This question pops up on HN occasionally, but I am posting it here again. These days, besides working as a data scientist, I am learning game theory and curious to know what you are learning besides your job.
I've started my own company and am about to launch our product, so I'm learning marketing.
I think that I've been lucky so far because most of the traction is based on the strength of the product, and that has meant that I can sit back and gather feedback and opinions without doing anything outside of asking. However it's left me in a position where I'm unsure which steps I should be taking as I get closer and closer to launching.
If anyone has any resources that they've found particularly helpful, I'd love to read them.
I've seen The Mom Test enough now that I need to read it, also, thanks for Build by Tony Faddel!
I'm trying to be as active as possible on IndieHackers. It definitely can be a good resource, it's just finding the posts which are actually good advice vs marking their own startups.
My current project is https://feetr.io which is a stock discovery algorithm, currently averaging ~4.1% daily increase per stock. Please feel free to give as brutal feedback as possible. You can message me here, through twitter (at twitter.com/feetr_io) or email at smcn@feetr.io.
My current understanding is that the "Maximum potential returns" just seems too unrealistic, despite it being the compounding interest of buying the best performing stock at open, and selling it at the highest point of that day. It's unrealistic that anyone could achieve that on a consistent basis but I personally have achieved over 1000% returns, and some of my beta testers have achieved much better than that.
I'm learning docker to run a bunch of services on an old computer. I want to try out Navidrome for serving music and a photo gallery to use instead of Google photos.
> I'm learning docker to run a bunch of services on an old computer.
Super cool! This is my go-to setup for all my at-home stuff. I was previously running Kubernetes for my home lab and had a bunch of fancy stuff for it setup (I'm a platform security engineer in an AWS environment) -- but I went back to managing Docker containers for each application I care about as it is so dang simple.
Good luck on your Docker/container journey. Totally useful in any situation in my opinion.
I just took delivery of some practice nunchaku off eBay :-) God what you can do in one day's watching tutorials! I just taught two of my kids the basics and we haven't broken anything yet.
Other than that. Midnight Commander (always had it, never learned it), picking up some Perl, Janet, Groovy. Some GDevelop with my kids.
Theory wise I'm working within my field to study some esoteric personality theory. A bit of math here and there. Some astrology stuff also for esoteric interest. Researching microscopes to look at buying one in the future.
How to play guitar. I'm in my 60s, but it's never too late to learn how to shred or shoe-gaze.
Similarly, 30+ years ago I learned how to ride a motorcycle, and rode for 30 years without crashing. It was great having a hobby that had absolutely nothing to do with computers. I recently sold the bikes and gear, it's just too risky at my age.
> It was great having a hobby that had absolutely nothing to do with computers.
Totally agree. I’m also learning guitar and I started with an acoustic and have continued with it because, even though I borrowed a friends electric, there is something awesome and refreshing about a practice so far from computing that it doesn’t even require a power source.
Piano. 43 now, played maybe 2 years in primary school. My partner got a good quality electric one with headphones.
This led me to start as I could practice at night while the kids slept, and not be embarrassed sucking and/or driving people insane doing exercises/ scales
Can you talk about how you are going about learning the piano? Ie. What study materials and how much practice you do? Piano is something I would love to learn too.
I went through it page by page, each day I started I'd go back maybe 5-10 pages. I do contrawise 2 handed scales as a warm up. I've been approaching it as work (ie concentrate hard, do deliberate practice not messing around) and have seen really fast improvement. I practice maybe 30 mins 5 days a week.
I'll also just have fun - I just try and play the songs I really like (Greensleeves, Scarborough fair, House of the rising sun, Canon in D etc) until they're really good. I can (barely) play Canon in D after maybe a month (though I played Violin for 5 years and piano for 2 as a kid)
Also learning guitar! After 7 years of piano lessons, I am shocked how much different it feels to learn guitar
To sibling threads that ask about self-taught: I highly recommend group Zoom guitar lessons at the very least. Holds you accountable, you can ask questions, and you don’t have to chart your own study course.
Re-learning C by reading K&R and operating systems by reading Tanenbaum et al in the evenings. Hoping to then read a bit deeper about operating systems and long-term dreaming of getting so deep (if I ever get there) that I can write/improve device support for an operating system. This is all with the end goal to feel less helpless when things work on one and not another, while not being best buddies with a BSD kernel hacker and almost certainly knowing that I lack the funds to hire one for the amount of hours necessary. '^^
Python - I'm in the Sysadmin/DevOps/CloundEng space and bash/ansible/terraform isn't enough any more. Need to learn to do "real" programming. I also have a side project that requires a proper interactive website.
Currently going through a MBA program, slowly unlearning many of the habits I've picked up as an Individual contributor and began to look at the big picture.
Reinforcement Learning, second edition: An Introduction by Richard S. Sutton & Andrew G. Barto is like one of the, if not the, best book to learn reinforcement learning. I really enjoyed it!
Dating. Or, trying. Harder than I thought, and every attempt I make it always seems to go the direction of signing up for one of these online dating services, which I originally wanted to avoid, because privacy is important to me.
- I'm learning about the format (sections) of executable machine code files.
- I'm learning about love, e.g. how different ppl express their affections and what they expect from others they love.
- I'm learning about Stoicism and Cynicism (Hellenistic philosophy).
- I'm restudying nursing, so I can go back to work.
