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Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#241

Post by pkolaczk »

The_rationalist wrote: post #11

Kotlin is my new favorite language. You should give it a try. Fighting syntax noise, clutter, boilerplate and redundant repetitive work is a big chunk of what define a modern language, and at this, Kotlin is probably the best. It will make you more productive AND happier. BTW using new languages that have relatively poor ecosystem (go, rust, swift, elixir) is a far riskier choice than people believe. Having a poor li…

> Kotlin ability to idiomaticaly reuse the multi billions of value JVM ecosystem make this language outclass all others "modern languages

This is simply a large overstatement. There are many other modern popular languages on JVM that have unrestricted access to the exactly same ecosystem. To name a few: Scala, Dotty, Clojure, Groovy, Ceylon, Jython, JRuby.

> Others are condemned to perpetually reinvent the wheel instead of making true progress.

This is a funny statement to make when promoting a language that basically took almost all of its features from Scala and a few minor things from the others. There is nothing original in Kotlin.

BTW: the ecosystem is not only libraries. It is also tooling. Kotlin is a single, proprietary IDE language. Quite limited compared to the other languages I listed.

As far as removing redundant repetitive code, while Kotlin may be slightly better than Java in this regard mostly due to a nicer syntax, it stands no chance compared to Clojure or Scala, which both allow extremely high level, abstract way of coding.

Having said that, Kotlin is a fun language to write in. If I needed to write an Android app, this would be my first choice.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#242

Post by jophde »

effthisis wrote: post #198

Quantum logic and programming. Given the demonstration of quantum supremacy, AWS expanding into QC with their Braket service, and MS releasing Q# in 10-20 years this will be one thing you will want to have learned. All of the silly JS frameworks can wait. The ML world gains massively due to underlying speed gains of QM. Security considerations will have to change drastically. Having a head start here is extremely val…

Sort of my plan. Working on math and then through an Algorithms book and an Algorithms Course from GaTech OMCS in the summer. Planning on interviewing in the fall. I have accepted the game.. After that Id like to use my new math skills to dive into QM/QC. TBH its the only thing that seems like “new tech”. I suppose web 3 is interesting haven’t had a chance to dive in.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#244

Post by nikofeyn »

simongray wrote: post #87
Random_ernest wrote: post #28

I know that this might be not a very popular opinion but I am learning Clojure in 2020. I work a lot with data and in my particular job the most important things are rapid prototyping, productivity and level of abstraction. After getting into the basics I find it to be the most intuitive and well designed language I came across. Last time I felt that I could do extremely complex things in hardly any time was when I l…

Clojure/ClojureScript is this satisfying combination of "boring" and stable, yet at the same time cutting edge. I think people need to get over their fear of the parens and start paying more attention to it. Having used Clojure exclusively in my professional life for the last 2 years, it saddens me that we don't see more converts from JS. It's such a great language for today's reactive frontend paradigm. Everyone in…

> I think people need to get over their fear of the parens and start paying more attention to it.

i have no problem with parentheses. it’s the JVM that gives me pause. i feel .NET and BEAM are the better choices these days with c#/f# and elixir/erlang/lfe, respectively.

i would love to use a lisp/scheme but just don’t feel comfortable with the JVM and how much of it comes through in clojure.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#245

Post by teunispeters »

rumanator wrote: post #157
theSealedTanker wrote: post #2

C Programming

Why C and not Rust? Not criticizing, just curious.

C is used in a lot of infrastructure - especially at lower levels (eg : server operations, routers, etc)

Rust isn't. Not to say that couldn't change, but there's just no active functioning infrastructure using it yet - or if it is, it's not very visible yet.

Mind, I code in C daily and rarely see anything else anymore, but I work in that infrastructure level of systems.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#246

Post by dnautics »

nickjj wrote: post #125
dnautics wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very backend (like, orchestrating customer vms) admin panel running in prod with liveview. the elixir backend replaced a flawed stateless django program and has been error-free since we kicked it over a few months ago. Mind you the scale isn't big (we have 10 or so customers at any given time) and will be hiring a junior to build a user facing liveview. I'm confident that elixir is footgun-proof enough to do…

Nice. Do you still feel that way even with the new features of LV being developed? It feels like how you use it is being heavily churned on with the introduction of Live Components and now people are also building custom unofficial abstractions on top of that. But at the same time, end user features don't seem to be being released that often. IMO it's starting to feel like Phoenix is becoming very fragmented even tho…

I dunno, I guess i'm too busy coding to be worried? I think the biggest thing to worry about as an elixir developer is C#/orleans, but it might be okay on account of who the hell wants to muck with C# when you can be in easy-mode FP land.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#248

Post by rumanator »

zinclozenge wrote: post #159
azangru wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No reason to act like this. Not the author of the parent comment; but with bristling replies like this, aren’t you dismissing the experience of those who, through years of experience, have become weary, and disillusioned, and a bit cynical? Isn't it also a valuable perspective (don't go for the new and shiny; stick with the tried and true), delivered in exactly the same way many older craftsmen have historically sh…

There are plenty of reasons to learn new languages and frameworks. Dismissing them because of 'new and shiny' is not a good reason.

> Dismissing them because of 'new and shiny' is not a good reason.

How about putting a pin on technologies that are unproven and immature? Because many projects (and careers) have died a painful death because an overeager developer decided to bet the farm on a shiny flavor of the month because it was trending.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#250

Post by shpx »

- Svelte, a compiled front end JavaScript framework https://svelte.dev/

- Nix, a functional package manager https://nixos.org/nix/ basically, to install stuff, instead of running `sudo apt install your_package` you edit `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix` and then regenerate your OS from the config stored in that file using `nixos-rebuild switch`. The benefit is that then you can take that file to a new computer with a new installation of NixOS and regenerate much of the state of your system just with that one file.

- QUIC and HTTP/3. I think you have to read the RFCs starting with HTTP/2 to understand it, but really I just mean that you should be aware of them. I think HTTP/3 should start to really exist some time this year and you should consider enabling it in nginx once it becomes available.

- Rust

- A dependently typed programming language like Idris https://www.idris-lang.org/ https://www.manning.com/books/type-driven-development-with-i... or Lean https://leanprover.github.io/tutorial/ or one of the older ones like Coq or Agda https://plfa.github.io/

- Python type hints and async

- Deno (JS runtime by the creator of Node.js) https://deno.land/

- zstd, a relatively new compression algorithm https://github.com/facebook/zstd https://quixdb.github.io/squash-benchmark/

- BLAKE2b, which is the new hashing function you should be using. It's faster than MD5 and cryptographically secure. https://blake2.net/

- Keras

- How to make VR applications (probably with Unity).

Not technologies:

- Homotopy Type theory https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/

- Zero Knowledge Proofs

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