your local bank helps you invest in predetermined portfolios, and the investment will be tax-deductible.

I don’t invest in pillar 3 because the banks charge a medieval 1-2% management fee.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#283

Post by enraged_camel »

agungsukma wrote: post #30
aeternum wrote: post #11

Regular expressions fall into this category. While they might take longer to master, you should know the basics after an hour. I've been surprised at how often people convert long lists line-by-line. You can sometimes take what was a multiple-hour task and complete it with a handful of cryptic characters.

Yes, regular expression. Saves me from lines of substr, split, join, etc.

Eh, I always use substr, split and so on if possible. They make the code way easier to read than with a regex.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#284

Post by peteforde »

escanda wrote: post #38
peteforde wrote: post #8

There's a growing realization that you can completely side-step the need for Single-Page App frameworks like React using websockets and the morphdom library. Projects like StimulusReflex (Rails) and LiveView (Phoenix) allow developers to build complex, reactive modern apps faster and easier by rejecting the need to even have client state. https://github.com/hopsoft/stimulus_reflex https://github.com/phoenixframework/…

Your mind will be furtherly blown when you realize this has been working for decades in JavaServerFaces!

Citation, please.

I can't yet prove that you don't understand what we're doing, but if I failed to communicate the end result, well, that's on me. It's a hard thing to summarize quickly, and I'm working on it all of the time.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#285

Post by jt2190 »

How to ask better questions.

Before asking any question, I now ask myself:

* Is this the right person to ask? How likely are they to know the answer? Should I trust their answer?

* Would knowing the answer change my next step?

* Have I spent a reasonable amount of time trying to answer the question myself? Am I depriving myself of an opportunity to learn?

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#286

Post by onorton »

Mizza wrote: post #42

Learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube using the "beginner's method." Maybe not as valuable as you were hoping, but getting the methods down feels good and gives you a new hobby of competing against your own best times.

I remember that I couldn't be bothered to learn the algorithms for the middle layer so I just learnt F2L (First 2 Layers) to solve that part. Never learnt the advanced stuff beyond that though.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#288

Post by satanspastaroll »

unicornmama wrote: post #282
unglaublich wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland makes it very interesting to follow your advice: you can deposit into a 'third pillar bank-account' which your local bank helps you invest in predetermined portfolios, and the investment will be tax-deductible.

I don’t invest in pillar 3 because the banks charge a medieval 1-2% management fee.

Damn, that's basically all the interest

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#289

Post by seaish »

kqr wrote: post #56

I don't know if an adult can do it in an hour, but learning to ride a bike is very useful/freeing.

I have a friend who did learn to ride a bike in an hour. I was extremely surprised, but he is the fastest learner I know so I don't think it's typical.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#290

Post by petargyurov »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #243
Symbiote wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of Cyrillic is learned by the average HN reader if you tell them to think Greek rather than Latin. "P" is an "r" sound (rho), "П" is a "p" (pi), etc.

I always wondered why in English the constant and the letter π pronounced as /paɪ/ when the Greek letter is obviously /pi/. It really grinds my gears, there's no pie in π! Does Enlgish routinely localize foreign alphabet names? If so, it's bad practice. I believe no one in the world learns English alphabet pronouncing it arbitrary, and not as /ˈeɪ/ /ˈbiː/ /ˈsiː/.

> Does Enlgish routinely localize foreign alphabet names?

All the time. In terms of pronunciation, the English love adding extra vowels and elongating others when pronouncing foreign words, especially names.

A classic example, which even the English are aware of and like to laugh about:

"Una cerveza por favor" will turn into "Ooona cervezaa pour favor"

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