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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 433 posts

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

#81

Post by yu3zhou4 »

Good luck to everyone in achieving their goals and exploring new paths!

To me it's deep learning compilers since mid 2025. I am a person who can't learn just from reading books, so 80% of time I learn by doing (contribute to PyTorch) and 20% of time I read books (now: Engineering a Compiler from Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon) and talk to LLMs to fill gaps in my understanding.

My main quest now is to build a bridge [0] between PyTorch and universal GPU computing world - which I believe WebGPU might become. What it requires is to build is 1) a runtime for executing PyTorch ATen operations on WebGPU by running WGSL shaders and 2) a compiler, so you can use full PyTorch power with @torch.compile

[0] - https://github.com/jmaczan/torch-webgpu

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

#83

Post by pdyc »

I want to give away my tools for free and take on more ambitious projects, like building more capable browsers and local LLMs to get rid of corporate chokeholds. But that would probably never come true, because I would be tied up making money just to survive, rather than being able to give things away or take on more ambitious projects.

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

#84

Post by sandspar »

boricj wrote: post #78

I want to draw again. I used to, when I was in a classroom or at a bar. Actually managed to get quite good at it through sheer boredom in grande école . Then life happened and that faded away, alongside my mental health. Recently I've rediscovered doodling while attending ACM CCS 2025 as an independent (long story) and I want to improve my mental health in 2026, to the point where I can draw regularly again.

What subjects or style do you like to draw?

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

#85

Post by kuerbel »

busymom0 wrote: post #14

I want to try once again to learn piano. Previously, many years ago, I took lessons for 1.5 years but gave up because it was just too hard and I wasn't enjoying it. This time, I plan on trying to self learn. Been watching YouTube tutorials recently and as soon as I return from my trip, I will try once again. I have bought the Nancy Faber adult piano adventures book 1 too. Any tips are welcome.

What was too hard if I may ask? Maybe your teacher focused on the wrong things for/with you?

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

#87

Post by gnarcoregrizz »

Technical: release a simple, focused product. AI makes it easy to spam things out that look good. I would be psyched if something catches just a little bit of attention. I feel like my main limit is creativity now. Mine has been stifled by 15 years of rote web dev.

Non technical: I made a conscious decision to push career and technical things aside to spend more time living life (hobbies, family). I’ve since fallen behind in my career, but I’ve had more interesting life experiences I suppose. I do get jealous of people’s titles and promotions sometimes, but I don’t want their jobs. The competition to make others rich right now is enormous. Fucked labor market. Seems like a loser’s game (I just tell myself that since I can’t compete)

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

#88

Post by 0xMohan »

I'm good at coding so hate using LLMs for coding.

but the other things such as writing, just can't do it without LLMs's help. Looking up things, I defaulted to LLMs.

So in 2026, I just want to stop relying on LLMs.

Lol but I do like building LLMs (training from scratch, pre-training, fine-tuning, etc.). as a matter of fact, I'm pre-training a 1b model for last 2 days.

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

#89

Post by thenthenthen »

Reverse engineering. I cannot stand that every product I buy requires an app (that will break with the next upgrade/or lack thereof). I realise this is a problem possibly better suited to be solved on a policy level, but I rather learn some more reverse engineering skills (which can be both very rewarding as well as frustrating) than go into politics.

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

#90

Post by globular-toast »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #27
kenrick95 wrote: post #7

I want to learn driving. I live in a city with well-connected public transport (Singapore) so I don't feel the need to learn. However, this year I travelled to some rural areas in Japan and started to feel the pain of relying solely on public transport which is either extremely sparse, or sometimes non-existent which limits the places I want to visit. That's why I felt like if I obtain this skill, I can explore more…

> I want to learn driving. Two low-risk and cheap ways to develop relevant driving skills are bumper cars[0] and go-karts[1]. This may appear to be silly at first, but both involve the same hand-eye coordination and decision skills of vehicular driving (though the latter is no where nearly as fun as the others). 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_cars 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart

The real way is just to ride a bike. You can ride it on the road so you'll learn how the road works as well as how to operate a vehicle. When I got in a car the only things that took time to learn were operating the clutch and manoeuvres in tight spaces (you need to develop spacial awareness that you won't get from cycling). If I had learnt to drive an auto it would have been trivially easy after years of cycling.
Post reply on HN