Ask HN: What are you going to learn in 2023? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you going to learn in 2023?

45 pointsaccount-553 comments

Happy new year HN. As the title says.

On my list are:

- Lua

- APL (not sure yet which)

- Forth

- Lisp

I will continue learning:

- Python

- JavaScript

- Dart/Flutter

- XSLT (I know, but it's work related and actually really powerful, even if outdated and overly verbose)

Edit: formatting, no idea how you make a list on this sight without it concatenating into one line if there's only a newline between each item!

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The recent "gardening in Obsidian" post on HN has motivated me to put a bigger focus on how I take notes and how to do it more effectively. I've been unhappy with how I hold on to knowledge I want to keep long-term for a while now, but felt paralyzed by all the options available to me. I've been on a bit of a bender reading in the past week or so about note-taking and I've made some crucial insights that will have a big impact on how I proceed.

I'd say my primary goal for the year will be to transform how I offload information into my "second brain" and how I couple that with spaced repetition (through Anki).

tl;dr Learn how to take better notes.

Love this one. Have a similar goal. Any interest in an accountability buddy? Email is in profile if so!

I missed that post, do you happen to have the link?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137703

(googled 'Gardening in Obsidian Hacker News`)

I regretted never learning to play an instrument beyond the basics and I didn’t really understand analog electronics beyond the simple stuff.

So I’ve gotten into guitar and guitar pedal circuits. It’s cool because they reinforce each other.

I started just copying schematics and they give me new sounds which makes me enjoy practicing more. I develop better technique which makes new circuits useful.

In both I’m making breakthroughs going from copying to creating my own from the building blocks I learn.

My plan is to keep digging into this. I’m finally understanding the math behind small signals and developing the finger dexterity and muscle memory to be able to dig more into music theory.

As I get older, I still like “thinking” hobbies. But having them outside of computers has helped my burnout.

Also I figured out that I can’t beat myself up for not “finishing.” I finish at work. My hobbies should be a way to avoid stress and not add to it. Dreaming and moving on are OK. These have been fun because there’s no finish line. It’s just habit and repetition.

Now I’m basically doing this as well: music and audio electronics.

Although I have learned to play a musical instrument I’ve been somewhat fallow with it and so 2023 will be a more rigorous practice and exploring and playing with home made pedals and noisemakers.

That’s awesome! I’m not totally weird! :)

But, yeah, the practice thing has been so important. It’s a habit as much as a hobby now.

The music is better understood, and I just shoot for at least 10 mins a day. Usually do longer, sometimes miss days.

For the electronics I do a few things: collect and study schematics, draw and study circuits in LTSpice, and breadboard.

When I have something I like, I’ll do it in perfboard. I also design them in KiCAD, but haven’t ordered PCBs for a pedal yet.

Oh, this gadget is super handy for breadboarding: https://www.arcadiaelectronics.com/product-page/breadboard-p...

It’s so nice to get rid of the repetitive stuff. Saw it on a Wampler video, zoomed in and bought. Wish the alternate power was 4.5V vs 5V to avoid having to cookie cutter the voltage divider but whatever.

Starting this year I'm switching from gameplay programmer to game engine programmer. I originally studied computer graphics a lot while I was in school, and I really enjoyed the time I spent working on optimization as a gameplay programmer.

As a gameplay programmer, a lot of the problem solving and work I did was insular and particular to the game. Engine development feels like a much bigger world where very similar problems are being worked on by many people all over the world. I feel there's a lot more material I need to go read.

I also want to start learning how to song write and improvise on piano. I'm starting to get some grasp on music theory finally and can probably not be totally lost when placing chords next to each other.

For 2023, I'll be trying to become proficient in Rust. Ported about half my AOC code over, and don't feel like an absolute chucklehead at this point.

The stable diffusion is really the first time I've used a GPU as compute, and I suspect this will turn into updating a video card for non-gaming. Enjoying what is within the realms of the possible with a bit of Python. There is an entire AI world there I've just sort of ignored that seems to have just hit a sweet spot.

Finish my instrument rating this Spring, as I brush the frozen cobwebs from my flying. Did very under the hood in 2022.

Used to be a flight instructor, a quarter century ago. I'm not a fan of flying under the hood. If you want to get the most for your money, make sure to get X-Plane, a decent yoke and throttle quadrant, as well as access to something like VATSIM. Practice until you understand the "system" completely and have all your procedures down, so that you exactly know what to do in what sequence. Then you can still do and hour or two under the hood, to experience the sensations in a real airplane.

