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Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

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Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#1

Post by akktor »

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#2

Post by akktor »

For me, it's gotta be Asahi Linux development. I've been following the work of Asahi Lina and the team for a long time, watching their progress in awe. It just seems incredibly cool to get macOS hardware running Linux so well. But every time I think about actually diving into it, my brain just screams "super complicated!" and I have no idea where I'd even begin to contribute or understand what's going on under the hood. It's definitely one of those things I admire from a distance because it feels so far beyond my current capabilities.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#5

Post by incomingpain »

There's 2 big ones that I want to learn.

Quantum computer programming. I've dived a couple times into Qiskit from IBM. Also tried to get into dwave and ocean sdk but they never got back to me.

Qiskit tutorials are easy to blow through and i think even understand. But when trying to use it for my own purposes, just never get anywhere.

The other one for me with no success. Training my own specialized predicting AI models. Tensorflow, pytorch, and another.

I certainly prefer pytorch. Super simple to build models on simple stuff.

I'm trying to do something that literally nobody else has ever done. My lack of success has probably a lot more to do with that it's not perhaps actually doable.

Flipside, I might be re-approaching this now that i have the pycharm ai to help me in this progress.

>you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Never be afraid to try. Always dare to fail; you only truly learn when failing. The easier you make it to fail, the quicker you learn.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#6

Post by swsieber »

Hobby electronics & robotics. I can make an LED blink on a ESP8266 (it's been a while), but that's it. I'd like to get more familiar with a multimeter, figuring out broken kids toys, etc. but it's a bit daunting. Maybe there's too many options and not enough constraints. I'm not sure.

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#7

Post by jesol »

I don't know anything about electronics design, but I'm really into backpacking so a high efficiency battery system with a solar panel is really interesting to me. I came across this project[1], and wanted to improve upon it for my usecase. I want to add the ability to have multiple 21700 cells in a lightweight charger, instead of a single cell with a builtin USB charger. I want to learn more electronics, but it definitely feels like a multiyear process, and it'd be nice to shortcut it for the projects I'm interested in.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/myog/comments/1k3stln/ultralight_13...

Re: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

#10

Post by drabadur »

swsieber wrote: post #6

Hobby electronics & robotics. I can make an LED blink on a ESP8266 (it's been a while), but that's it. I'd like to get more familiar with a multimeter, figuring out broken kids toys, etc. but it's a bit daunting. Maybe there's too many options and not enough constraints. I'm not sure.

For robotics, I recently came across this course to learn the basics: https://github.com/henki-robotics/robotics_essentials_ros2. Haven't started it yet though.
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