Ask HN: What Are You Learning? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#261

Post by ducharmdev » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #227

ducharmdev wrote: post #222

- F# : I've learned basic concepts of functional programming through JavaScript/typescript, but have wanted to learn a more functional language. I do C# for work, so F# seems like a logical next step. - Databases : in the past I feel that I've learned too heavily on ORMs, so lately I've been trying to learn how databases actually work. Things like how to interpret execution plans, the data structures used for indexes…

Math: if you're self taught, have you heard or looked at Open Universities maths degree? It's well regarded for an online course and around £18k for the entire thing. I know a DPhil at Oxford who came from that course.

I've not heard of that, is this a 4-yr degree? I'm on the fence about going back to school for something like this, as it would just be for personal growth (and I already spent 4 yrs in university, albeit other fields). Math seems difficult to self-teach compared to software dev though.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#262

Post by jvanderbot » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

incanus77 wrote: post #76

I’ve been playing with bare metal Raspberry Pi programming and really enjoying it. There are two great frameworks — Circle and Ultibo. The former is in C++, but the latter is in… Free Pascal. Which is kinda weird but kinda fun. Having a Pi boot up and run your application in 2-3 seconds is pretty stunning.

Aside: I'll never understand why C++ immediately implies everything needs to be classes. In fact, deep class hierarchies that I've seen in other projects muddle the design and confuse extensibility.

I much prefer a C++ lite, with stl library, interfaces instead of classes, and c++ syntax sugar + procedural programming, please.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#263

Post by DreamScatter » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #142

dorchadas wrote: post #127

Currently working on textbooks in: Topological Manifolds (Lee: Topological Manifolds) Abstract Algebra (Dummit and Foote) Geometric Algebra (Doran: Geometric Algebra for Physicists) Differential Geometry (Fecko: Differential Geometry and Lie Groups for Physicists) Though I'm less invested in these last two currently, as the diff geo's a prep for the masters I'll be doing and the other is something I'd really like to…

Are you aware of bivector.net, a new Geometric Algebra community? Join the discord https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk .

I've been on the bivector discord since the beginning (aka chakravala), you can find my geometric algebra library Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#264

Post by mbrameld » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

simonswords82 wrote: post #235

mbrameld wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like you flew VFR into IMC with an instructor. Is that what really happened? If so, I would suggest a different instructor!

Not at all, he's an excellent instructor (and trust me I've met a few bad ones!) The chain of events were we were circa 2000ft VFR. Instructor took control to climb in to cloud to get on top of it. Got in, instructor realised we were not going to be able to get on top of it and so IFR'd us back to the aerodrome with an ILS landing just for show.

Maybe it's a terminology issue. VFR means visual flight rules where you just remain clear of clouds (unless things are radically different where you are). Were you on an IFR flight plan the whole time but in VMC (visual meteorological conditions) until you entered the clouds?

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#265

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

I'm working on a website for my honey business using Angular 8. I know it would be much faster and easier to something like Wordpress, but I want to build a basic competency with a relevant frontend language. I mostly work in Python and Java, but our team doesn't have any frontend members and we might end up with this type of work in the future (ie becoming a mentor would be my ticket to finally getting promoted to senior dev... if I don't get a low rating this year, which I was told I likely would).

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#266

Post by dgs_sgd » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #260

dgs_sgd wrote: post #246

Spanish. It's been the focus of most of my free time for the last 1.5 years and I've seen incredible results. I'm surprised by those who commented that they're learning multiple unrelated subjects at once. Are you learning anything beyond a superficial level? Or is the goal to pique your curiosity on a new subject and then decide if you want to make it your core focus?

I'm one of those doing multiple unrelated subjects at once. For me, it's because I have the time. I'm a teacher, and we're out for summer, so I've got time to focus on several different things. I can do an hour or so of math a day, alternating the various books I'm going through, and give myself an hour of Irish immersion a day (mostly reading) as I'm already at a comfortable B2+ (officially tested) so it's just a ma…

Thanks for the response and congrats on being B2 certified in Irish! I'm taking the B2 exam for Spanish this fall :).

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#267

Post by superkitty » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

leetcode(eat/drink/sleep) and system design, ML Infra

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#268

Post by dorchadas » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

dgs_sgd wrote: post #266

dorchadas wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those doing multiple unrelated subjects at once. For me, it's because I have the time. I'm a teacher, and we're out for summer, so I've got time to focus on several different things. I can do an hour or so of math a day, alternating the various books I'm going through, and give myself an hour of Irish immersion a day (mostly reading) as I'm already at a comfortable B2+ (officially tested) so it's just a ma…

Thanks for the response and congrats on being B2 certified in Irish! I'm taking the B2 exam for Spanish this fall :).

Gracias. ¡Buena suerte!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#269

Post by wenc » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

* I've been studying Brazilian Portuguese for a couple of years. It's the first Romance language that I've studied in depth (I took French in high school but never progressed very far). I've become fascinated by Romance language grammars, and Portuguese has grammar in spades, e.g. tons of conjugations like the future subjunctive, personal infinitive, imperfect, etc. The great thing is that once you've studied one Romance language, you almost always get an automatic headstart in another. (except for outliers like Romanian). For example, through my study of Portuguese I've found that I automatically gotten (written) Spanish for free. I can now read simple Spanish texts even though I've never studied the language (though I still have to beware of false cognates; also, more complex articles like those in El País still stump me.)

* The other thing I've been investigating is meta-learning techniques for predictive modeling, like ensembling, stacking and boosting (the kinds of techniques used in ML competitions) -- basically ways to combine statistical models to extract more signal without overfitting. At some point individual statistical models are limited in their ability to extract signal from data (even though the signals are there) -- and neural networks are a step too far because of the data volume requirements -- so learning how to combine multiple models is the way to go. None of this stuff is new and I'm a few years late to the game but better late than never.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#270

Post by np32 » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

aeoleonn wrote: post #245

randcraw wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Another book you'll want to check out is Richard Szeliski's free draft of "Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications", second edition, https://szeliski.org/Book/

This looks choice! Seriously-- looks like just the guide I need. Plus the author is a professor of the topic material. I am super grateful to you for making me aware of this resource. Thanks for recommending it! Just this week I started a sabbatical devoted to putting together a computer vision + ML project. So this will be useful. Adding it to my learning journal.

If you are interested in more maths and 3D Geometry, the bible of the field is "Multiple view geometry in computer vision" by Hartley and Zisserman. Szielski's book is very hands on, but is it more of a formulas + litterature review book than a clean derivation book.

A lot of 3D Geometry algorithms are based on clean derivations and estimations, thus depending on your math fluency, you will find great enjoyment in that book too. The proofs flow really well.