Pretty much a continuation of what I started in late 2022

* I want some certifications, and just finished studying for Microsoft PowerApps. I'm going to scheduled that test, go for an Azure certification, then Kubernetes. Most of that is for personal interest.

* I started learning F# and have a couple of projects I intend to complete. Right now I'm starting with a serverless Identity Sever. Rust continues to beckon from the sidelines though. I might be distracted, or even worse, try to take the middle path and master both at the same time.

* On Saturday mornings I meet with some friends and we have been working towards our own MicroSaaS efforts; in January we enter market validation for various ideas we have. Ideally at least one idea will survive and I'll be working on that in 2023, which should involve a bit of a learning curve.

* Intentional use of a Zettlekasten is bearing fruit, and I've relaunched my blog with the intention of creating writing products as a result. Need to get RSS working first though.

I'm going to learn how to be social on the internet. Interact with communities instead of just ingesting other's interactions and leaving.

I'd love to even start contributing to communities, taking feedback and meeting others who have likeminded goals.

And learn more Rust.

Unfortunately there’s not time for learning right now. 2023 will be filled with me fighting bureaucracies, reestablishing stable income, possibly moving, and then sitting around and waiting for other bureaucracies to move. Unfortunately just about everything that could go wrong went wrong at the end of this past year leaving me in a very bad position.

Then maybe in a year or two I can continue learning. I’ve been trying to go back to school for a while, but that won’t happen anytime soon in the least because I lost the job that was going to fund it and it looks like with market conditions and personal situation I’ll be stuck eating a massive paycut.

sorry to hear. what are your skills, anything you could do (remotely) in the IT field?

Beginning two long endeavors this year.

1. Becoming UltraStrong. A concept I made-up to test myself. Compete and not zero any events in an open strongman event on a Saturday, then complete a 50 miler (ultra marathon) on a Sunday. I did ultras in my 20s and competed in two strongman competitions last year.

2. Reading and writing an essay on all the books in my library; roughly 300 books.

I'm going to learn how to build models for CAD. Probably going to use FreeCAD and have the files mail-order 3D printed.

FreeCAD is... Not great. See if there are any ways to get SOLIDWORKS or Fusion; academic? Military?

Check out RealThunder's fork and what he's added!

I am trying to learn Greek as my 3rd language, because I have moved here for work. But from my first encounters at shops, I have lot to learn.

You guys are speaking too fast

This was suggested for learning Greek here few weeks ago: https://www.languagetransfer.org/

I tried few lessons and the method seems very promising.

Top of my list is learning enough nextjs/TS to build a mdx driven blog. I do a lot of selfhosting type tinkering & reckon dropping some of that onto a blog could have some value & generate some modest traffic.

Also busy (slowly) learning rust, with ultimate aim being static site nextjs front end with wasm/rust for dynamic pieces.

I’m going to learn how to make peace with the fact that I won’t be achieving my dreams, at least not anytime soon :’(

Care to share what your dreams are? No worries if not.

Having the time to grow my bootstrapped Saas business which is currently doing about 3k/mo in revenue, to eventually quit my 9-5

Just moved to a high COL city a year ago (for wife’s dream job and this is her dream place to live), bought an expensive house shortly after that, started a fulltime job 6mos ago due to expecting our first child and the economy (was subcontracting part time before that) and had our first child 3 months ago

big shrug

It was pretty tough the first few weeks after birth, but I’m more at peace with it now. The intense love for the baby I hope would materialize at first and conquer all but didn’t happen, is slowly happening more now since she’s started being more interactive, smiling, etc :)

Surprised no one said Haskell yet. I've been learning Rust in 2022 but I'm coming across more functional concepts so I thought I'd just bite the bullet and learn Haskell as a more fully realized functional language.

My primary focus is to add Anki cards any time I learn something important that I am likely to forget, so as to employ spaced repetition and retain things better. But my programming goals are focused squarely on Haskell this year. Last year was Rust, which I will continue to use. But I'd like to see what ideas I will learn from Haskell, as well as make some projects that are well suited to Haskell.

What are you using as learning material? I got Haskell Programming From First Principles as well as Category Theory For Programmers, they're both good resources.

1) I'm doing ossu curriculum so probably a lot of stuff related to computer science 2) I want to develop my artistic skills and build a habit of sketching daily. Also have a few Blender and Zbrush courses I want to take. 3) creating video games - I plan to participate in some game jams this year and really get into game dev as it's something I've been planning to do for a long time now 4) last but no least I would like to learn more about physical exercising and optimizing my capabilities in this area

Linear algebra. Also refresh Calculus.

