Ask HN: If you could teach a course, what would it be? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you could teach a course, what would it be?

8 pointsazhenley44 comments

If you could teach a course on any topic of your choosing, what would it be?

Building Mathematical Intuition. We live in a time of expanded access to computing tools which can be used to build intuition for various mathematical subtopics. Admittedly, 3B1B and similar channels do a great job of this already. My only addition would be to approach a set subject (e.g. Linear Algebra, Statistics, ...) using computational tools with an aim to demonstrate "how" the theorems work and "why" those are useful in real-life situations.

Sales & Marketing for Engineers I think knowing how to build a product/company is great, but being able to sell it and market it is just as important. I would teach it in a way tailored to engineers.

Can you point me towards any resources you highly recommend?

Honestly, I've always looked at YouTube videos and did some courses on marketing. I am not a marketer in any way, but I just try to find as many free resources as I can online to learn more about marketing.

I’ve always wanted to teach a course about IT topics that comp sci students tend to miss out on in university-level programs. Think “applied computing” stuff, like Linux administration, routing/switching, etc.

There is a course called "The missing semester" by MIT on YouTube.

Math. Not a die hard math fan but I think it can be beautiful and interesting. Saddens me to see soooo many people hate it.

Probably discrete math or introductory calculus.

Absolutely! I am not a mathematician but enjoyed Maths thoroughly during my school and college. Especially differential calculus and discrete maths during school, and probability & statistics during my college.

I've thought about putting something together on protocols and systems design for years now. I've found that the protocols-first approach to system design, analysis, construction, maintenance, and sustainment has worked really well for me, and is probably the most valuable tool I have as an engineer. I would love to see it formalized and taught.

How to hardened Linux and maintain a proper white lab, way past QubeOS, past Whonix, past SELinux, GRC …

- First step, ditch the systemd

- second step, replace the glibc

- third step …

- Profit!?

So basically just use Alpine?

Not sure if I understand the ditch systemd part, because more suid binaries lead to a bigger attack surface?

(Constructive) Mathematics from the group up using intuitionism, formal logic, Curry-Howard and Type theory.

Is there a book you'd recommend in this vein?

I don’t think there is a definitive book which represent exactly what I have in mind. It would depend a lot on your background. If you have a mathematical background with some formal logic, you could read the introduction to the Homotopy Type Theory Book, but it is aiming at something different. This video and accompanying paper could also help https://math.andrej.com/2016/10/10/five-stages-of-accepting-.... If you have no logic background, it would require a bit more.

What is your background and interest? I could perhaps help if you want to learn something like this

Building and flying custom FPV quadcopters. I think this would be a great way to teach young kids all kinds of interesting topics AND get them to go outside.

Perfect Dad Course! Would not mind signing up for a paid version.

I imagine this to be a real-life thing. In Germany, we have things called "Volkshochschule" (think: community college without any commitment, just booked by the course. It would be perfect for this kind of model, or just offering a few weeks crash course during the summer break.

Something about designing and building life simulations, if I was good enough at it to teach such a thing (I am not).

It would cover logical and reasoning fallacies. It would be like LessWrong and related websites.

I'd like to see a dojo for serious logic battles like the medieval scholastics used to engage in.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/obligationes/

You should make a logical fallacy trainer app -- it'd be a service to humanity.

Cool, you can find a lot of material on Skeptics sites

Stress-free software development.

Intrigued. Care to elaborate

Intrigued. Care to learn.

Random Access: Bring a question, and we'll find answers to it together.

At the moment I'd teach one on Node.js backend performance optimization.

I'd be interested in that! Any links you can recommend ?

Off the top of my head:

- Understand the event loop to avoid blocking

- Understand the JIT compiler to write compiler optimization-friendly code

- With Typescript: speed up build and dev times using the SWC compiler, understand which types take more compilation time

- Minimize heap allocations to avoid memory leaks: https://blog.appsignal.com/2022/09/28/minimize-heap-allocati...

- Write native modules when you need CPU intensive operations (the official doc is quite good: https://nodejs.org/api/addons.html)

- Take care of node_modules (e.g. https://mainmatter.com/blog/2022/09/29/pnpm/)

- With Docker: optimize docker image to only include what you need. E.g. use Alpine if you don't have any particular external dependencies

Thanks !

How to froth cappuccino milk. Once I am suitably good at it myself.

The Development Of Heresy: How Meta-Ideologies Shaped Our World.

Well, I do teach about software testing and quality

Mixture of programming and arts.

Something about open source.

Heard a programmer recently how open source programmers were being exploited by corpos that used their enthusiasm for the craft.

This is nothing new, 27 years ago the Apache web server came out and pretty soon there were lots of web hosting companies using it for free, some of those contributed back to make it better or hired Apache devs to improve it or set it up for them. The same happened with Linux, PHP, Debian and countless other pieces of software. The only difference now is that devs are complaining about it. At least these days with Patreon and other things, there are more ways for people to pay for development time. Check out the FOSSjobs site and wiki for more options.

https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

Learning how to learn.

Sextant navigation

How to wake up tired 90% of the time for Dummies.

Only 90%. Must be a beginner course.

Is this that common? xD

How to find a cannabis product you enjoy.

Are you talking different strains or ways of consuming it?

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