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Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

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Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#431

Post by efigle2501 »

dolguldur wrote: post #411
refurb wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a couple months by reading a few key books and following up to understand the specifics. And no, I went with an index investment strategy, not trying to beat the market. But it really helps to understand why index investing is a good choice.

I wonder what to read to understand how the fact that so much money is invested in index funds these days could eventually become a problem in a crisis situation and how to profit if that happens.

At which point you short said index funds and laugh as trillions are wiped off these etfs and index funds in the blink of an eye...weeee

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#432

Post by jarekdziedzic »

sAbakumoff wrote: post #236
skrebbel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 8 months. Unexciting speed compared to diets, but I'm not on any diet and I eat whatever I like. It's not going to come back on. I expect to lose the same amount again in the next 8 months or so. No idea about body temperature, sorry.

That is perfectly normal speed of losing ~1 kg per month. I have been there...lost ~20 for 2 years and keep it until now. As for the body temperature I read somewhere that losing 3% of weight slows down metabolism significantly that leads to wide spectrum of side effects like low body temperature.

Not an expert here, but your metabolic rate depends on how much muscle you have. Losing fat alone is hard. Typically you lose some muscle along the way, unless you try to fight it with weight training.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#433

Post by scarface74 »

dominotw wrote: post #308
m90 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in a few real world examples of these cases where you are able to apply the CS knowledge in your day job. Would you mind sharing one or two?

Learning about b-trees, storage layers of databases comes in hand when you have to push your database to its optimum performance. Similarly understanding storage classes for data and indexes, for example when to btree vs lsm trees. If you are using lsm trees when and how it should be optimized. And ofcourse, in interviews :D.

You don’t really need a degree for that. You can learn that from a book.

As far as interviews, the last three jobs I had.

1. We need you to design a fault tolerant system with no single points of failure. Write out your design on the board.

2. What is your 90 day plan to build a software development department to achieve these initiatives.

3. Here are some issues with our AWS infrastructure and challenges we are having delivering features. How can you help solve them.

Yes, I’m supposedly a hands on developer, but at a certain point in your career, you’re not asked to write a merge sort on the board.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#434

Post by elteto »

wallflower wrote: post #71

Going to a gym two to three times a week for small group training sessions. In terms of investment, it is not as expensive as private training and it keeps you on track. The real investment is in you. Your most important asset is your ability to produce income. Having a healthier body helps maintain that ability. The damage that I do through typing is only barely counteracted by these training sessions. I don’t take…

People are focusing on the asset comment too much, and IMHO missing the forest for the trees.

Let's add one more word:

    Your most important _material_ asset is your ability to produce income.
Bam. No more philosophical/moral connotations. It's almost tautological: your ability to generate material value is your most valued material asset.

It doesn't even have to refer to working as that value generator. If you have enough money in a bank account to live off the interest then that is your most valued material asset!

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#435

Post by biggio »

csomar wrote: post #224

Drinking lots of water. It might not be the same for everyone. However, I have noticed that I rarely drink water. It is interesting that I only noticed that this year (late twenties). The effects on my body and mind were phenomenal. I used to drink less than 1 liter a day. I don't feel thirst. So I don't drink water when I'm dehydrated (because I almost never feel it). Instead, I have a prescribed quantity that I dri…

Yes! 4 litres is probably bit extreme. You should drink about 2-3 litres. It is also important to drink plenty of water to avoid kidney stones.

You mentioned your pee colour is on the extreme side. You should probably get yourself scanned for kidney stones. Kidney stones can go undetected for ages.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#436

Post by comboy »

drpossum wrote: post #52

This may sound weird, but estimation. This book literally changed my thinking and how I do a lot of calculations http://web.mit.edu/6.055/book/book-draft.pdf Basic physics principles combined with the above. Being able to not only see how something works, but to be able to at least estimate it's parameters is invaluable to designing anything new

Can you provide the title/author of this book?