Doing Synacor Contest right now.

Going to take data structure and operating system I in local university this winter and probably operating system II and computer theory(automata and other stuffs, prerequisite for compiler theory) this fall. If I can complete computer theory in summer then will take compiler theory I in fall.

Aside from university, might work on a RISC-V softcore course too.

Computer Skills:

-Rust

-(getting better at) Networking

-(actually moving beyond functionally competent in) SQL

Personal Skills:

-Mandarin

-Competitive Swimming

General Goals:

-Live more life.

Similar goals technically. What are you studying up on for networking? I’ve been doing a lot of home lab stuff

I planned to follow both of these and implement what is necessary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiQR5rTSshw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7MNX_UD7vY&list=PLIhvC56v63...

For SQL, I love Digital Ocean for their docs. I bought the book Practical SQL as well (I LOVE No Starch Press books):

https://digitalocean.com/community/tutorial_series/how-to-us...

https://nostarch.com/practical-sql-2nd-edition

For Rust, I'm literally reading the std lib and all of the rust books.

Good luck.

Elixir! Phoenix [0] (and Liveview) have been getting more and more interest as of late and I want to try building something with it to give it a try.

[0] https://www.phoenixframework.org/

I hope to learn more about the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas through reading his works, I acquired a complete copy of the Summa Theologiae as well as some of his scriptural commentaries, and reading secondary works by thomists.

Latin. I am going to learn Latin.

I am also going to learn game dev, and I’m going to get very good at rucking, running, and pull ups. And in a year, I’m going to come back, edit this post and say dadgummit I did what I said I would.

I've been laid off so I'll learn skills that'll get me a job:

- Leetcode

- Rust (not sure it'll help but it'll keep me sane)

- DDD (started today because of another HN thread)

- Brush up on React

Coq theorem prover. I'm tired of writing tests, I would rather write proofs. Can the code just be reliable and correct? That's all I want.

Spanish! Open to any tips on the best way to do that :-)

I've been learning Spanish using Comprehensible Input and it's been a complete game-changer for me. Oversimplified, it's learning a language by watching videos where you understand about 80% of what's going on without trying to analyze the vocabulary or grammar. No studying, no memorization. Your subconscious does the heavy lifting. Part of the goal is take conscious translation out of the picture. For example, if you hear "manzana," the ideal is that word directly connects to your image of what an apple is, not to the English world "apple."

It takes hundreds of hours, but for me, it's working, and I'm enjoying it. I'm using Dreaming Spanish [0] which is free for a while, and then pretty cheap if you want to keep going. Strongly recommended.

0: https://www.dreamingspanish.com

As someone who learned the language in about 4 months, my advice is to saturate yourself with conversation as much as possible without worrying about grammatical or structural correctness at first, just learn to talk and use as many words as possible for essential conversation without worrying how well you say everything. Immerse yourself in doing this as much as possible.

Ideally, if you work remotely, move to latin america for a few months. Otherwise, find a digital (app-based maybe) or social way of doing the same where you are. Also, suppress all embarrassment about saying anything incorrectly, just get the essential ability to communicate ideas across first while you converse as much as possible. Refinement can come later, the first thing is to learn the broad strokes rapidly.

My two cents from experience learning two additional languages fluently.

i've gotten pretty good with just duolingo and trying to have basic conversations with my in-laws over the weekends. Biggest problem to me is the grasping sentences as a whole most of the time, i still translate indiviual words. This creates akward delays when i am responding. I would recommend trying to grasp sentences as a whole vs words.

Listen to shows and movies in Spanish (english subtitles), and Spanish music. Then find Spanish-speakers to practice with.

Get a Spanish language book from the library and try reading it.

I am a farmer and learning frontend web development this year. I hope to get a job as a frontend developer. Learning async JS right now.

Foundations of math and hopefully calculus. OSCP.

I’m going to try to get back to the Elixir/Phoenix e-book I bought this time last year :)

I need to get back to my 105 or so Udemy courses. Most of them are at 5%.

Music production with Ableton

I _plan_ on doing this as well. What resources will you use (besides the Ableton tutorial)?

Mostly just experimenting and Youtube videos. If you know of something better, do share !

Dart / Flutter & deep dive into Rails hotwire

• Music theory and production

• Improve my Finnish to B1 level

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