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

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#301

Post by barcoder » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

programmarchy wrote: post #97

barcoder wrote: post #20

How to make beautiful 3D characters and scenes. I started with Blender and now I'm learning Substance for painting the models because the work flow is creativity focused. The possibilities are truly amazing with today's tools. Working in 3D has opened my eyes to new possibilities. I believe that having skills in 3D will become very important over the next five years with adoption of mixed reality hardware.

Totally agree. I'm working on a mixed reality app and have started learning Blender as well to set up asset pipelines and toolchains, so being sucked into the 3D modeling world also. I've been surprised to find a ton of overlap between 3D modeling and ML-based tools to assist in the process. Would love to trade notes if you're available to chat sometime.

I'm really interested to hear about your process using ML tools and Blender. Nvidia Canvas is one I plan to test this week.

My current work flow is very hands on because I'm creating characters for a game and want an oil painted texture look. I'd like to find a way to copy the style from one character to the next.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#302

Post by qq4 » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

xfer wrote: post #242

qq4 wrote: post #140

I've been learning Haskell for a few months now. I really like it and am looking to write a small compiler in it. Anyone have any pointers? I'm also smoking ribs for the first time today, that should be a fun learning experience.

You can do these small set of languages to get some idea: http://plzoo.andrej.com/ .

Thanks, these look great!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#303

Post by softwaredoug » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

Kayaking

I used to be afraid of the water - especially natural bodies of water. This comes from learning to swim late due to tubes in my ears. So rivers carry a lot of mystique for me. I got into class 2-3 whitewater kayaking as a teenager, gained confidence in rivers, then did a bit more after college.

Recently, in my 40s, I realized “it’s ok to have interests your partner/family doesn’t”. Somehow this was a eureka for me to find more hobbies away from coding. So for me kayaking has been a part of that and my family has been supportive. Hopefully I'll find a local group that shares my interest at my beginner skill level :)

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#304

Post by natmaka » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

jamestimmins wrote: post #281

natmaka wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I learn Muay-Thai (Thai boxing), and this is incredibly useful, mainly because I have to (try to) switch from my usual "thinking for hours/days/months to a problem" mode into "flowing, neglecting analysis/systemics/... and letting whatever is left take control and act/react RIGHT NOW".

Do you worry at all about taking kicks to the head or it damaging your body long term?

This is really a problem in the professional world, and at a lesser extent in some high-end amateur setups, mainly when some competitors want to become pros or if there is some animosity between gyms/people.

They cut weight, have good technique and power, and the stakes sometimes are very high. This is dangerous.

Cutting weight reduces the amount of water in the body => the brain bounces on the skull at a greater speed => more kinetic energy => major risk (hemorrhage...).

Many sports are much more dangerous than commonly thought. Each and every friend who practiced judo or BJJ developed serious joints problems, or even major hips-related ordeals. Comparing football and MMA leads to surprising observations: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2830774-football-vs-mma-...

My take: do not compete (and do not aim at becoming a professional!), avoid any gym where hard sparring is mandatory, or where the trainers don't closely monitor the sparring sessions or don't immediately break anything getting out-of-hands. There is some residual risk, but IMHO probably no higher than walking down the streets, and the gains are worth it.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#305

Post by vfinn » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

Jaxtek wrote: post #298

vfinn wrote: post #217

DevOps/GitOps. Need to build a stack consisting of Kubernetes (zero downtime, volumes), Docker for images, Django Rest Framework (backend), Nginx (reverse proxy for static files), Uwsgi (for Nginx-Django coordination), Next.js (front), Postgresql (db), Flux (for syncing with private docker registry images using maybe semver and for github repository polling), Ansible (for agentless initial configuration for test/qa/p…

Your stack looks similar to this ( https://panelbear.com/blog/tech-stack/ ) This might help

Thanks for the link. The summary seems to have a couple of tools I'm not familiar with.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#306

Post by becausecurious » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

How to bootstrap side projects.

I have a strong hypothesis that working on my side projects full time would make me happier. These days I focus on noticing my own problems and exploring whether others have them too.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#307

Post by firedating » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

React.

I've been developing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27627381 using Django and its templates for UI. This became unmanageable fast. These days there are wonderful volunteers, who help me. We've chosen React for the UI and I learn it to be able to contribute to and maintain the new UI.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#308

Post by exdsq » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 8:17 AM UTC

ducharmdev wrote: post #261

exdsq wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a 3-year degree in the UK but you can take up to 16 years to complete it paying per module. It is very well respected compared to your normal 'online degrees' though!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#309

Post by kssm » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 8:48 AM UTC

Learning Terraform, Packer, Vault, Ansible to deploy docker containers on ec2. The project uses Laravel Jetstream for UI. Rails to manage some scrapers. And Go for some http routes to return proxies and ips of selenium instances.

After that getting Grafana, Prometheus and Influxdb going.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#310

Post by Leherenn » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

mbrameld wrote: post #264

simonswords82 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or the instructor requested IFR from the ATC when they encountered bad conditions (IMC).

But I'm not sure why you are downvoted, you are right, being IFR qualified does not mean you can switch at will between VFR/IFR. You need to file a flight plan with ATC first in any case.