Show HN: Learn anything by creating something everyday | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Learn anything by creating something everyday

internetvin.com

232 pointsinternetvin41 comments

Some background on how and why I started this.

I was going through a very difficult time in my life. My father in law passed away suddenly two days before my son and first child were born. Things were very emotional and stressful. I couldn't find any clarity. I didn't have any time for myself to figure it all out.

One day, while sitting alone in my friends startup office I heard the song Naked Life by Oko Ebombo. I am not sure why it was this song or if it could have been another song. Maybe I was depressed enough. But this song made me want to make music. I messaged some friends with a link to the track and asked, "how do you make this?" Most of them responded with things like, take singing lessons, get guitar lessons and so on. None of this was an option for me. I had to be back in my apartment to help my wife in an hour.

So I downloaded GarageBand for iOS, made a track and uploaded it to SoundCloud. Once that happened, I started to feel better. Prior to that moment I had never made any music in my life. The next day I did the same thing and I just didn't stop.

I wrote about this process on Twitter in a thread titled, "What I learned making some kind of music for 365 consecutive days:"

https://twitter.com/internetVin/status/1019033516028280832

I am following the same process now to teach myself how to code. I never want to stop doing this.

I too did this except 1 month at a time.

I use to produce music or 'jams' once a day for a month or so. I also did 3D quite a bit and produced 1 spaceship concept a day as part of "#shiptember"

It's a really fun way to learn to do something and inevitably become REALLY fast at it and produce incredible work that you'd never thought possible to start with. You know the software/hardware so good that by the end of it, it's effortless.

The king of this is of course `beeple`.

The point is: create, every day. It's under many forms and disciplines but usually it's under the umbrella of "progress before perfection" and "#everyday".

This has absolutely been my experience. The artist Beeple is an excellent example of this and someone who inspired me a lot. Your work sounds really cool

If you enjoy jam sessions and would like to do this online, try with DFM [1]. I don't know if they still do it to this day, but back in the very early '00s I listened to their jam sessions weekly.

Doing it IRL has its + and -

[1] http://dfm.nu

This sounds a lot like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which focuses on writing (regardless of quality) a certain number of words each day.

I try and do this but end up usually just working through tutorials each day rather than making something. I suppose its a balance. I've been thinking of making little tutorial videos of me making little dinky web apps, I probably just need to put the tutorials on hold and start making.

As someone who's also learning how to make music with Logic Pro X because I listened to songs that I wanted to create myself, I can understand you. Your story is absolutely inspiring.

Mastering a skill in solitary is said to be a key aspect of individuation. The amount of personal development I've experienced in the last 2 years is all due to the desire to be able to do something e.g. making music, understanding people and the world, learning to lead others and build a small company, learning how to comfort people in bad times, learning the meaning of real connection with other people and so many more. We should all embrace those wishes we have and these goals we'd like to achieve and support ourselves. I think this is a very life-affirming and supportive view that can change the people in a profound way.

P.S.: I'm also a fan of beeple. He is very inspirational for me in his regularity, something I'm still struggling with.

P.P.S.: The tool looks amazing. For just 6 months of experience, this is a great thing to achieve. Connecting with the Slack API and building something that looks good (also on mobile) isn't easy. You're doing great!

This is beautiful. It's surreal to read something so aligned with my own experiences on life and the world around me. Unreal

Wow. I've really shed a tear. I've signed up, looking forward to talk with you about your experiences and wishes.

Weird suggestions provided there's no guitar in the song (only bass), and he's not exactly "singing" in the sense usually attributed to the word.

Those are two of the suggestions I received in that moment. I didn’t think they were weird, I just thought they were things that I couldn’t do. Not knowing what to do or feeling like there was nothing I could do was my general state at that time.

It’s so cool to me that you listened to the track

I cannot say just how much this resonates with me.

I've had similar experiences in the past of successful "learning binge" by making something daily, but never for a sustained period of more than a month.

Desire having considered doing it all again in public, posting my progress on GitHub maybe, I am now weirdly hesitant to even apply for this free service which enables me to do just that!

I think it's the fear of commitment. May be soon but not today.

But congratulations on successfully rolling out the first version of this awesome tool. All the best for iterations!

thank you so much. I find when I feel fear like that it's because the thing I'm about to try might actually work.

> I feel fear like that it's because the thing I'm about to try might actually work.

Exactly, this is incredible, because deep down you know this, and yet the fear is real.

This goes on my list of "things I want to have in my new world religion if I ever get around to creating one".

Absolutely unreal

We took "Show HN" off the title because requiring an invite makes it more like a sign-up page than something people are able to try out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

I will give everyone who signs up a chance to try it out to hold up on the promise. I'll do this within 5 days of them signing up. Everything about this is just trying to be useful to people

Also here are links to profiles if that helps retain the "Show HN" status so people here can play with elements of this. I've worked really hard to get to a point where I have a working tool that people can use. It required teaching myself how to code to realize it. On Jan 01 2019, I had never written a line of code. I'm a huge fan of Hacker News and would appreciate the Show HN categorization.

https://hfo.futureland.tv/internetvin

https://hfo.futureland.tv/saph

https://hfo.futureland.tv/ruaa

https://hfo.futureland.tv/gabrieloc

https://hfo.futureland.tv/katherine

Ok, we'll make an exception for you.

