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Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

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Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#81

My goal: build an outdoor robot to keep the deer away from my plants. Learning goals: - Brushless motor control: has now reached cheap commodity status and would be good to learn more about. In the past I was always stuck between DC toy motors and full 6 wire AC motor control. - Vision system on a small micro with edge-AI model for deer detection. After decades of classic machine vision I think it's time to overcome…

There is a similar project for rabbit deterrence that might give some helpful ideas on the approach: https://blog.roboflow.com/rabbit-deterrence-system/

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#82
post #20

I'm going to try and learn Rust (started and failed several times already), probably by building something with actix-web

You may also want to check out https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum if actix-web doesn't click for you.

I tried both, I'm not sure how Axum is much different than actix-web, seems like they both have similar syntax for creating a new router, adding routes and middleware, and starting the server. I think actix-web has macro-defined routes but I haven't been using those anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#83
post #77
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that Elixir is a great investment?

I'm not sure how much you know about Elixir, so apologies for stating anything obvious. * Elixir sits on top of the BEAM (the Erlang VM), which has several decades of being battle tested. * Elixir is at its core a functional language, with immutable only (not just by default) data, and comes with built-in processes and OTP, a library that provides ready-made abstractions on top of processes. It's very, very good at c…

You've listed some nice qualities of Elixir but none of them necessarily make learning it worthwhile given a finite amount of time to invest.

Do Elixir's ideas improve your thinking when working on other languages?

Are Elixir developers in demand compared to other languages?

Is it a fad language? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=elixir

Questions like this probably reveal more important qualities of an investment.

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#85
post #36

Haskell is once again better than ever.

Can you elaborate? I haven’t followed Haskell for some time, and would really appreciate some highlights!

The language in the last 5 years added so much and is on the way to adding so much more.

Highlights are hard to name because different people like different features!

The packaging/dependency situation is pretty much solved now. Cabal v2 has been a godsend. That used to be the big issue. Stack is still around and works fine. ghcup makes installing everything easy. And Nix support is excellent and offers diversity of choice between nixpkgs and haskell.nix (which opens your way to proper x-compilation!)

I don't use it, but the Haskell Language Server is also vastly improved.

The library ecosystem is also the best it's ever been. Again, depends on what you wanna do. But there are more people and companies out there contributing to Haskell OSS than ever.

The compiler and RTS also keep solving problems and pushing the bleeding edge. Compact regions, a new latency-optimized GC, and the eventlog have greatly improved the RTS. And linear types landed recently - still nascent but still a big deal. And dependent types are definitely on their way.

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#86
post #83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much you know about Elixir, so apologies for stating anything obvious. * Elixir sits on top of the BEAM (the Erlang VM), which has several decades of being battle tested. * Elixir is at its core a functional language, with immutable only (not just by default) data, and comes with built-in processes and OTP, a library that provides ready-made abstractions on top of processes. It's very, very good at c…

You've listed some nice qualities of Elixir but none of them necessarily make learning it worthwhile given a finite amount of time to invest. Do Elixir's ideas improve your thinking when working on other languages? Are Elixir developers in demand compared to other languages? Is it a fad language? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=elixir Questions like this probably reveal more important qualities of an i…

I can’t answer every question known to man based off the vague prompt I answered. I took a pretty good stab at it. :) I also don’t know what makes things learning worthwhile to every type of person.

> Do Elixir's ideas improve your thinking when working on other languages?

Most languages do, and I’ve already mentioned Elixir’s unique features. Although, in a way, it will make working with other languages feel painful if you do any concurrency. Elixir and Erlang change the way you think about and work with concurrent processes and do it in about the best way possible, as it’s built in to the language in a core way. Learning how to deal with immutable data, writing pattern matching code, and functional programming are also all pluses.

> Are Elixir developers in demand compared to other languages?

I don’t know how to judge this, because define demand. The answer is ultimately relatively irrelevant to me and how I look for positions. If you’re asking, in a roundabout way, whether there are well-paying jobs in Elixir, the answer is yes.

> Is it a fad language?

I don’t know what a fad language is. Stack Overflow is not the global truth, and the plot is linked without context. Elixir has had its official forum for seven years now. It was created around the beginning of 2016, which roughly corresponds to the peak in the data you posted with a bit of lag in the downturn, as might be expected as people learn of the new forum.

Lastly, making a decision based upon what is popular now is not a long term thinking decision. What is popular now was making head winds 10-20 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#87
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I haven’t followed Haskell for some time, and would really appreciate some highlights!

The language in the last 5 years added so much and is on the way to adding so much more. Highlights are hard to name because different people like different features! The packaging/dependency situation is pretty much solved now. Cabal v2 has been a godsend. That used to be the big issue. Stack is still around and works fine. ghcup makes installing everything easy. And Nix support is excellent and offers diversity of…

Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#88
post #77
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that Elixir is a great investment?

I'm not sure how much you know about Elixir, so apologies for stating anything obvious. * Elixir sits on top of the BEAM (the Erlang VM), which has several decades of being battle tested. * Elixir is at its core a functional language, with immutable only (not just by default) data, and comes with built-in processes and OTP, a library that provides ready-made abstractions on top of processes. It's very, very good at c…

Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#89
post #88
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much you know about Elixir, so apologies for stating anything obvious. * Elixir sits on top of the BEAM (the Erlang VM), which has several decades of being battle tested. * Elixir is at its core a functional language, with immutable only (not just by default) data, and comes with built-in processes and OTP, a library that provides ready-made abstractions on top of processes. It's very, very good at c…

Thank you!

No problem! Hopefully you jump into it. :)

Re: Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2023?

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an amazing project and learning opportunity! Reminds me of a halfbaked hardware+software project idea of my own: - Goal: increase the amount of natural light in my apartment during the day - Mount a flat mirror on a motorized sun-tracking attachment on south-facing balcony railing - Set up geometry, software, and motor to rotate the mirror so that it always reflects a beam of sunlight into the apartm…

Cool idea, there is a town in Austria where the sun doesn't shine in winter and they were going to build something like that on the adjacent mountaintop. I think it never happened, though.

It is done in Norway: https://www.visitnorway.com/listings/the-giant-sun-mirrors-i...

More results here: https://kagi.com/search?q=rjukan+mirror&r=no&sh=jDluj1x6n_J8...

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