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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?

#521

Post by dave7 »

Started off the year with React, like others have mentioned in this thread "React for Beginners" by Wes Bos was instrumental in my understanding. Styled-Components is probably my favourite React library. I had been using JavaScript regularly but not very modern - JQuery and Dojo - so ES6 was new to me too. Again Wes Bos and additionally FunFunFunction were very helpful here.

In the summer I began an interest in game development. I took the CS50G course on edX taught by Colton Ogden - I don't have enough good words to say about this amazing series of lectures! Thank you so much! Alongside various game design principles, through this I learned Lua, Love2D and a little Unity.

The tail end of the year has been a quest for knowledge with me voraciously acquiring game dev knowledge from blogs, reddit and mostly the amazing resource that is Youtube - C#, Unity, Unreal, CG/GLSL/HLSL, most recently Blender.

Shoutouts to Youtube channels The Art of Code, Makin' Stuff Look Good, Brackeys, Blackthornprod, Blender Guru and of course GDC.

There is so much to learn!

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

#522

Post by robertAngst »

thisisananth wrote: post #206
robertAngst wrote: post #51

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…

This is so inspiring. It is also really amazing that you were able to do it in 2 months. How much time did you spend working on this? All the best!

At most I'd spend ~2-3 hours a night, and we had build days on weekends.

The nice part was that it was nearly entirely on me. Didn't have to wait for other people, aside from some shipping.

Prototyping is definitely possible! Wish you the best as well!

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

#523

Post by robertAngst »

throwawaymath wrote: post #194
robertAngst wrote: post #51

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…

I implore you to start a company if you're at all interested in working on this further. Seriously, please consider productizing it. I would pay thousands of dollars for a polished version of this in my home, especially if it matched the style and decor of my dining room furniture.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Making big decisions over the next 1 month as I have 3 major projects. My (already popular) website, this dishwasher, and my finance app.

Did mention this thread to my co-engineer, I'm pretty sure he is going to make this a reality.

The biggest question regarding the dishwasher is-

Do we go luxury and expensive since plumbing is already a multi thousand dollar requirement? Or, should we go commodity, and have users attach to their kitchen sink(portable dishwasher style)?

How much would you pay for the dishwasher, table, chairs, electrical and plumbing? (full service)

I'll have follow up details in ~1 month if you want to follow on Efficiency Is Everything.

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

#525

Post by tarcio »

Clojure and Python.

Clojure was a language that I tried a few years back and never really got into - parentheses everywhere, who needs those?

But its syntax hides its functional elegance and is a really pleasant language to work with - even Java becomes bearable!

As for Python, I never had the chance to with with. Built a video stream server from Pi Camera using flask which is nice , small and simple - a lot simpler than I thought.

Also at work had to apply Python for a project too and easy the right tool for the job when dealing with file system entries that is on the gigabytes.

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

#526

Post by sebastienrocks »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #395

PHP and Wordpress Had to start over at the bottom after alcohol addiction destroyed me. Landed a job working with WordPress and started having quite a bit of with it. Naturally I just HAD to start tinkering and learned PHP to write plugins and manipulate the hell out of it. PHP isn't all that bad and is actually pretty easy to pick up. My only gripe with it is that quite a bit of the libraries aren't on par with othe…

I would suggest you now focus your attention elsewhere. Wordpress is a great eco-system, but if you want to earn more, dive into Javascript with ES6.

From there you can pick-up a UI framework (I would personally suggest Vue.js), and move onto exciting large-scale front-end applications, with a better pay-check.

I've almost doubled my salary moving from a Wordpress developer to a front-end engineer in a years time.

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

#527

Post by woutercx »

- ASP.NET Core. It's mature enough now to be able to convert our (chatbot framework) solution from .NET Framework to .NET Core.

- Dabbled a bit with Docker and Kubernetes on Azure

- I've been using VS Code more and more

- Dialogflow for connecting a chatbot to Google Assistant

- Text to Speech and Speech to Text API's like Nuance, Acapela, Google Cloud Text to Speech and the Audio Object in HTML 5

- Azure Active Directory for authentication and role based access.

- Hugo, a static site generator

- Face recognition / emotion detection using Cognitive services in Azure

- I'm moving away from Angular to Vue.js and for Proof of Concepts I mostly use Vanilla JS

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

#528

Post by webdva »

In the year 2018, the technologies I learned:

I learned the Neataptic neural network library and gained experience in text classification using an artificial neural network.

I learned the D3.js charting library.

I learned the express-session NPM package and gained the capability to implement user accounts and HTTP-based user sessions.

I learned SQLite for creating database subsystems for heavily constrained server environments such as the Orange Pi Zero single board computer.

I learned the Blender 3D modeling and animation utility and obtained the capability to create basic 3D models and animations.

I learned the Babylon.js 3D game development framework and obtained the ability to make 3D browser games.

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

#529

Post by gdfer »

dxxvi wrote: post #468
gdfer wrote: post #452

I learned a ton in 2018 after many years of working primarily with Java & Spring in large "enterprise" systems. It had been getting boring to the point of questioning if development is what I wanted to do. 2018 was a year of stoking the flames and I'm really enjoying hands-on technical work again. I decided to pick up Python and learned some Flask & Django while I was at it. Really liking it. I also took some machine…

"after many years of working primarily with Java & Spring in large "enterprise" systems": thought you would choose Scala next :-)

Solid prediction. I've been THIS close to learning Scala a few times. I did pick up some Groovy/Grails a couple years ago and decided, while familiar & powerful, I'd try to venture outside of the JVM next.

Scala still on my mind though. Kotlin too.

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

#530

Post by giekaton »

outoftheabyss wrote: post #458
giekaton wrote: post #175

Did a lot of learning in 2018. Finally moved away from Wordpress as a back-end, which I pushed to the limit. Learned Laravel and greatly improved my skills in vanilla PHP. Moved from jQuery to Vue.js - it's now my default front-end framework. Started using CLI and Git regularly. Learned PWA, service workers, serverless, Web3, some Solidity, more MySQL, server admin, scaling. Throughout 2018 I was coding all the time…

Thanks for sharing. I have a very basic question. What is your favoured method of learning new technologies/languages, how do you make the most of your time and make it stick? I am coming from a different background and the learning is a completely different dynamic to what I am used to. I could ask this of most here but you seem to be particularly proficient at learning loads in a short space of time.

Hi, this is how I do it:

1. First I read some theoretical info about the new technology that I want to learn. It can be a book, documentation, or the information can be in a form of a podcast or a video. You need some theoretical background in order to understand the core concepts.

2. Then from my ideas list I pick a new project to work on. I then create some sketches, designs and start coding. As a new school coder, I mostly use google for answers regarding syntax, methods, patterns and general best practices.

Sometimes it works the other way around: I first decide on the project I want to create, and then learn the tech that the project requires.

I also closely watch the general tech ecosystem, and pick projects that allow me to learn new things, building upon the previous knowledge. In 2019 this will be less important, because now I have my skillset in place, so the main criteria for picking projects will be the project's potential for commercial success.

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