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#437

Post by bootlooped »

fifnir wrote: post #138
wallflower wrote: post #71

Going to a gym two to three times a week for small group training sessions. In terms of investment, it is not as expensive as private training and it keeps you on track. The real investment is in you. Your most important asset is your ability to produce income. Having a healthier body helps maintain that ability. The damage that I do through typing is only barely counteracted by these training sessions. I don’t take…

> Your most important asset is your ability to produce income. come on

In Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, physiological needs are placed at the foundation. This statement is not that different, since money is the foundation of almost everything a person does in the modern world.

It's not a statement on how things should be, or how we might want them to be. It's just a pragmatic acceptance of the way things are.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#438

Post by loosetypes »

mattlondon wrote: post #142

Computer Science degree. Sure, lots of us "learnt" programming in our bedrooms or whatever by doing our own thing and messing about in whatever language. I went into my compsci degree arrogantly thinking that I pretty much knew how to code already so please just give me the bit of paper saying I have the degree and I'll be on my way thanks very much. I was very wrong. Although I was pretty good at the coding (or at l…

Torn on this one.

I'm currently finishing up my CS degree after having worked professionally as a dev for a few years. I got started with a bootcamp, maybe before they were mainstream.

Maybe my expectations were out of line from the onset, but I came in more to learn than for the sacred degree. And I don't mean for this to be specific to my school - I imagine it's happening many places - but the school seems to be going out of its way to push students away from what I'd consider the core computer science curriculum.

I don't think it was always this way but subjects like compilers, algorithms, operating systems, and computer networking are veering more and more towards optional. Taking all of them before graduating is rare.

Instead, the hot thing seems to be software engineering. It sounds so good on paper - and I'm sure students, parents, and school admins all want it - but my experience with it has been complete nonsense.

In practice, these, and similar classes, have just been watered down versions of what is done in bootcamps, but executed poorly by folks with little industry experience. The result seems to be no actual computer science knowledge, a superficial experience, and bad habits.

There's so much more hard computer science I want to learn. And while I'd love to continue on to grad school - I have learned a fantastic amount here - so I can actually get to the good stuff, I don't know if it's realistically the best path.

tldr, I'm a bit bitter that I've had to take so many "filler" courses during my cs degree. Are CS degrees getting watered down? Is software engineering as a domain like this everywhere?

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#439

Post by rubicon33 »

codr4 wrote: post #353
rubicon33 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it's the only game, rather, I believe it's the best. The alternatives are theoretically wonderful, but when you lose the security of regular meals, a roof over your head, a shower, etc... Suddenly I'm not convinced. Judging from the fact that you too are posting from a computer, running on the internet, I can assume you haven't adopted the virtuous life of income free bliss that you speak of?

Oh, for heavens sake. That's as far as you can see? You can get that in prison. We were born and raised on a giant slave plantation. There are enough resources to take care of everyone, so much that some of it has to be kept off the market to keep up the illusion and prices. I'm currently scraping by at a bare minimum, growing my own vegetables and foraging whatever I can find in the area. And I find it infinitely mo…

"I'm currently scraping by at a bare minimum, growing my own vegetables and foraging whatever I can find in the area. And I find it infinitely more satisfying than writing software for startups and helping them rape the world in the name of profit."

Oh really? You're "scraping" by? How then are you growing your own vegetables? Please tell me, on who's land do you sow thy seeds? Where is this magical place that you can setup a fort, free yourself from the machine, and live off the land, without having to spend a penny?

Clearly I missed the memo about it's location.

Re: Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them?

#440

Post by mycelium »

ajmurmann wrote: post #337
msluyter wrote: post #127

Readline —- I’m sometimes amazed at the number of relatively seasoned developers who don’t know simple commands like ctrl-r. This one really pays off because almost all shells and repls like ipython or the mysql client implement it. Sample cheat sheet: https://readline.kablamo.org/emacs.html You don’t have to learn it all, but mastering the basics like moving to the end/beginning on the line, moving/deleting by word,…

Lots of the commands work in many macOS GUI apps as well.

The origin of those shared commands isn't from readline, but rather from emacs key bindings that made it into both readline and MacOS: https://jblevins.org/log/kbd
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