Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018? • Hacker News Board

chirau wrote: post #202

scarface74 wrote: post #26

Python - I was a little hesitant because I really wanted to get more into Node/JavaScript but that’s what my team uses for simple scripts. Historically,I didn’t like any scripting language but I actually like Python for simple AWS backend lambdas and automation. AWS - At the beginning of the year I knew nothing about AWS. I thought it was just a way to host VMs. Since then I’ve done projects involving networking, Dev…

Have you found the certifications useful?

Define "useful".

I personally have 3 AWS certifications (All of the associate level).

Their use to me was 1) When studying for them, I learned a ton more about the platform and 2) Recruiters and employers love it - I get even more job/interview offers now.

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

#215

Post by petepete » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

I had a client ask me to fix an ancient web app of theirs, written in VB.NET and barely touched since 2005/6. As a bonus it had no source control. So that was new (to me).

Back to Rails and PostgreSQL for me. Neither new nor exciting but it pays the bills.

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

#216

Post by senorsmile » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

hekillno wrote: post #72

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…

can non-CMU student learn that class online?

I would like to know the same.

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

#217

Post by dmos62 » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

The separation of implementation and algorithm, and the utility of formal specs and proofs. This roughly translates to machine assisted proofs and model checking. Namely, ACL2 and TLA+.

I found these technologies and methods enormously beneficial to abstract thinking and producing good systems.

Leslie Lamport, creator of TLA+ (and LaTeX), put out a lot of content about this topic and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it.

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

#218

Post by hashhar » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

I started my job last year in July as a search engineer in a major Indian e-commerce company straight out of college and was really glad to be able to work using one of the most beautiful tech stacks I've seen - Golang microservices talking to Apache Solr, Redis and a little bit of MySQL/Mongo connected to the external world through RabbitMQ.

I learnt writing good abstractions, organising code, the value of commenting the WHYs instead of the WHATs. I learnt about the amazing power of Redis wire protocol for mass insertions (reducing a 6 hour data import job to under 10 minutes using nothing but a CSV file and 4 lines of sed).

I also learnt a lot about debugging systems. Trying to find the root cause, fixing it and creating processes to prevent it from repeating.

I also got to work on a few hacky one-off solutions for scaling a legacy PHP monolith by redirecting all Memcache calls to a PHP class file which is basically a dump of all the Memcache data. I was overjoyed once I saw our legacy stack able to sustain over 6k orders per minute whereas it crumbled at around 1200 orders per minute earlier.

I also got to debug issues arising due to saturated network switches across two floors in our colocation DC.

All in all a great year.

I also saw how it feels to be laid off due to restructuring after a merger (with Walmart) after having worked tirelessly for the company and learnt how important it is to have a support system. I'm glad my amazing peers could arrange over 20 interviews for me within two weeks and I was back on a new job. I was also glad for the amazing severance pay that the organisation gave me.

I am glad for my first job, my first professional circle and all the learning that it gave me.

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

#219

Post by okcwarrior » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

Vue.js. I use it exclusively for front end now and have ditched Angular 2/React all together. I even got it approved for use in the very large enterprise I work at (internal apps only of course, but we have a lot of those).

I also embraced messaging for good and was shocked at how easy NServiceBus makes everything regarding AMPQ.

I continued to celebrate .NET Core advancements and use it for all my server side programming.

I also dipped my feet in Scala and really like what I found .. Q1 of 2019 will be Scala heavy at work, then back to .NET Core.

E: Forget, every single project I have is set up in Azure Devops now for build/deployment. It's amazing.

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

#220

Post by jamakai » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

avip wrote: post #111

firebase platform. I don't have any "at scale" experience with it, but it's now my default web deployment platform and I love it.

I've been looking for a good platform to start putting up some personal projects, why did you like firebase so much?