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Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

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Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#42

Post by nathan_compton »

seanssel wrote: post #15

Game development. I’ll admit that part of my problem is chronic depression over a decade+. The idea of gamedev excites me, but I have a hard time feeling passionate about anything these days. You definitely need that for games. Hell, I’m barely able to sit down and even enjoy games anymore.

We're not depressed, the rest of the world is just stupidly optimistic.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#45

Post by clumpthump »

pigcat wrote: post #38

Making electronic music. Any recommendations for where to start?

I've been having a lot of fun getting started with Max/MSP following Cipriani & Giri's "Electronic Music And Sound Design" books. Max is a paid program though; Pure Data is similar but open source.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#47

Post by dgfitz »

captain_coffee wrote: post #28
redog wrote: post #21

Making enough money to retire

Any realistic strategies that you have considered in order to try achieving that? Genuine question.

Genuine answer: I buy a lotto ticket like once a week. ~100 bucks/yr seems like a decent risk/reward tradeoff once over a certain tier of income.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#48

Post by quintes »

pigcat wrote: post #38

Making electronic music. Any recommendations for where to start?

Ah caught me! You need a Mac and GarageBand. I was always in the too expensive not gonna buy one but it changed my home use a lot.

GarageBand is easy. I’m gonna upgrade to logic at some point but that’s a start.

And good studio monitors or studio headphones. Can’t mix on regular headphones. I’ve got some m-audio pretty good.

Then you play. I don’t have many followers or fans but I’m doing it for me.

Here’s a track https://open.spotify.com/track/5o0xa7x1Q3bokEwFOEnXBQ?si=QZc...

It’s lofi/ electronica.

Best of luck

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#49

Post by tuveson »

joshdavham wrote: post #39

Python packages written in low-level languages like C/C++ and Rust. There are currently so many cool open source projects in the python ecosystem that involve writing python packages in low-level languages. But unfortunately, I've barely written any low-level code since university, so these projects are effectively out of reach for me at the moment. However, I do plan on learning Rust sometime later this year and the…

C is not as hard to get into as you might think, and probably necessary to be at least a little bit comfortable with if you want to write Python libraries or understand Python internals. I would suggest Beej’s guide, if you’re looking for a place to start!

https://beej.us/guide/bgc/

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#50

Post by i_don_t_know »

swsieber wrote: post #6

Hobby electronics & robotics. I can make an LED blink on a ESP8266 (it's been a while), but that's it. I'd like to get more familiar with a multimeter, figuring out broken kids toys, etc. but it's a bit daunting. Maybe there's too many options and not enough constraints. I'm not sure.

I have found the Make: Electronics series of books by Charles Platt to be a good mix of basics / fundamentals and fun projects.
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