Ask HN: What do you wish you were better at? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you wish you were better at?

4 pointsaduric17 comments

For me it's 3 things: regex, regex and regex.

EDIT: my social life

Focusing my efforts, managing my time, and figuring out what my priorities in life are.

regex, on the big scheme of things, is a pretty easy problem to solve. If you think about them in terms of state machines, they become easier to grasp your mind around.

Doing nice visual design stuff. I'm apparently not all that great at it, but frankly don't really notice (I like the look and feel of this site, for instance) so it's not like I have anything to benchmark against.

My personal top 3 is:

- getting into shape (it's needed, but I'm starting that tomorrow)

- persisting (in everything, 2years ago I was getting in a better shape, but see #1)

- live greener (we already use 1/2 of electricity a normal family uses, but I know we could do better)

That's it. And the best part is I can do all 3 things, it's not something I will never be able to do. Better start working on them!

Making money, overcoming presentation anxiety, selling, art.

Edit: If you need help on the regular expressions you might want to pick up the mastering regular expressions book from o'reilly. It's a great book for that: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528126/

Keeping money. I actually find it easier to make money than keep it in the long run.

Writing. I'm not a bad writer but man it'd be great to be better.

coding from scratch, not procrastinating, eating more

eating more? Now, that's something I'm really good at.

now you've got six problems :) (http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247)

see I don't know why people hate on {perl,awk,sed}. To me, these are the best tools available for data munging and they're just too damn convenient. However, I always get the feeling that my efficiency takes a hit when I try to be too clever.

don't get me wrong. I love perl. and I use awk almost every day (mostly because I can't be bothered to remember the syntax for cut). I just find it a little weird to say regex regex regex is the only thing to improve about yourself. regexes are powerful things, but they aren't the answer to all problems. I cringe when people brandish a zero-width negative look-behind assertion when a simple index() will do. there is an interview problem I like to give that involves string prefixes and when perl people start off down the regex path, I know that they've been lured into a quagmire.

btw, if you haven't read it, the friedl book is great and I consider it the definitive text on at least the practical matters of regular expressions (and it even covers a good chunk of the CS theory behind them as well).

Being confidant in myself or my work.

Making money.

Using my time wisely, as time is money.

I'm already good at using my time wisely. I have some specific things I need to work on in terms of translating that into increased income. I think it will all come, eventually. (However, I was born without a patient bone in my body so I'm not very content about my expectation that "it will come, eventually.")

It will come, eventually. But probably not in the form you expect.

Keeping fear and anxiety in their place -- not banished, but in perspective.

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