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Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#221

Post by bufferoverflow »

yters wrote: post #128

Learn about intelligent design theory and how it impacts biology and computer science. Google papers by Dembski for the mathematical underpinning. I recommend his papers 'search for a search' and 'specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence'. Read Winston Ewert's paper 'Dependency Graph of Life' for an amazing application of CS to bioinformatics, and 'algorithmic specified complexity in the game of life' f…

No, don't waste your time on "intelligent design". It's pseudoscientific garbage pushed by the Christians.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#222

Post by nojvek »

thedayisntgray wrote: post #8

Marketing is a big one for me. Building a great product means nothing if you can’t reach your target audience. And I don’t mean learning how to used Facebook or Google to run ads, I mean the theory behind marketing. I would like to read more books similar to the 22 immutable laws of marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Started an small solo business, would love to be well read. More book recommendations are welcome.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#223

Post by langitbiru »

Here are what I am learning in 2020. I try to be a holistic person. So I am learning technical skills, business skills, and social skills.

Technical: Blockchain programming (mostly on Ethereum). I believe Ethereum is the future. Programmable money. How cool is that?

However if you think blockchain is fad, you could replace it with cybersecurity.

Business: Corporate finance (stocks, bonds, future contracts, options, etc). This is related with blockchain because I believe a lot of financial applications will move to blockchain platform.

However if you think blockchain is fad, corporate finance itself is a useful skill for investment and analyzing company's finance. Just now, I learned that you could make two bonds with different risks and yields into one security which you can divide into senior tranches and junior tranches. It's very interesting.

Social: Negotiation. I am reading Chris Voss' book (Never Split The Difference). He has a class in MasterClass as well. Coursera has a couple of negotiation courses. In the past, I received the shorter end of the stick because I'm not good at negotiation. So I'll try to change that.

Happy acquiring skills!

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#225

Post by tnel77 »

chrissnell wrote: post #100

Some suggestions: - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Do this with every project and you will have a nice tool collection before you know it. - Learn to take pictures on a manual camera. You can do this with a modern automatic camera if it has a manual mode. Learn ab…

What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#226

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

bitexploder wrote: post #35

I will share one that has served me well for over 20 years: learn RDBMS and SQL. Learn normal forms, good schema design, and how to write complex queries. NoSQL adopters often avoided schemas like the plague and ended up with unmaintainable messes after a few years. I have seen more than a few NoSQL -> SQL conversions by now. Data is the most important thing in your app. Give it a great design. Plus databases like Po…

To expand on this, learn about some of the neat things you can do within a SELECT statement.

Learn how the JOIN syntax works[0], and how to use OUTER JOINs.

Learn about WINDOW[1] functions and what kind of problems they can solve. In particular, many reporting needs can probably be solved with WINDOW functions instead of tracking state as you loop through a result set in application code.

Learn about Common Table Expressions[2]. While these usually aren't necessary, they can make your queries a LOT more readable.

The thing about learning this type of stuff is that it doesn't matter what database you learn on, you can use it on virtually any SQL database (possibly requiring minor syntax changes).

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/tutorial-join.html and https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/queries-table-expressions...

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/tutorial-window.html

[2] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/queries-with.html

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#228

Post by rchaud »

tootie wrote: post #103
heinrichhartman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deadlift's are quite dangerous for the untrained. Start with "Fix Rounded Shoulders" and "Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt" if you have not already done so. Plenty of great advice on YouTube on those topics.

One of my favorite web 1.0 sites that's still kicking it old school: https://exrx.net/ Detailed workout guides and clear, simple visuals of proper form on hundreds of exercises.

Good to know it's still around. I remember going to this site a lot around 2009-10.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#229

Post by mattrp »

chrissnell wrote: post #100

Some suggestions: - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Do this with every project and you will have a nice tool collection before you know it. - Learn to take pictures on a manual camera. You can do this with a modern automatic camera if it has a manual mode. Learn ab…

> - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two.

Be careful... my wife gave me a drill one year and I’ve since renovated two houses and now have a small fortune in tools.

If you don’t have a garage, basement or backyard for it, your local community college might have a “maker lab” with all sorts of high end woodworking, metal working, laser cutters and 3D printers...along with meetups and evening classes to boot.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#230

Post by voidmain0001 »

gh0t1 wrote: post #70
Dumblydorr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of learning French, can anyone recommend which tool to use?

I would suggest using a French or Canadian person.

Agreed. My language learning skyrocketed once I forced myself to only converse in the language. Regrettably for that you need to have native language speakers available which was something I was able to avail myself of.
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