Just take those ADHD meds ;)
Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
61–70 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#62THat's easy. By definition "enough" is context dependent.
If I see that for a given question/problem/project/goal I know _enough_ - then it's enough.
So the best constraint and source of focus is the ultimate goal you have in mind when you start going into some topic.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#63It helps to know about a few key details:
Gravity
Halting problem
Travelling salesman & NP-hard
CRUD
Gödel's incompleteness theorem
Kolmogorov complexity
Series by Richard C. Waters
Simple finite groups
Projective geometry and octonions and complex numbers
Soldering electronics
Transistors, resistors, capacitors, coils, and diodes
Linear Algebra
Statistical Calculus (step functions and Ito integration)
Exponential function
Gamma function
Table saws
Screws vs nails
You want a nice little ball of knowledge with a comparatively large surface that you can attach stuff to. And then you also know what kind of expert to get.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grounding with a real scenario: You're doing your taxes. At what point do you hand off to a tax expert? OP's asking a tough question. At some point, it's impractical to try to be great at everything.
I never hand my taxes off to a tax expert. If I run into a problem where I can't interpret the tax code myself, I'll schedule an hour appointment with a tax expert to get the answer to that specific question. If their answer sounds too good to be true, I'll schedule some appointments with other experts and take the most pessimistic answer. Ultimately, it's my responsibility that my taxes are correct, so I need to und…
>where I can't interpret the tax code myself
That still leaves you making the crucial decision of when to roll in the expert with a layman's knowledge base & judgement.
Conceptually "I'll know when I don't know" is a very weak approach, especially on things like tax where the gotchas can be arbitrary & non-intuitive.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grounding with a real scenario: You're doing your taxes. At what point do you hand off to a tax expert? OP's asking a tough question. At some point, it's impractical to try to be great at everything.
I never hand my taxes off to a tax expert. If I run into a problem where I can't interpret the tax code myself, I'll schedule an hour appointment with a tax expert to get the answer to that specific question. If their answer sounds too good to be true, I'll schedule some appointments with other experts and take the most pessimistic answer. Ultimately, it's my responsibility that my taxes are correct, so I need to und…
As a generalist myself, I have decided not to require myself to become an expert in some tax issues, and so as a corollary decided not to complicate my finances with things that could invoke those issues.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#66Can I use this now/today for something immediate? Do I otherwise think it's cool enough to play with taking time away from other activities?
That's most of it... I tend to read tech articles, documentation, etc pretty voraciously. I'm okay-ish at remembering names, or at least enough to remember what to look for if I need something and read about a good fit a few years ago. So I tend to continue to take in what I can, staying somewhat shallow outside of what's in front of me, or otherwise has my interest.
Right now, my secondary interests are around rust and adapting legacy tech (BBS Doors, Telnet, etc), so if I look into something more, that's where I'm more inclined to do it. I'm also a bit lazy.
I'll dig fairly deep in terms of what's in front of me. I'm actively working on a green C# backend so I've brought in FastEndpoints (new to me, but similar to other tech I've used) while also relying heavily on Dapper and MS-SQL Server and Grate for migrations. The use of C# and SQL Server are outside my control, as is deploying to Windows. That said, having some awareness of the ecosystem over the years lets me be able to bring in newer options that fit well over time.
By contrast, if I were working in a JS target (Node, Cloudflare, etc) I'd probably be leaning heavily into Hono+Zod+OpenAPI libraries. Again, relatively current in that space.
In the end, I just try to have awareness of what is shaping up in the communities and trying not to dive into anything I can't make use of now.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#67I stop when I find a solution to the problem. Most of the time the learning happens along the way, not necessarily in the solution itself but all the things you try and iterate on your journey to the solution. Everything changes in tech by the minute ... but also nothing changes. For web applications it has been HTML, CSS and JS for nearly 30 years. XMLHttpRequest/AJAX came out 25+ years ago. There have been many imp…
> I stop when I find a solution to the problem That. I’ve embraced that I cannot direct which topic my self-directed learning will take up and sustain (almost none of which ends up going toward tech stuff, aside from a span of some years in my teens and early 20s—and all of that was motivated by wanting to accomplish specific things with computers) and rely on assignments to motivate me for career-relevant learning.…
That's funny, I often love learning for the sake of.. experimenting, building things. I just recognize that I cannot do it all and prioritize immediate needs first.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#68“I know enough to do the thing,” is fine.
“I know enough about X,” is willful ignorance. But “I have reached the limit of my interest in X for now,” is subtly different and healthy because interests come and go.
But, you can’t keep up and feeling like you ever kept up is an illusion of youth. So my advice:
If you have to pick something to learn (because you do not know useful things to learn) consider things that have been around a while like Linux and JavaScript and C++ and RDBMS etc. because they probably aren’t going to stop being relevant. Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#69[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
#70I stop when I find a solution to the problem. Most of the time the learning happens along the way, not necessarily in the solution itself but all the things you try and iterate on your journey to the solution. Everything changes in tech by the minute ... but also nothing changes. For web applications it has been HTML, CSS and JS for nearly 30 years. XMLHttpRequest/AJAX came out 25+ years ago. There have been many imp…
I do a lot of repairs on electronics. I stop when I understand enough of the theory of operation to get things fixed. I've worked on everything from industrial control like 480 volt 3 phase SCR packs to Cesium beam atomic clocks.
If it was interesting, I'll dive in to learn more in case I encounter something similar in the future.