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Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

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Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#161

Post by _asummers »

karanke wrote: post #154
_asummers wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a single core server, and I have a queue of tasks. I can process them one at a time. But say I don't want to work on one task at a time. I might decide to do some database operation and while I'm waiting for the response to come back, I might decide to do some work on a separate thread so I'm not idling. We now have concurrency. If I add more cores, and my program is coded to be able to take advantage of that, I…

I enjoyed this explanation, thank you. Curious to know what the differences are vis-a-vis big data tools like Hadoop or Spark; as a user of those tools I recognized a lot of common failure patterns in the example above. Thanks!

I'm unfamiliar with Hadoop/Spark beyond knowing what they are and vaguely where they'd be used, but I imagine they tend on the "well we can just recalculate sub-jobs" failure models, instead optimizing developer speed over computational speed. Though that is wild speculation.

You wouldn't use Erlang/Elixir for doing calculation because that's just not what it's good at. But you might use it as something to manage jobs in a larger distributed system perhaps. Though my suspicion there is you may run into tooling impedance mismatches as you get deeper into the failure modes.

Sorry I can't speak more knowledgeably about that. I'm curious if any WhatsApp folks are around and can comment on if they ever made their Erlang systems talk with their Hadoop/Spark stuff and what that all looked like.

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#162

Post by igotsideas »

_asummers wrote: post #127
freehunter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Rails for my web programming needs, and I've heard a lot of people talk about switching from Ruby/Rails to Elixir/Phoenix because of "concurrency", but I'm going to be honest and say I don't know what that means. I'm not a CS grad and I'm not super familiar with all of the terminology. Can someone help me with two things? Really trying to understand the benefit. 1. When you say "concurrency" do you just mean "h…

I'm a single core server, and I have a queue of tasks. I can process them one at a time. But say I don't want to work on one task at a time. I might decide to do some database operation and while I'm waiting for the response to come back, I might decide to do some work on a separate thread so I'm not idling. We now have concurrency. If I add more cores, and my program is coded to be able to take advantage of that, I…

I enjoyed your explanation as well.

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#163

Post by igotsideas »

fersab wrote: post #70
vikas5678 wrote: post #59

3 critical skills that will help you through out your life: 1. Learn to workout well - crossfit, hire a trainer, etc 2. Basic financial knowledge - investing, taxes, RSUs/Options, etc 3. Presentation skills - most of your career will be determined by how effectively you communicate, influence and persuade. Invest in it.

crossfit is like scientology of fitness

Lol this had me dyin. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#164

Post by scarface74 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73
jsgoller1 wrote: post #67

Interviewing. I spent about 3-4 months this year working on my interviewing and competitive programming skills via LeetCode, reading The Algorithm Design Manual, and taking classes at Bradfield School of CS in San Francisco. I feel like it's made a world of difference. I know Hacker News tends to hate on programming interviews, but it really pays to be good at them (and trust me, it's a learnable skill). I do agree t…

You spent 3-4 months honing your interview skills, that sounds very expensive. Are you claiming that this practice made you a better programmer overall or just better at interviews? It isn’t just hackernews hating on the current way of doing programming interviews, it’s a widespread sentiment in the industry. The current way of doing interviews seems both excessive (requires 2 months of practice) and easily games (wi…

The current way of doing interviews seems both excessive (requires 2 months of practice) and easily games (with 2 months of practice...). Who is winning from this?

While I have never had a leetCode style interview, I’ve also far removed from Silicon Valley. That being said, if that’s what my local market required, that’s what I would do.

“The [job] market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#165

Post by scarface74 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #93
jsgoller1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both - my interviewing skills got better mostly from doing mock interviews and exposure to the questions that would be asked during an interview, but I'd say my programming skills got better from learning more about algorithm and data structure design, as well as carefully thinking about edge cases so as to beat the battery of test cases that each LeetCode problem has.

We really have to be careful here, because many CS programs have or are planning CS courses specifically designed around LeetCode problems as a way of giving their students a leg up in the interview process. If these kinds of interviews become more widespread (and there are a lot of companies trying to copy google here), this will only intensify and possibly begin push out other CS courses with more useful content. T…

From a very pragmatic standpoint, the most useful courses in college are those that help you get a job.

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#166

Post by ivanmaeder »

kken wrote: post #8
lwheelock wrote: post #4

Leadership skills. Whether or not you need them today or not, whether you want to be in a leadership role soon or not, they are essential for anyone seeking to progress and you can’t start too soon. There are many many ways to approach this and I’ll just offer two book titles that I believe would be beneficial. 1. Start with Why 2. Extreme Ownership

A much faster way to understand the central message of "Start with Why" would be to watch the TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA Is the book worth reading, in addition? I see very mixed reviews.

Don't waste your time with the book—it's complete fluff: unoriginal, rambling, repetitious, with faulty reasoning…

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#167

Post by romeisendcoming »

_asummers wrote: post #127
freehunter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Rails for my web programming needs, and I've heard a lot of people talk about switching from Ruby/Rails to Elixir/Phoenix because of "concurrency", but I'm going to be honest and say I don't know what that means. I'm not a CS grad and I'm not super familiar with all of the terminology. Can someone help me with two things? Really trying to understand the benefit. 1. When you say "concurrency" do you just mean "h…

I'm a single core server, and I have a queue of tasks. I can process them one at a time. But say I don't want to work on one task at a time. I might decide to do some database operation and while I'm waiting for the response to come back, I might decide to do some work on a separate thread so I'm not idling. We now have concurrency. If I add more cores, and my program is coded to be able to take advantage of that, I…

If you have a single core/threaded computer you can only schedule one task at a time and concurrency is an illusion.

What this functional language does is mask the complexity involved in SMP systems where state and data are subject to races via concurrent access. It also allows you to subscribe to the doomed philosophy of fail once, try again, try harder while ignoring the underlying cause. Trying the same thing over and over while failing has a name associated with it.

It implements a separate scheduler which superimposes it's rules over what ever OS kernel scheduling is in place. Sometimes you don't want that complexity.

It's functional. Who cares about functional as the _only_ model for a programming language?

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#168

Post by romeisendcoming »

vikas5678 wrote: post #59

3 critical skills that will help you through out your life: 1. Learn to workout well - crossfit, hire a trainer, etc 2. Basic financial knowledge - investing, taxes, RSUs/Options, etc 3. Presentation skills - most of your career will be determined by how effectively you communicate, influence and persuade. Invest in it.

1. useless 50+ unless you enjoy pain and injury. 2. Buy something that is always worth something, take care of it and make enough $$ to enjoy life. Leave something for your family and rainy days. 3. Presentation skills? Communication skills and I'd say those are only useful when you have something to communicate. Technical and creative skills are just as important.

OP list is the young mans guide to SV future reality if I had to guess.

Re: Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?

#169

Post by romeisendcoming »

jsgoller1 wrote: post #71

C. I read K&R and did every exercise in it this year, and it really changed how I thought about programming, even in higher level languages. Specifically, I feel like it's made me a lot more considerate about algorithm design and detecting edge cases. More justification: https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/the-cost-of-forsaking-c-1139864...

You are not going to get much love here. But you are right.
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