Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 876 posts

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#331

Post by madhadron »

himanshuy wrote: post #240
billfruit wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to enjoy poetry. There is so much of great poetry in English, but I think it is not being read and appreciated enough. It is a kind of mental challenge like doing a puzzle, to unlock the full vivid meaning. Also reading fiction, though how exactly it helps one is beyond me, but it offers glimpses into other worlds. For example I read recently 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', I doubt its richness of detail, and…

Totally agree with you. Recently started moving from non-fiction to poetry and picked up "The Gift", Poems by Hafiz. It refreshing to see how much one can say with a few words.

Agreed. It's a magnificent translation of magnificent work. My family has adopted the Nowruz custom of opening Hafiz randomly and reading what we find as an annual ritual.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#332

Post by geddy »

tnel77 wrote: post #225
chrissnell wrote: post #100

Some suggestions: - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Do this with every project and you will have a nice tool collection before you know it. - Learn to take pictures on a manual camera. You can do this with a modern automatic camera if it has a manual mode. Learn ab…

What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”

Funny thing about those people is they constantly complain about how expensive everything is, yet they spend frivolous amounts of money on what's probably the highest marked up item: food. Meal prep for a week for ~$75 and you're set. It would cost probably 4 times that (at least, depending on where you eat) to eat out, not to mention you don't know how it was prepared, and it's probably wildly unhealthy compared to if you just cooked it at home.

Take 2-3 hours on Sundays and cook some food. It's not hard.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#333

Post by brodouevencode »

texasbigdata wrote: post #45
heinrichhartman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deadlift's are quite dangerous for the untrained. Start with "Fix Rounded Shoulders" and "Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt" if you have not already done so. Plenty of great advice on YouTube on those topics.

Even then not necessarily sufficient. Source: worked with a trainer on this for months after pulling my back at a crossfit years earlier and still having lingering effects. Sitting a ton creates, or can create, large hip inflexibility, tight hamstrings, etc. If budget and space isn't a material constraint, get a hexbar... it will lessen some of the impact on your back. Deadlifting (and squatting) is arguably the most…

There's a lot of back and forth in this thread about deadlifts "being the devil", so I'm glad you brought up flexibility. ROM gets more important the older you get. If you're a washed-up meathead (like myself) working on flexibility makes it easier to get out of the bed in the morning and some mornings it makes it _possible_ to get out of bed.

Doing yoga (yeah, I know) has fixed my hip flexor issues and got my lower body lifts to near PR levels again.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#334

Post by cgh »

kerkeslager wrote: post #9

Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.

All great suggestions that sound easy but are not. For the exercise part, I'd say deadlifts and overhead press.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#335

Post by bitexploder »

vector_spaces wrote: post #264
bitexploder wrote: post #35

I will share one that has served me well for over 20 years: learn RDBMS and SQL. Learn normal forms, good schema design, and how to write complex queries. NoSQL adopters often avoided schemas like the plague and ended up with unmaintainable messes after a few years. I have seen more than a few NoSQL -> SQL conversions by now. Data is the most important thing in your app. Give it a great design. Plus databases like Po…

Any references in particular you recommend to learn schema design, particularly with an orientation towards performance (e.g. for high-volume sites)? A couple years ago I got dinged on a take-home project that involved building a db schema, but didn't get any specific feedback on my work, and it's sort of haunted me to this day (especially since SQL is one of my primary languages)

Everything I learned on is old school. Joe Celko was a great author back in the day. I always enjoyed this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties-Programming/d...

Although it is 10 years old, not much has changed in the universe of SQL basics. If I were to capture the essence of good schema design it is mostly about keeping data normalized until you have a really good reason not to. Denormalization is almost always an optimization choice.

And before you optimize you should have basic things covered, like indexes, etc. I have fixed more than one "slow" query by simply adding indicies to everything people are joining on. So, check out a tool like pgAdmin that has a cool query planner optimization feature. What is happening under the hood doesn't matter a /lot/ when learning SQL, but it is really insightful to see how indicies of various types impact performance. I believe this book basically covers it all from a theoretical perspective. Optimization and indices aren't super well covered in SQL for smarties, which make sense, it isn't about optimization but is a little higher level.

