HN Explorer

Ask HN: What Skills/Skill Upgrades You're Getting in 2021?

6 points by rayxi271828 ↗ HN
Preferably something that can be measured with milestones (e.g.: foreign language exam, either you pass or you don't), "stretches your brain" in a different way (so if you already know Java, picking C# may not be that much of a stretch), and reasonably useful for your life (but not necessarily work).

Mine so far: 1. Aiming to pass B2 exam for French (meets all 3 criteria above) 2. TLA+, hard to measure progress, stretches my brain in a different way, but practical utility is dubious 3. Category Theory, similar to TLA+, but even harder to find pragmatic applications.

Am keen to hear from others.

8 comments

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person_of_color
I want to learn Rust

I want to change career from SWE to Quant Trading.

lalwanivikas
How do you plan to do it? Do you know anyone who has done it? I have mainly done Python work till now and I am not sure if people like me can make the switch :/
person_of_color
I have no idea, but the top tier companies pay more than FAANG where I am now.
mkranjec
Blog more, at least one quality post per month to improve my writing skills. Learn more about investing and taxes. Not sure on how to quantify latter.
kingkongjaffa
Try to target a saving rate (post tax income - essential spending)

and then from that a budget of whatevers left into: fun stuff | investing

mkranjec
I think I got pretty decent numbers - around 30% of post tax income goes directly into savings for future real estate purchase, 15% to emergency fund and 10% into child's savings account. Not sure I can stretch those numbers much further, probably would need to start looking around for better paying job or double down on side gigs. Side gig income stays on business account and I divide it between savings and education every now and then.

I've been questioning myself if that real estate fund is worth investing into something like index funds for short-term (3-5 years) or is it better to be safe than sorry and just leave it in savings account.

brtkdotse
I’m actually doing the opposite - I’m dropping everything JavaScript related and focusing whole-heartedly on .Net and Blazor. I have no beef with js, but the mental load keeping two ecosystems, communities, tool chains and concepts is too much for me. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s something else, but I can tell there’s limited space in my head and JavaScript doesn’t spark enough joy to stay.
detaro
Longer-term I had some plans regarding organizing events, but 2021 also looks dicey if it will allow any of that properly so putting that back for now.

I'd like to develop an electronics project from design to small-scale production run (not necessarily for profit, but hopefully covering production expenses).