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What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

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Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#171

Post by hombre_fatal »

el_cujo wrote: post #164
jakobegger wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one hours is defiantly enough to get to know the main Vim bindings I'm going to do an experiment. I've been struggling with Vim for a long time. I need to leave in about one hour. Instead of wasting time here on HN, I'll now spend an hour learning Vim. I doubt that this will get me very far, but I'll let you know how far I got.

type vimtutor in your shell for the "intended" tutorial

vimtutor sold me on vim in 10 minutes. o, O, p, P, y, I, A, etc. It was immediately obvious to me how it could be useful, having one-key shortcuts for the most common maneuvers in text editors, even if I were just writing prose.

Next time you're stuck somewhere without internet, as I was, give vimtutor a shot.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#172

Post by troydavis »

maroonblazer wrote: post #152
melling wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book was released today. https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything... I wrote some educational apps for language learning. Are there techniques that I could use to help and motivate my users?

I've read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear and "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. Does "Tiny Habits" bring anything new to the table? Or is it a reformulation of these other ideas?

I can't speak about Fogg's new book, but I've read Atomic Habits and read or listened to some of Fogg's other work. I think you're past the point of diminishing returns, especially compared to spending that time tweaking how you apply it. For example, by making triggers more obvious (daily email nag), progress more consequential (BeeMinder, blog), or goals more fun (choose valuable habits!).

If you want Fogg's take in a nutshell, here's a short podcast interview: https://boxofcrayons.com/2016/08/bj-fogg-on-behaviour-change... . tl;dl: Have an explicit trigger that you can't ignore.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#173

Post by sowbug »

mathieubordere wrote: post #106

using `Ctrl + r` in your shell, I just hope someone reading this doesn't know it yet :-)

If you like this, you'll also like pushd/popd. Example:

$ cd ~/src/app/foo/bar/baz

$ pushd /etc/qux/quux/quuz/corge/grault/garply/waldo

$ popd

$ pwd

/home/you/src/app/foo/bar/baz

It's a stack of directories. You pushd the current directory on to the stack and cd to a new directory all in a single command, then you popd back to the previous directory (i.e., the one on the top of the stack). It's useful if you're jumping all over the filesystem to do work, or if someone interrupts you and you want to cd somewhere to show them the contents of a file without losing your own context.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#174

Post by slowhand09 »

Learn how to get out of debt!!!

Step 1: List your debts from smallest to largest regardless of interest rate.

Step 2: Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest.

Step 3: Pay as much as possible on your smallest debt.

Step 4: Repeat until each debt is paid in full

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#175

Post by hombre_fatal »

fbnlsr wrote: post #64
timvisee wrote: post #34

Vim. I think it can be in the list as well. It takes a long time to properly learn. But one hours is defiantly enough to get to know the main Vim bindings, to be as productive as in other editors. In the end it makes you super productive.

Serious question: I keep seeing Vim thrown up and down like it's the holy grail. I've been using VS Code for two years maybe now, and I don't see how Vim could help me be a better/more productive coder. What am I missing?

imo, the best parts of Vim are its shortcuts which is why I am happy with only Vim-like keybindings in other apps and don't need them to impl the whole kitchen sink.

For example, right now, how do you make a blank line above your cursor and move your cursor there? Do you maybe go ctrl-a to move the cursor to the front of the current line, carriage return to move the current line own, then press up-arrow to move your cursor to the new, empty line? In Vim, it's just capital O. lower-case o to create an empty line below you and move your cursor there. And I could go on for all sorts of simple tasks that have most people reaching for their mouse.

Entry-level Vim keybindings just make these basic tasks more pleasant.

I got pretty hard-core into Vim when I was in uni and had time to care and credentialize in Vim. Nowadays, I'm switching between so many editors that I'm happy just using basic Vim keybindings.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#176

Post by criddell »

agentwiggles wrote: post #144
criddell wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always skeptical of this claim (and yes I do know vim fairly well). Programming isn't that much typing. For every burst of typing there's probably an equally long or longer lull where you are leaning back and looking at the screen or sketching something out on paper. If your productivity is limited by how fast you can type then you are either a far, far better programmer than most people or your skills are being…

It's not so much typing that Vim helps with, it's _editing_. It's definitely not about raw text entry - it's about thinking things like "hey I want to move these 3 lines up to this spot" and being able to do that with 3 or 4 keystrokes. The reason folks talk about feeling crippled when they use a regular editor is that you get used to things like `f(` to take you to the front of some function's arg list, or `ci{` to…

> being able to do that with 3 or 4 keystrokes.

I get that. My point is that I decide to move that chunk of code after looking at the screen for 4 minutes so it doesn't matter if it's 3 or 4 keystrokes or 5 or 6.

Once you know your editor well, you aren't thinking about the keystrokes anyway. It becomes entirely automatic. There are lots of editor operations that I couldn't tell you what the keystrokes actually are without sitting at a keyboard and doing it.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#177

Post by roganartu »

OGWhales wrote: post #165
nordsieck wrote: post #149

IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective when you're communicating. I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people. One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of: "The…

My dad gave me very similar advice growing up, as I love for things to be factually correct. To me, it didn't bother me if someone corrected me. However, most people don't appreciate it and it isn't worth upsetting them 90% of the time. This is something I didn't understand. Another thing he told me was not to be a know it all. One example would be when people said something and I had learned before, instead of dimin…

> Another thing he told me was not to be a know it all. One example would be when people said something and I had learned before, instead of diminishing their statement by saying I knew that, I should say something like "wow that's cool" as it makes the person feel better.

Taking this a step further, if you know the topic well you can instead say something like "I know, it's very cool isn't it? Did you also know that ".

Delivery is important of course, with the "I know" part needing to be energetic and supportive, but I've found this approach to be an effective way to build rapport and it has lead to some really interesting discussions.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#178

Post by nordsieck »

OGWhales wrote: post #165
nordsieck wrote: post #149

IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective when you're communicating. I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people. One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of: "The…

My dad gave me very similar advice growing up, as I love for things to be factually correct. To me, it didn't bother me if someone corrected me. However, most people don't appreciate it and it isn't worth upsetting them 90% of the time. This is something I didn't understand. Another thing he told me was not to be a know it all. One example would be when people said something and I had learned before, instead of dimin…

> when people said something and I had learned before, instead of diminishing their statement by saying I knew that, I should say something like "wow that's cool" as it makes the person feel better.

That's really great. I'll have to pick that up.

Sounds like your dad was/is a pretty smart guy.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#179

Post by OGWhales »

Insanity wrote: post #68
nkrisc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more valuable than it might seem. I'd wager many people couldn't even sit still for an hour in a room by themselves with nothing but their own thoughts.

Does it count if you lie awake in bed for an hour unable to sleep because of rumination? Because in that case, I'm sure plenty of people do it at some point. But what helps me is taking walks. You're alone with your thoughts, but the act of walking through nature is stimulating for more positive thinking, from my experience anyway.

I don't find that similar at all, it feels more like torture than meditation. The bit about walking I fully agree with. I live in the mountains and love being able to walk cool trails with nothing but my thoughts

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#180

Post by jasonlotito »

majiasheng wrote: post #62

How to speak (Professor Patrick Winston from MIT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

My short 4 word recommendation for people wanting to learn to speak in public: slow down, speak up.

For me, those two things get you a lot farther than you might think, and solve two of the biggest issues I see from people.

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