Please don't ask friends to upvote your HN posts, though. It's against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), HN users tend to see through it, and we ban accounts and sites that do it. Also, it's mostly pointless, because most such votes are rejected by the software.

OK - this kind of approach is what makes HN so cool. It's something I really appreciate as a reader. It's great that you have software that can do that.

fwiw the premise of asking any friends to support this was essentially, "hey I finally had the courage to post that thing we've been iMessaging about everyday and that you are a user of and finding value in on Hacker News."

I basically use my Mac to make things and visit this website.

Just wanted to say it's very cool your 365-nd output is the futureland-alpha landing page.

Not at 365 with code yet! Today is day 170. I think it’s very cool that you took the time to check this stuff out and write your thoughts. Thank you so much

Wow, there is some really cool stuff in there. Love how you can immediately see the improvement over time by scrolling through them in some of them. I can't commit to doing something every day right now with uni and work. I've tried it in the past and failed. But I would love to try this in the future.

Whenever you're ready. Many existing users in Futureland are students in Uni. I encourage you to try and figure out why you failed in the past. I'm always around to help in any way I can.

I like this. I feel like I would want to participate in the community, but not necessarily as an everyday creator.

While I do enjoy creating things myself, I also like providing support and mentoring where I can. Are there ways for creators to easily share their work from the Futureland system with the wider internet community? Are you considering "mentor" or "support" participants who do not create, but provide knowledge and encouragement to creators?

Not that you need to support such things. These are just a couple thoughts I had while browsing the link and the other comments here.

These are very interesting perspectives and notes.

1. "Are there ways for creators to easily share their work from the Futureland system with the wider Internet community?"

This is something I have been thinking about a lot. I wonder about the role of seeking attention while learning something new. I wonder a lot about how seeking attention affects what we end up making. Or what we end up not trying. I want to do whatever is best for users. I could be wrong but I'm not sure if it is as straight forward as adding the ability to publish to Twitter, Instagram and so on.

A long way of saying: I don't have clear answers on this yet and I think it requires deeper thinking and experimentation.

2. "Are you considering "mentor" or "support" participants who do not create, but provide knowledge and encouragement to creators?"

This is a powerful question. Some form of mentorship might be incredibly important. In my own life, there have been many times when someone I met on the Internet has said something to me that really transformed how I see the world or my work.

A question that comes to mind is, "how do you enable true and capable mentors to have more impact?" and "how do you avoid being lead by pretend ones?"

I really like the idea and the execution. The only thing I am against is Slack. I don't wish to Slack.

Can you add additional channels like Telegram maybe? WIP[1] uses telegram bot to do something similar to what you are aiming at.

[1]: https://wip.chat/

I agree with your thoughts on Slack completely. Building on Slack was a decision I needed to make to realize the Alpha of this concept. I selected Slack because of the wide ranging types of people that already use it. I’m hoping Futureland can be a collision of many different creative disciplines. I live in Toronto and the density of telegram users here is low. At least in my life experience.

Over time if Futureland continues to be useful to others, I hope it can exist and provide value entirely on its own.

In this case I should also give credit and thanks to Slack. If it wasn’t for their existing software I wouldn’t have been able to get to this point.

Reminds me of Jennifer Dewalt and her "180 webpages in 180 days" project she did to learn programming.

https://jenniferdewalt.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155

(I'm usually bad with names, but I remember her name to this day. It was a really good way to make an impression!)

Yes, I have come across her project and her story - it's amazing. Thank you for sharing.

It is OK to share "mediocre work", actually this is encouraged as it begins to change your psychological relationship with your work. Making mediocre things is a very important part of learning anything new.

Wow that's pretty good advice actually...

To give some insight as a user, It's a solid resource / program. Being centralized through slack is a great use for a community driven network. Just eliminates the feeling like you're going it alone. Speaking personally, the HFO program is helping get out of a creative drought. There's definitely something to this

This is dope. Its like healthier instagram!

I would totally use it. (I'm such an instagram haters)

I have 1 suggestion, If you're planning to rework the UI/UX, don't go way off than current theme too much. I love the older webs vibe. As bonus point it could keep idiots away and maintain quality content.

I am very open to whatever will make this useful to others. I would love to hear your suggestions. Feel free to share them here if it makes sense or if you want to message me directly, @internetVin on Twitter.

Good idea. I can see the potential this can have for motivation... often enough you (I) just need a tiny nudge to push you over the edge and just do it. This sounds like it could do just that.

Tiny offtopic nitpick: In the title and on the page you write "everyday". Written as one word, it means "ordniary". What you probably want is "every day", which means "each day".

Appreciate you taking the time to write about this. Noted your feedback. It’s great thank you.

Interesting.

Request access page needs UX work.

It leaves the prompt text in the field when you click on it. No indication of issue / feedback at all when you click submit.

Ty. Added feedback on submission.

I'll improve the rest of the UX now as well.

<rant> Kind of tough learning new things in blue collar software shops. Not impossible but really, really tough.

Dope idea using Slack as the central UI!

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