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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 579 posts

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

#461

Post by balladeer »

goodstuff9 wrote: post #445
balladeer wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I will try. कुत्र = where (?) पठसि = studying. When you want to use "studying" with "you"; with "I" it would have been "pathaami" (पठामि) iirc. संस्कृतम् = Sanskrit So, it should roughly read "Where are (you) studying Sanskrit?"

Yes. I'm pretty much a novice but I think you may skip the bracketed _you_ because it's idiomatic to skip it when its clear from the conjugation. E.g. (You) go and (you) find him. Also guessing that he was using material and not learning at an institution, I should have used केन (using what) Or just asked कथा (how).

Right. Even in Hindi it makes perfect sense to often skip You, I etc.

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

#462

Post by sn41 »

comboy wrote: post #436
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?

The author is Sanjoy Mahajan. He has another interesting book, "Streetfighting Mathematics".

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

#463

Post by jeffshek »

lwansbrough wrote: post #32

I’m still very much in the earlier stages of learning, but I’ll say negotiation. Recognizing that virtually any situation involving an “exchange” between two interested parties can become a negotiation has been a great insight into control for me. People often think of negotiation as business, however it can be much more personal than that and can be very useful for your interpersonal relationships as much as it can…

Ironically, this book brings up how it disagrees with the most upvoted comment's book "Getting To Yes".

This book (Never Split the Difference) was also pretty helpful to me, but it's easy to forget to apply in scenarios.

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

#464

Post by sam0x17 »

kodablah wrote: post #175
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…

While I have no doubt this paid dividends for you, I'm not convinced that the cost/benefit is greater on the whole than alternatively spending those 4 years doing real-world development. Subjective, sure, but from my perspective there are too many amazing self-taught developers and too many subpar ones with degrees to automatically justify the 4 year time and money cost for the average person (concerning skill, caree…

It also depends on whether your indicator for success is writing CRUD endpoints in the latest web framework vs inventing new data structures, algorithms, and AI systems.

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

#465

Post by gdubs »

dcraw wrote: post #345
gdubs wrote: post #340

A lot of mine have been covered here already, so I’ll keep it to Drawing. No matter where you’re at — even if you can only draw stick figures — working on drawing skills is an incredible, compounding investment that pays continual dividends.

Sounds interesting, but not obvious to me. What are the dividends?

Most relevant here on HN I think would be the ability to communicate and articulate ideas very quickly and efficiently. I say dividends because while you can get rusty, the skill never really goes away; I constantly feel grateful for all the time I’ve put into improving my drawing skills over the years.

“Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” is the book I typically recommend for anyone at any skill level.

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

#466

Post by dsnuh »

efigle2501 wrote: post #426
toptal wrote: post #155

Sound engineering. If you're a good sound engineer, you can basically get any album or record signed. All major labels look for excellent sound engineering first, and creativity second. This may sound counterintuitive, however if something is very creative and sounds unprofessional, they won't sign it. If it sounds excellent though very uncreative, it's still professional so there is a high chance of them signing it.…

Isn't it insanely complex and difficult to get some music sounding professional, refined and diminished? Not to mention the cost of equipment... Only from watching friends trying to get their music published, and even after paying big names in the industry it was still rubbish..

Not that I have mastered it, but what I have found richly rewarding, and in a similar vein, is learning about MIDI and beatmaking. I bought a MIDIFighter 3D from DJ Tech Tools, and just started messing around. I'm still a novice, but expanding out from there and purchasing a Roland TR-8 (rebooted TR-808) and learning how to program beats into it has been a blast. And I have learned a ton in process. You naturally move into how to get better sounds for your recording, and learn what you need to know to try to get the sound in your head into the recording. You get to experiment. You get exposed to new types of music, and whole subcultures of enthusiasts and professionals that you probably never knew existed.

I've mostly tried to practice "controllerism" or "finger drumming". There's tons of different soundpacks for Ableton (Lite is free, but limited), Traktor, and other software. It's really relaxing sometimes to just sit and tap out beats and clear your mind by concentrating on it. It's like an adult version of Simon where you get to set the pattern. It's really fun, and you can get a capable USB MIDI controller for a hundred bucks, even better deals on Craigslist. There's a lot of tutorials on Youtube to get you started, if you decide to give it a try.

Here's a good example of what controllerism is, if you are curious: https://youtu.be/mUUbbaBkZHw?t=28 (skipped ahead of some cursing at the beginning of the video).

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

#467

Post by vagab0nd »

Understanding risk vs reward, and maybe some math behind it. It sounds simple on the surface, but once I deeply understood it, it just keeps showing up again and again in life: financial investing, trading, playing poker, taking risks in life, making better decisions, etc. Where other people see "gambling", I see calculated risk taking. And it pays off.

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

#468

Post by lazarljubenovic »

scarface74 wrote: post #433
dominotw wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 havi…

> You can learn that from a book.

And I did read it from a book, when someone from University introduced me to the book and explained it to me in short firstly so I can grasp it more easily on my own.

I'd never pick a book about B trees on my own (booooring, let's learn LatestFramework.js).

My University professors were mostly a complete disaster but at least the materials we had were good enough. Who wanted to learn had access to knowledge, and for motivation -- at least the grades.

I can't see myself on my own even finding a book about theory and then going through it for 4 months, getting into nitty gritty details just for the kick of it.

There's no obvious benefit at the time of learning it. By the time you can see the benefit on your own, it could be too late.

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

#469

Post by seventhtiger »

EliRivers wrote: post #211
DenisM wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of writing feedback - you could have made your point in half as much text. What is your take on brevity?

I'm with Strunk & White.

Strunk & White is held in too high regard because of its status as the definitive writing style guide in education. Much of it is outdated, or based on the opinions and pet peeves of the writers. Some of it is outright wrong and promotes bad writing in favor of made up grammar rules such as split infinitives.

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

#470

Post by rane »

giantsloth wrote: post #312
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…

I recently started strength training as a software developer and it’s been a huge boon on my mental health, my confidence and for sticking with decent eating habits. For people looking to get started, I would suggest Starting Strength, which is a book on Amazon (pretty lengthy, but extremely thorough) or Strong Lifts 5x5 (google it to find the program it’s free on the web). The basic gist is to do full body barbell m…

I would add Barbell Medicine to your list of youtube channels. They also have a podcast and produce lots of useful content.
Post reply on HN