What single piece of advice would you give a non-programmer who wants to get better at using technology?
Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#2Mine is: Don't waste time finding the "best" program for a particular task. Rather, find one that exposes keybindings for every action in the program, and then commit those bindings to muscle memory. This applies to:
- design tools (Photoshop, Figma)
- media-editing programs (GarageBand, whatever is used for video-editing these days)
- unexpected places (e.g. Trello)
The mouse has only 3-6 degrees of freedom to interact with. Only two digits on one hand operate a mouse. A keyboard has 50+ degrees of freedom, with all ten fingers available for usage.
Anecdotally, companies that design software that can be exclusively used by a keyboard tend to think more highly of their customers.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#3Mine is: Don't waste time finding the "best" program for a particular task. Rather, find one that exposes keybindings for every action in the program, and then commit those bindings to muscle memory. This applies to: - design tools (Photoshop, Figma) - media-editing programs (GarageBand, whatever is used for video-editing these days) - unexpected places (e.g. Trello) The mouse has only 3-6 degrees of freedom to inter…
As long as you're optimizing, consider a mouse with a lot of buttons. Lets you use a mouse while at the same time having access to a bunch of keybindings.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#4You can Google for just about anything these days. Or ChatGPT if you're into that. a lot of the time as a person who's known to be good at computer stuff to my friends, I have no idea and just Google their questions, and seem smart.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#5Depends on their goal and inclination. But perhaps this: Learning the basics of the Unix shell can be very useful when wrangling text and data, or for operating on lots of files in a batch.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#6Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#7Learn how to write in a clear and concise way that is coherent and can be understood by other people.
Learn how to write to different audiences. You communicate differently with programmers than you would executives.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#8Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.
Agree that Excel is a great tool and can lead to more advanced skills, but what would "functional programming environment" mean to a non-programmer?
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#9Invest time into learning to get the most out of your (software) tools: keyboard shortcuts, text styles, automation.
It will pay off very quickly.
Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?
#10Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.
Agree that Excel is a great tool and can lead to more advanced skills, but what would "functional programming environment" mean to a non-programmer?
A programming environment that functions, I guess.