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Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#51

Post by robertAngst »

Real World Embedded Systems. Built a dishwasher that cleans and sets your dinner table.

C++, Arduino, Electrical Engineering, and worked with a mechanical engineer on the design execution.

Here is the story, skip to the bottom if you want to see the youtube video-

Started this year working on a finance App, this one needed to be perfect. React Native, Laravel PHP mysql. The app is almost finished, and is worthy of a note in its own right. This 6 month project taught me more about programming than the last 9 years. In the process I started automating my Electrical Engineering job in python. Word got out, and I got head hunted by a stranger at work. They were looking for Embedded Systems, I applied, and was denied the position because I didn't have experience.

So I needed experience in Embedded Systems, and I've hated doing dishes. This was a problem that could teach me Embedded Systems and grow my Electrical Engineering skills(B.S. was in Chem engineering, M.S. Industrial Engineering). And it did.

Since there was nothing to copy from, I would spend 2-3 days researching EVERYTHING there was to know about resistors. Then when I knew which resistor I would need, I'd have to spend 2-3 days on capacitors. Since the HN thread might care about relevant details- Learned everything about stepper motors, ICs, I2Cs, controlling electricity, and voltage. Since I wanted to learn embedded systems, I didn't use delays, instead I used a state system with interrupts.

It took ~2 months start to finish.

Here is the video of the working prototype-

https://youtu.be/Ru_3sNCS-4c?t=457

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#52

Post by Dowwie »

faitswulff wrote: post #34
Dowwie wrote: post #32

Rust! :) I've been working full time with Rust this year for web development using postgres. The language and ecosystem have largely been sufficient for creating a robust platform. I have been working with the latest version of stable Rust all year and have never experienced breaking changes. Working with futures was unnecessarily difficult. Async/await is releasing next year, hopefully in Q1. This will simplify futu…

How do you feel about the productivity for web development in Rust?

My priorities are unique to my situation, so a responsible answer to your question is "it depends on what you're trying to do".

I am trying to create a scalable platform. Without having best practices to learn from, I had to discover what that required while trying to make the most of Rust. The discovery process involves many iterations of trying approaches out until a decent one emerges.

On the other hand, once I laid the tracks down, I found my usual hindrances to productivity: business logic and data modeling.

I am much more productive with Rust and raw SQL parameter binding than Python with SQLAlchemy query builder. Evidently, the costs associated with using an orm are greater than the benefits for someone who is fluent in SQL. Learning a dsl and then fighting the dsl and then asking for help repeatedly, just to accomplish the same task and no more, is a really bad use of time.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#54

Post by rohan1024 »

Dowwie wrote: post #33
rohan1024 wrote: post #28

Flutter/Dart: Still learning but I'm quiet amazed by the quality of apps made in record time.

How would you rate the resources to learn and reference? Is it accessible for mobile newbies?

Like @vchernobyl said it's very accessible. I would like to add that I'm subscribed to https://www.reddit.com/r/flutterdev. Everything from tutorials to news gets posted over there.

Just today I found this app which is great reference once you are aware of the basics

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.x_we...

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#55

Post by Jhsto »

I discarded job opportunities with web programming in Go and instead started learning about software-defined radio from scratch. Eventually, I got my own LTE network up.

I think there are interesting things happening in the compiler space, so I hope to learn more about those.

Coincidentally, I find Rust my favorite "tech" in 2018 because of the compiler and its various targets (like Nvidia cards).

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#56

Post by p2detar »

dsiegel2275 wrote: post #23

Machine Learning. In 2018 I went from "zero to sixty", so to speak. At the beginning of the year I knew nothing about ML, and my math skills had gotten so rusty I couldn't even remember how to do simple derivatives or multiply two matrices. In the first half of 2018 I relearned the college math that I had forgotten by working through MIT OCW's Linear Algebra, Calculus, and Probability courses. In the Fall, I enrolled…

Thanks a lot for the MIT OCW lectures hint! I want to do the same in 2019. What works for me in general is diving into a side project and learning by hacking, but I fear ML won't be susceptible to this approach.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#57

Post by jaabe »

My team started being more serious about our switching from .NET to a mix of Django, Flask and Vue.js this year, so I've been focusing on those. I personally played around with GraphQL (Apollo, Yoga and Graphene) for a while, but ultimately I didn't find a good use case for it in our setups and kind of left it at that.

Our 2019 will be spent on building our AWS and Azure skills along with container setups, as we look to move further away from our .NET and IIS heavy setup. With an increased focus on getting better with Python and Vue, possibly moving our JavaScript to Typescript.

I don't have anything negative to say about .NET, in case anyone was wondering. I think .NET core and Blazor.NET are especially interesting. We've just had so much more fun with Python and that's frankly really motivational. We're also using more and more Python when we do data-driven development, incorporate GIS stuff or do various forms of scripting, so it sort of makes sense to consolidate.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?

#60

Post by juhatl »

Elixir. The ecosystem has been steadily growing (and, more importantly, becoming more robust and mature) throughout 2018 with continuously improved tooling, libraries and frameworks. I'm excited for many of the upcoming things [1] in the Elixir world, and how those things can improve the way I build (web) software in 2019.

[1] For one example, https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/12/12/phoenix-liveview-intera...

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