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Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

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191–200 of 242 posts

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#191
post #186

I am trying to learn Erlang. The idea is to write a CRUD app which is a multi-user PWA app completely without framework. For front end, HTML, CSS and JS with reefjs for reactivity (these are are things I already know). The idea is to experiment and stress test with the idea of write once run forever to the max. See how far can I get. Any resource for Erlang will be much appreciated. Currently using exercism and Joe's…

Why not use something like cowboy?

I do intend to use cowboy. I guess I should have been more clear. There are definitely parts which I don't want to reinvent for obvious reasons.

But yeah. Product logic and security without using frameworks like Chicagoboos, Nova framework or Nitrogen is what I meant when I said no framework. Replacing any possible crypto parts or critical libraries like cowboy is not the intend.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#192

Relearning statistics with a Bayesian approach. My undergrad education was in social science research methods and I spent 4 years learning the strict frequentist approach of orthodox statistics. It made sense for highly-controlled experiments and simple dice games. But it broke down horribly when faced with any complexity and I never understood why. 25 years later, it's time to fill in the gaps. My reading list: - E.…

I find bayesrulesbook.com to be the best book on bayesian statistics, it's free online html version. Excellent examples, using stan.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#193

FreeCAD. And also reading the book on Modern Manufacturing Techniques by Groover. I work as a Software Engineer but somehow I haven't had the itch to write any personal software or work on side projects for some time now. Looking to expand my toolset and get my creative side going again in a new space.

Are you aware of python first libraries like build123d and cadquery? build123d has an improved API over cadquery, excellent docs and no dependency on conda. Best tool for modern parametric python CAD.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#194

Jazz Guitar, after spending years listening to jazz, decided to start down the path of learning to play it in my thirties. I already played some guitar, but over the past year, I've learned so many things about theory, chord construction, inversions, phrasing, time feel, and have been doing a concerted effort in improving my aural skills to lift other players' music by ear and transcribe their playing.

I could have written this myself.. Going through the exact same thing. Love me a 2-5-1. I wish you the best of luck in your music journey!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#196
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What resources are you using to learn calculus? I am on a similar boat

I'm taking a class at the local community college. It's OK, just some class notes and an e-textbook that I never bother to read. The pedagogy is much as I remember it, the teacher going through the problems on a whiteboard and expecting everyone to rote-memorize things. But mostly, I'm learning from ChatGPT. You can enter (or take a picture of) any problem and ask it to break it down step by step and it does that ver…

Pre-calc mathematics can be a bit boring because it consists mostly of a lot of technicalities that aren't themselves super interesting. A lot of those technicalities are connected in ways that unfortunately become only apparent in much higher-level maths. So I can understand that it's a bit of a pain, but I also think that it gets better afterwards (at least on the conceptual level).

I'm a bit skeptical about the use of ChatGPT because it can be very off about maths. If it's something it has seen exactly like this in its training materials, it will get it right (e.g. it will spit out the correct quadratic formula). But if you ask it to solve a specific problem that it hasn't seen before with those exact parameters, it might be bogus. It could still help, but proceed with caution. For example, there's one part where you ask it why it multiplied by 4. Your question is wrong, because it multiplied by -4, but ChatGPT, always eager to please, doesn't correct you on that, instead it says: "Multiplying by 4 is equivalent to dividing by −0.25 because 1/-0.25 = -4" - which is self-contradictory.

There are also other services you could use for this, such as symbolab (which is rule-based), but I think it needs a subscription to see all the steps.

I would recommend actually reading the textbook. Or, if it's a boring textbook, try out other textbooks. People find different kinds of explanations intuitive / different styles of exposition engaging, so you can experiment. I think it would make it easier for you to retain the material because you would learn some of the why.

In mathematics, it's often a better strategy to understand something and be able to know what it's true, than to just memorise the result.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#200

Deeper studying of hardware and software that drives deep learning for the simple reason that I find Python a horrible experience and I am wondering why there are no real alternatives in modern deep learning. Also home DYI, forest building and Portuguese.

I'd love to know why you "find Python a horrible experience"? It's the complete opposite to what I know and others know.

It’s very personal and I don’t need anyone to agree with it. I have 20+ years of Python programming behind me and while I like coding, I really don’t like Python or the Python dev experience. I guess I want to find out if the grass is greener or not at all.
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