Ask HN: What would you learn if you would have three to six months free time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would you learn if you would have three to six months free time?

23 pointsmoitessier31 comments

Imagine that you are on paid vacation for the next 3-6 months. What would you learn?

From my past 5 military deployments it’s not what I would learn. It’s what I would write. On my last deployment I created a new way to perform test automation in the browser that is dramatically faster and more simple than the big tools. I also refined a tiered security model for decentralization. On the deployment prior to that one I made some refinements to my diff application and created a data model for stacked language representation (a uniform less powerful but more scalable alternative to abstract syntax trees)

Thank you for your service. Out of curiosity, are you doing software stuff in the military or is this just a side hobby? If the former, I'm curious to learn about what kind of work you do. If the latter, why did you not go full time into software?

I am a signal officer. I have performed a different job on every deployment. The military is largely allergic to writing software so all the software I write are just side hustles on GitHub. I am part time military and full time software developer in the corporate world.

Go to Japan and take an intensive japanese course. Yamasa Institute in Okazaki is a great school.

Why do you specify that one in particular? There are so many there. Don’t know how to separate good from the bad.

For culture and not for business learning Japanese at Nara makes more sense but I suppose you need relationships in Society to get connected. Japan being a part of the dishonest decadent West has a fair share of charlatan.

It's hard to justify spending lots of time learning fundamentals while working on real projects. The kinds of things taught in college.

So, assuming one is a programmer, whatever one's weakest areas are: math, algorithms, assembly, operating systems (Linux), networking, distributed systems, electronics, machine learning, etc.

Or if one is already really solid in all fundamentals, and lacking more practical expertise, then a modern popular programming language like TS/JS, Go, Rust.

Or if you just want to learn for fun, I'd read recommend reading a lot of biographies of historical figures. And/or learning a foreign language.

And of course, learning how to cook your own food, exercise your body, and sleep well are probably more important than anything else you could possibly do for yourself.

Algebra, the real one, with groups and rings and so forth

Is this out of curiosity or it has practical benefit for you? I practical benefit then which?

If your problem has an algebraic structure, you can rewrite your code in many more ways than you could if it didn't.

For instance, associative (not even necessarily commutative) problems do not have to be processed as given, but can be chopped up into hardware-size chunks, each of which is treated in a "flat" manner (ie. suitable for mapping to a warp or loop).

Rings lead to generalisations of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horner%27s_method , etc.

Curiosity. A whole lot of other math seems to hinge on these notions.

Abstract algebra has a strong crossover into type theory, it you think of types as sets. Maybe not strictly useful while bashing out python code but it's nice to have an elegant mental model

I would prepare for a long distance trail or triathlon like a pro - with proper rest etc - you could learn a lot about yourself and your body.

Spending holidays entirely studying security stuffs to sharpen my skills, so a lot more of that. Kernel mode exploitation, mobile forensics and exploitation (beyond msf+social engineering). If i have more time learn ada, erlang and ocaml and then write offensive tools for the sake of it (and to evade detection). Too much shit on my list.

Vulnerability analysis and subsequent exploitation development. I would obviously need way more time than that to be good at it but I've always found the topic interesting.

This massive resurgence in generative AI has me interested in the AI space all over again.

Going to spend the next 3-6 months just learning everything I can about it.

Another language in intensive in-person classes.

Difficult and unrealistic probably, but I would spend this time to immerse myself in language learning (one of ACEFRS) .

Learn the information model at Twitter Elon M characterizes as a Rube Goldberg fractal machine.

Building sciences. How to build economical, high performance multi family housing.

Biblical Hebrew, to be able to read the Prophet Jeremiah in the original

It takes more than 3-6 months, but is definitely worth it. There are a number of universities offering online classes.

AWS Pro level Cert.

This is what I would do as well realistically.

two different routes:

- try and become the best portrait photographer possible

- learn ar/vr tech in prep for the apple devices being launched

To play guitar and maybe some machine learning.

A larger corpus.

Math and AI.

energy

to paint

Golang and Rust Bug Bounty

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