There are /tons/ of data sets out there now a days. CSV files, etc. Find some interesting data and start challenging yourself with interesting ways to design that data into a database. I actually design most of my SQL databases using an ORM these days, but, my bedrock knowledge of SQL makes it very efficient and I can avoid committing "SQL sins" (denormalization) prematurely. You will be surprised at how much you can learn on simple data sets :)

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#336

Post by jlangemeier »

Psyladine wrote: post #265
danenania wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a slow cooker and have your groceries delivered. You can make delicious, nutritious 1 pot meals that last you 2 or 3 days a pop with minimal prep time and cleanup.

I wish. Minimum $$ and limited inventory available for delivery through my local grocers. Anyone who cooks beyond some veggies and out-of-the-box meal components knows quality of ingredients is the utmost. Like, going to multiple butchers for the best cut of meat kind of quality. It's like anything else, you must invest the time and energy to get the quality. Restaurants simply abstract this away by increasing the co…

I think you're over playing "quality." A great stew can be made from ribeye or from chuck; if I'm grilling I want the ribeye from my local butcher, if I'm making a stew I don't really care.

If I'm making a quick soup for the evening; I'll use store-bought stock, if I'm making it for a huge group of friends, I'll put in the time to make my own.

Home made spaetzle is a great, quick noodle (and since I've got Celiac, it's an easy noodle to make GF) that takes about 5 minutes to actually make, 3 minutes to boil, and 5 minutes to brown on the stove top. Using it for Mac-and-Cheese is almost faster than the Kraft stuff.

And with anything that is a learned skill, cooking is slow at first; but as you get better at the basics it speeds up the process. As an example, it used to take me almost 2 hours to change my oil on my car; now I can do it as fast as a shop (~20-30 minutes).

The biggest thing that it all comes down to is time/money tradeoff, if I can convince myself that something is more worth the time it takes to do than the cost of someone else doing it, I can usually make it happen.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#337

Post by TurkishPoptart »

hluska wrote: post #80
phowat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this list, the thing I struggle most with is conversations with strangers. Any suggestions on how to improve that?

Here’s a neat trick. When you’re at a party, meetup or other social event, don’t approach people standing alone. Instead, approach people in groups of two, say hello (or give a quick little glass tink ‘cheers’) and introduce yourself. A large large amount of the time, one of those two people want OUT of the conversation and you’ll be that out. That’s a great low risk drill to get started. It’s low risk because it wor…

This is a good tip. And something easy and safe to start a conversation with a group of 2+ is a question like "How do you guys know each other?" They'll likely mention a mutual friend, their workplace, or a hobby they share, which can all be good topics to help develop a conversation.

Also, if you're a guest of the host of a party, you can approach people and just ask "So, how do you know $host?" Perhaps these are both effective conversation starts or questions because they begin with "how" as opposed to a who/what/when sort of question.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#338

Post by brodouevencode »

ramblerman wrote: post #98
texasbigdata wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then not necessarily sufficient. Source: worked with a trainer on this for months after pulling my back at a crossfit years earlier and still having lingering effects. Sitting a ton creates, or can create, large hip inflexibility, tight hamstrings, etc. If budget and space isn't a material constraint, get a hexbar... it will lessen some of the impact on your back. Deadlifting (and squatting) is arguably the most…

To be fair, crossfit for the uninitiated is always a bad idea. Doing movements like deadlifts for reps (when fatigued!!) is a recipe for disaster.

Not to mention most boxes do a piss-poor job of teaching form to begin with.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#339

Post by smileysteve »

tnel77 wrote: post #225
chrissnell wrote: post #100

Some suggestions: - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Do this with every project and you will have a nice tool collection before you know it. - Learn to take pictures on a manual camera. You can do this with a modern automatic camera if it has a manual mode. Learn ab…

What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”

I also noticed this; my friends would eat out or eat a tv dinner every night; In the meantime, I was eating healthy chicken and veggies.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#340

Post by stevenwoo »

gozzoo wrote: post #244
billfruit wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to enjoy poetry. There is so much of great poetry in English, but I think it is not being read and appreciated enough. It is a kind of mental challenge like doing a puzzle, to unlock the full vivid meaning. Also reading fiction, though how exactly it helps one is beyond me, but it offers glimpses into other worlds. For example I read recently 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', I doubt its richness of detail, and…

I've been trying the same and each time I failed miserably. I just don't get it and certainly can't enjoy it. Can someone recomend good poetry sutable for highly analytical mind or a book about apreciating poetry?

Some stuff that reads weird to me is quite beautiful when spoken appropriately, my internal voice/reading speed needs to be adjusted or is not good for this. Off the top of my head the best example might be cheating but it's when Ann Dowd recites a bit of Yeats in The Leftovers.
Post reply on HN