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Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

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

#501

Post by sanderjd »

langitbiru wrote: post #223

Here are what I am learning in 2020. I try to be a holistic person. So I am learning technical skills, business skills, and social skills. Technical: Blockchain programming (mostly on Ethereum). I believe Ethereum is the future. Programmable money. How cool is that? However if you think blockchain is fad, you could replace it with cybersecurity. Business: Corporate finance (stocks, bonds, future contracts, options, e…

How are you studying corporate finance? What are the canonical / first principles books?

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

#502

Post by pjlegato »

Invictus0 wrote: post #399
the_gastropod wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion this kind of living, in part, explains why so many people are miserable. I feel like removing every inconvenient thing from your life, and "having someone else do it for you" must make your ability to handle discomfort atrophy to the point where the tiniest unpleasantness feels like a catastrophe. Like muscles, your brain, your immune system, etc., we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a w…

Sounds like you're projecting the habits of your personal circle onto the masses: most people are nowhere remotely near the point of removing every inconvenience from their lives. I don't know a lot of miserable rich people either.

The atrophy of personal cooking in the United States is a broad and pretty well documented phenomenon: "The percentage of daily energy consumed from home food sources and time spent in food preparation decreased significantly for all socioeconomic groups between 1965–1966 and 2007–2008" [1]

* https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/work-its-... * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/05/the-s... * https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-grocery-industry-confronts-a-new... * [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639863/

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

#503

Post by bryanmgreen »

38932ur98u wrote: post #429
bryanmgreen wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I’m completing an “In My 20’s” document tracking numbers of big things (is: how many countries visited, music festivals attended, pieces of furniture built, jobs had, dollars saved, etc), feelings, observations, lessons and questions. It’s pretty powerful. I can track my progress, see the speedbumps, but I think the biggest thing is that despite having all this data, it is not predictive. I have zero idea w…

I'm interested in this. Do you have a template?

I made this myself, feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=13IHeFemwCxMYvpbadUM5d_8fLV...

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

#504

Post by chrissnell »

sharadov wrote: post #496
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…

Learn to make basic cocktails ( manhattan, old-fashioned). Get good spirits, quality mixes ( cannot emphasize this enough), fresh herbs and you got yourself a great skill.

Definitely. Like a good set of tools in the workshop, I love to buy new spirits every time I have a cocktail night with friends. I have a liquor cabinet full of strange aperitifs and whiskeys. It's very fun to learn. I should find an app that lets me build a virtual liquor cabinet and gives me ideas for new drinks that I can make with what I have.

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

#505

Post by mattrp »

Pigo wrote: post #476
mattrp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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. Be careful... my wife gave me a drill one year and I’ve since renovated two houses and now have a small fortune in tools. If you don’t have a garage, basement or backyard for it, your local community college might have a “maker l…

I've started some woodworking projects. My first couple of attempts left a lot to be desired. It seems like a lot of it is just having the right tools. I mostly enjoy the sanding and staining part, or using a torch to weather proof it. The other thing is I can't find good plans. If I have a plan to follow, it makes all the difference, I don't know enough to figure it out as I go. Like right now, I've been wanting to…

I agree that it does make the process go better if you have a reference. I found myself more and more looking at small details -- I cannot go into a room any more and not see the sheet rock screws underneath layers of tape and spackle designed to conceal them. I can't unsee poorly mitered joints.

It's like coding...in the beginning, yes, its useful to modify someone else's similar project as you learn, but after awhile, its much easier and more engaging to start with a blank sheet and just start typing.

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

#506

Post by chatmasta »

Hitton wrote: post #473
dfansteel wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cook or eat left overs 6 nights a week at this point. Beyond saving a massive amount of money it's shocking how much better the steak I make myself is than one I can get out. Most cities have kitchen equipment stores (not just Bed Bath) that actually have cooking courses you can take. Now "home made pasta" starts with flour and eggs.

Saving massive amount of money? Judging just from demographic that uses hackernews (mostly tech workers), I think it's actually cheaper to eat out if you measure price of your time by how much money would you earn in that time while working compared to shopping for the ingredients, cooking and doing dishes.

There are also a lot of entrepreneurs and students on here. Not everyone is living the $200k salary life.

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

#507

Post by jschwartzi »

kbrackbill wrote: post #463
andrewzah wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like coding but with none of the frustrations. You can’t get stuck midway because you have an incompatible version of carrots. All you need is ingredients and a good repertoire of recipes to draw from.

Huh, I feel the exact opposite- it's like coding with a bunch of extra frustrations like shopping and cleaning, and the possibility of messing up in an irreversible way (burning something, for example).

That's all part of the fun of learning to cook. I've burned so many things over the years it's almost like a game. I've made hundreds of ommlettes for breakfast and burned at least 30. Each time it was a learning experience, and it taught me to pay attention to what I'm doing and not get sidetracked trying to pack for the day or take garbage out or clean the refrigerator.

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

#508

Post by chrissnell »

Hitton wrote: post #473
dfansteel wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cook or eat left overs 6 nights a week at this point. Beyond saving a massive amount of money it's shocking how much better the steak I make myself is than one I can get out. Most cities have kitchen equipment stores (not just Bed Bath) that actually have cooking courses you can take. Now "home made pasta" starts with flour and eggs.

Saving massive amount of money? Judging just from demographic that uses hackernews (mostly tech workers), I think it's actually cheaper to eat out if you measure price of your time by how much money would you earn in that time while working compared to shopping for the ingredients, cooking and doing dishes.

That's an optimization that looks good in theory but is poor in practice. Evidence has proven that we consume more calories at restaurants than we do when we cook at home. There's a lot more to get out of cooking at home than nutrition, though. As others have alluded to, the experience of cooking and working with your hands is excellent (and cheap) therapy.

As for economy, you will find it once you've built up a good stock of spices and non-perishables and begin to optimize things by--for example--making chicken stock from the bones of that bird you roasted for dinner, or freezing the extra tomato paste from the can that you used 1/3 of.

This is coming from a guy who spent the first 15 years of his tech career eating out every single meal before meeting a girl, getting married, and then eating 6 of 7 weekly dinners at home.

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

#509

Post by sharadov »

the_gastropod wrote: post #386
astura wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. I have friends who do too but it's not because they don't know how to cook, it's because they don't like to and don't wanna bother and can afford the luxury of having someone else to do it for them.

I have a suspicion this kind of living, in part, explains why so many people are miserable. I feel like removing every inconvenient thing from your life, and "having someone else do it for you" must make your ability to handle discomfort atrophy to the point where the tiniest unpleasantness feels like a catastrophe. Like muscles, your brain, your immune system, etc., we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a w…

We are becoming one trick ponies, only defined by the work that we do. There is something about cooking, doing things with your hands that is fundamental to the human experience. I cook, but I also like to order in, sometimes I just microwave stuff. It depends on your mood.

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

#510

Post by chatmasta »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #430
tnel77 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!”

Same. Started cooking out of frugality and anything I can order or comes packaged is unhealthy. Cooking feels like the default, what normal people do. I was so wrong. None of my friends can cook even a simple meal without step by step instructions. Some can grill, and that's it. They just order food or eat something from a box every single day.

“Normal” people do cook, especially if they have families. You and your friends are in a bubble (nothing wrong with that).
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