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Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

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Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#61

Post by LouisSayers »

hu3 wrote: post #2

Learn to make money. Quite the adage but I have come to realise that I only ever learned to work, not to make money. I make a good living from consulting. But selling your time only gets you so far. So I'll probably hire. And probably find out all my previous bosses weren't so wrong with their complaints after all.

Stock trading can be quite lucrative if it's a good match. Have a look at Qullamaggie on YouTube.

> Edit, I say this as someone that has been learning to trade the last 6 months. To be completely transparent I've actually overall lost money doing this, but have also brought my account back up from having halved to almost break even a couple times now and can definitely see the possibility of doing very well. If I was better at following instructions I would 100% be profitable. The YouTuber I mentioned doesn't sell any courses.

> Edit 2, screw you guys for the downvotes. I'm sharing something I've found useful. You don't have to buy into the idea, but there are some people who do very well off of trading. Hence "if it's a match"

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#62

Post by imron »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #52
imron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you using AI and what sort of software are you building? I have similar years experience and regularly try out AI for development but always find it’s slower for the things I want to build and/or that it produces less than satisfactory results. Not sure if it’s how I use the models (I’ve experimented with all the frontier ones), or the types of things I’m building, or the languages I’m using, or if I’m not sp…

For me, it has gone through stages. Initially I was astounded by the results. Then I wrote a large feature (ad pacing) on a site using LLMs. I learned the LLMs did not really understand what they were doing. The algorithm (PID controller) itself was properly implemented (as there is plenty of data to train on), but it was trying to optimize the wrong thing. There were other similar findings where LLM was doing very s…

> I have learned how to use Claude Code effectively

This is step 3 of “draw the rest of the owl” :-)

> the most reasonable advice is to just keep going and try different kind of things.

This is where I’ve been at for a while now. Every couple of months I try again with latest models and latest techniques I hear people talking about but there’s very little concrete info there that works for me.

Then I wonder if it’s just my spend? I don’t mind spending $30/month to experiment but I’m not going to drop $300/month unless I can see evidence that it’ll be worth it, which I haven’t really seen, but maybe there’s a dependency and you don’t get the result without increased spend?

Some posts I’ve seen claim spending of $1,500/month, which would be worth it if it could increase productivity enough, but there’s very few specifics on workflows and results.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#64

Post by biztos »

Tech:

1. Rust, I quite like it but I still need AI assistance.

2. Desktop app dev, I'm making one in Tauri and love it, now I want to "go native."

3. Lower-level AI stuff, so far everything has been with APIs, and while that's great it feels a little too abstract.

4. Leetcode pattern matching. (Grumble grumble, but when job-hunting in Rome...)

Differently tech:

5. City driving. Thanks @kenrick95 for reminding me!

6. Color grading, and video editing in general.

7. The Thai language (speaking and reading).

8. Writing for the public.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#66

Post by volk45 »

Scheduled for Fire 1 (basic Fire academy) in 2026. Looking forward to developing basic fire fighting skills and strengthen my knowledge in this new volunteer undertaking I started in mid 2025.

As for tech skills in 2026, I’d love to develop a photogrammetry pipeline mixing shoulder mounted SLAM scanner, DSLR terrestrial photography, and aerial LiDAR data sets. I’m lucky to have access to these data sets, just gotta put the pieces together.

I’m already familiar with UAS (unmanned aerial systems) photogrammetry and mixing that with terrestrial photos for high detail models. Aerial Lidar and SLAM datasets are something new I’ve been working with over the past 6 months.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#67

Post by mattm »

pan69 wrote: post #28

I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc. So, 2026 i…

Wow, you sound exactly like me - except I have a bit less years of experience. Let me know if you want to connect to help keep stay motivated (email in profile)

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#68

Post by LouisSayers »

imron wrote: post #62
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it has gone through stages. Initially I was astounded by the results. Then I wrote a large feature (ad pacing) on a site using LLMs. I learned the LLMs did not really understand what they were doing. The algorithm (PID controller) itself was properly implemented (as there is plenty of data to train on), but it was trying to optimize the wrong thing. There were other similar findings where LLM was doing very s…

> I have learned how to use Claude Code effectively This is step 3 of “draw the rest of the owl” :-) > the most reasonable advice is to just keep going and try different kind of things. This is where I’ve been at for a while now. Every couple of months I try again with latest models and latest techniques I hear people talking about but there’s very little concrete info there that works for me. Then I wonder if it’s j…

You can achieve a lot on the $30 plan.

I use Claude every day for everything, it's amazing value for money.

Give it a specific task with the context it needs, that's what I find works well, then iterate from there. I just copy paste, nothing fancy.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?

#69

Post by strangelove026 »

LouisSayers wrote: post #60
strangelove026 wrote: post #45

Develop a calistenics practice. Ive been to the gym more on than off over the past few years and feel like I’ve plateaued. I also had a minor thing that I’ve gone to the physio for recently and I prefer the routine of doing those exercises (which would be similar to a calistenics practice in a lot of ways) to going to the gym. Kettlebell and pull up bar to be ordered when I’m back from India I recently bought a stain…

If you're into the gym and cooking, consider getting a cast iron frying pan. Not only great for cooking, but it can also help with wrist strength - you may need to ease into lifting the pan with a single hand.

I've got a wok (I make mapo tofu every now and then) and definitely agree!
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