Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 704 posts

Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#1

Post by spcebar »

I've worked on large products for large and small companies and written tens of thousands of lines of code across my career, solving complex, abstract, challenging technical problems in a variety of languages on a variety of platforms, sometimes under difficult conditions. I have often been a resource for my friends and co-workers when they have programming or technical questions.

I only recently learned how to correctly raise and lower window blinds--I had been doing it wrong my entire life. It was maybe the dumbest I have ever felt, and was a humbling reminder of how much I don't know about how much I don't know.

Have you had similar experiences?

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#2

Post by h2odragon »

I took a mauser .25 pocket pistol apart.

one of these: https://sportsmansvintagepress.com/read-free/mauser-rifles-p...

Eventually got it together again, but it required assistance from my uncle who had given it to me. He laughed long and hard when i described the predicament, then said "yup, that one got me too". He also rebuilt Mercedes diesels as a hobby, so he was full of entertaining critiques of German engineering.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#4

Post by spcebar »

huesatbri wrote: post #3

What did you do wrong and why was it dumb? What’s the correct way?

If you pull a blind cord to the right it stays up, if you pull it to the left it comes down. My whole life I've just been jiggling and tugging the cord to get it to stay or come down.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#5

Post by pavel_lishin »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

I took a mauser .25 pocket pistol apart. one of these: https://sportsmansvintagepress.com/read-free/mauser-rifles-p... Eventually got it together again, but it required assistance from my uncle who had given it to me. He laughed long and hard when i described the predicament, then said "yup, that one got me too". He also rebuilt Mercedes diesels as a hobby, so he was full of entertaining critiques of German engineeri…

What was the difficulty in re-assembling it?

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#8

Post by king_phil »

spcebar wrote: post #4
huesatbri wrote: post #3

What did you do wrong and why was it dumb? What’s the correct way?

If you pull a blind cord to the right it stays up, if you pull it to the left it comes down. My whole life I've just been jiggling and tugging the cord to get it to stay or come down.

Definitely not in the German speaking countries, we have different blinds. You pull a cord down for the blinds to go up, and vice versa. Then the cord is tied to a hook or button.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#10

Post by stevesearer »

I learned way into my adult life that I could just turn the swivel hook/latch to quickly unwind the cord on a vacuum cleaner.

Before that moment I would manually unwind the cord just like I would wind it up. To make it worse, I even remember wondering why the swivel hook was there thinking it was poor design.

Post reply on HN