- I'm trying to understand myself.
- Cooking via YouTube (Food Wishes w/ Chef John, and Kenji Lopez Alt's channel)
- ML model architectures (AI Coffee Break, and Yannic Kilcher's channels)
- Exploring different ways of thinking about and responses to the question: What is the meaning of life? (I don't think there is one, so it's more about how we derive one for ourselves.)
I know you didn’t ask for extra sources, but my son is trying to learn how to cook and I kind of fell in love with a YouTube creator. So, if you can stand a slightly Zoomer tone at times, Joshua Weissman has some of the best practical cooking education videos in approx 10-15 minute formats.
CS 436: Distributed Computer Systems
I started with MIT's course but realized a few pieces of the puzzle are missing in my model of the web, this course is better for noobs.
80 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadI think that I've been lucky so far because most of the traction is based on the strength of the product, and that has meant that I can sit back and gather feedback and opinions without doing anything outside of asking. However it's left me in a position where I'm unsure which steps I should be taking as I get closer and closer to launching.
If anyone has any resources that they've found particularly helpful, I'd love to read them.
Good book reads:
- The Mom Test
- Build by Tony Faddel
I’m reading IndieHackers.com every day.
What product are you launching?
I'm trying to be as active as possible on IndieHackers. It definitely can be a good resource, it's just finding the posts which are actually good advice vs marking their own startups.
My current project is https://feetr.io which is a stock discovery algorithm, currently averaging ~4.1% daily increase per stock. Please feel free to give as brutal feedback as possible. You can message me here, through twitter (at twitter.com/feetr_io) or email at smcn@feetr.io.
My current understanding is that the "Maximum potential returns" just seems too unrealistic, despite it being the compounding interest of buying the best performing stock at open, and selling it at the highest point of that day. It's unrealistic that anyone could achieve that on a consistent basis but I personally have achieved over 1000% returns, and some of my beta testers have achieved much better than that.
Super cool! This is my go-to setup for all my at-home stuff. I was previously running Kubernetes for my home lab and had a bunch of fancy stuff for it setup (I'm a platform security engineer in an AWS environment) -- but I went back to managing Docker containers for each application I care about as it is so dang simple.
Good luck on your Docker/container journey. Totally useful in any situation in my opinion.
Other than that. Midnight Commander (always had it, never learned it), picking up some Perl, Janet, Groovy. Some GDevelop with my kids.
Theory wise I'm working within my field to study some esoteric personality theory. A bit of math here and there. Some astrology stuff also for esoteric interest. Researching microscopes to look at buying one in the future.
Similarly, 30+ years ago I learned how to ride a motorcycle, and rode for 30 years without crashing. It was great having a hobby that had absolutely nothing to do with computers. I recently sold the bikes and gear, it's just too risky at my age.
Totally agree. I’m also learning guitar and I started with an acoustic and have continued with it because, even though I borrowed a friends electric, there is something awesome and refreshing about a practice so far from computing that it doesn’t even require a power source.
This led me to start as I could practice at night while the kids slept, and not be embarrassed sucking and/or driving people insane doing exercises/ scales
https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-basic-adult-piano-course-less...
I went through it page by page, each day I started I'd go back maybe 5-10 pages. I do contrawise 2 handed scales as a warm up. I've been approaching it as work (ie concentrate hard, do deliberate practice not messing around) and have seen really fast improvement. I practice maybe 30 mins 5 days a week.
I'll also just have fun - I just try and play the songs I really like (Greensleeves, Scarborough fair, House of the rising sun, Canon in D etc) until they're really good. I can (barely) play Canon in D after maybe a month (though I played Violin for 5 years and piano for 2 as a kid)
If I don't know a song, I'll google it before tackling it as I find that makes it way easier, eg here's Canon in D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFRYPg5dwss
You can also download sheet music, eg Aphex Twin, and easy version of Europe's the final countdown etc which is pretty fun to play as a synth.
Good luck!
To sibling threads that ask about self-taught: I highly recommend group Zoom guitar lessons at the very least. Holds you accountable, you can ask questions, and you don’t have to chart your own study course.
- Pytest (With Brian Okkens book)
- CPython (with Anthony Shaws book)
- Frontend tools: Rollup, Lit Web Elements
- latest Ecmascript features
- Azure services- App Service, CDN, Translator, Storage
- Flask Blueprints, SQLAlchemy with Alembic
- PostGreSQL
C++ I get to use more but the others not so much yet
Haskell is brutal
1. https://courses.dibya.online/courses/1690878/lectures/383852... [done]
2. https://www.deeplearningbook.org/ [currently reading]
tbh I feel very scattered. I really need to pick one or two things and focus.
- Cooking via YouTube (Food Wishes w/ Chef John, and Kenji Lopez Alt's channel)
- ML model architectures (AI Coffee Break, and Yannic Kilcher's channels)
- Exploring different ways of thinking about and responses to the question: What is the meaning of life? (I don't think there is one, so it's more about how we derive one for ourselves.)
Reading/watch list:
- Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, by Diane F. Halpern
- Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Robert J. Fogelin
- Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
- Evidence-based Software Engineering - http://knosof.co.uk/ESEUR/ESEUR.pdf
- A Philosophy of Software Design, by John Ousterhout
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware
This is research for a book I'm writing on that topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KFPWkK0bI&list=PLawkBQ15ND...