HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are you planning to learn in 2013?

59 points by anujkk ↗ HN
A new year is about to begin. What are you going to learn in this new year to improve yourself?

Here are few things I would like to learn in 2013 :

1. UI/UX Design : I'm a hacker who can make decent looking designs using css frameworks. I know I have a sense of design and I would like to take it to next level and become an expert designer.

2. A functional language : I don't know a single functional language. I would like to learn one. May be Haskell.

3. The art of selling : I am building a SAAS app for a niche and hopefully I will work hard this year to learn how to sell it to customers.

98 comments

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chuhnk
I will try to learn:

1. A programming language.

2. A natural language.

3. Work/Life balance.

4. To enjoy my life.

[dead] jeshan
I'm sure you know that there is a psychological effect behind the word 'try'. Don't use it when talking about personal goals, my friend!
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kedean
As someone currently pursuing a CS masters degree, I've decided I'm a little burnt out on theory and implementation, so I'm getting back into my other love: history. With 6 or 7 new books about ancient history, hopefully I can get my brain to stop obsessing over the asymptotic running time of my roomba, and how best to get c0 coverage with cat toys as a variable.
paulgb
1. Enough Spanish to be useful for travel

2. Salsa dance

3. Bayesian Statistics

4. Julia (julialang.org)

kragniz
I feel I'm running the risk of repeating the standard HN response for this type of question, but here are my goals for this year:

* Greatly improve my functional programming

* Learn Japanese

fieldforceapp
Another list with Japanese language skill as a goal, love it. Highly recommend traveling there, it's wonderful and confounding at the same time.
bgdam
As somebody on the verge of shipping software for the very first time and trying to make some money off it, I'm hoping I learn a lot about running a business and dealing with customers.
lucian303
1) Microsoft Bob 2) OS/2 3) Apple Lisa
hdra
1. Japanese, at least enough to navigate some Japanese websites 2. Some design sense. So that my weekend projects doesn't look like crap without bootstrap. 3. More maths. I am rather surprised how lacking my math is for doing some serious programming tasks. 4. Python. there are more, but i think i should focus to these,
fieldforceapp
On behalf of all my Japanese friends, glad to see #1 on your list. Highly recommend traveling there: nothing like immersion to build a skill!
koralatov
1. sed and awk;

2. To use vim competently;

3. To touch-type;

4. Perl;

5. Polish;

6. To stay offline on Xmas day.

srik
Out of curiosity, why Perl?
kamaal
Plenty of reasons to.

sed, awk and Perl practically don't have any competitors in their stride.

When you learn those tools, you basically realize that all the while you were using a hammer, while what you should been using is a screw driver.

koralatov
I'm planning to learn Perl for a combination of its ubiquity, the cheap O'Reillys I came across recently, and contrarianism. Kamaal's answer also covers it really well.
julsonl
Other than improving my programming skills and learning a bit more computer science theory in general:

1. Music. Learning to play the piano

2. Drawing and Painting

3. Cooking

ThomPete
Start with cooking that will help you understand Piano and Drawing better.
okal
Care to explain how?
ThomPete
Cooking really is about process, proportion, texture, color (taste), color (presentation), balance, contrast, seemlingly unrelated items coming together creating new experiences.

It will help you understand these terms in music and art more naturally while at the same time being easier to get started with (i.e. you have the skills necessary to create a dish more than to play the piano and draw)

okal
Oh, thanks. I'm a pretty good cook, or so I've been told, but I'm really into improvisation. Not sure how much of that would carry over to art and music. I have an intuitive sense of flavours that work well together, but I haven't been able to translate that to playing instruments.
ThomPete
Then you should be fine. It's the intuition that makes the artist.
xiaoma
For drawing, I strongly recommend Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. And you DO have all the skills you need to get started as long as you have remotely decent eye-sight and the ability to wield a pencil. The important thing is to force yourself to let go of iconic representations and look at the lines that are actually there. It will be uncomfortable, but once you do that, your progress will really begin.
davesmylie
I can second this. I'm your typical average terrible drawer.

Stepping through the first quarter of this book, following the exercises and going from being able to draw a barely recognisable stick figure to an actually respectable drawing within 50 pages was an amazing experience.

ruswick
1. Haskel

2. Rails

3. Typography theory

4. Statistics

5. More political philosophy

6. More arcane photography methodology/techniques

This is all in addition to the general academic edification entailed by high school.

sentiental
What encompasses typography theory? Like semiotics / linguistics or something more specific to web font use?
sentiental
* To learn and get a deep understanding of Go (golang) * To find a project thay excites me and that I believe I will be able to sell. * Meta-goal: to set adequate goals for myself so that I can keep learning, working and building without burning out.
mtrimpe
1. Dvorak

2. Emacs

3. Clojure

4. Testing from a keyboard

jaryd
Amateur robotics and radio!
okal
1. Music, theory and practice. I'm currently experimenting with the bass guitar, acoustic guitar and electric piano.

2. CS theory. I'm a fresh ECE grad and our program was light on CS content. I plan to work through Daume's "Yet another Haskell tutorial", Downey's "Complexity" and SICP.

3. Ballroom dancing.

4. German refresher course.

5. Improve my design skills.

krsunny
1. Javascript templating like mustache and dust

2. Webgl and three.js

3. Websockets and node

4. Phonegap and mobile development

5. Math geared towards game development

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stewie2
improve my drawing skills.
kev009
More Scala and Akka
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PureSin
For me: Python (Advanced): Django/ BeautifulSoup Clojure Android JQuery

Improve my Japanese/Mandarin

drcross
SWITCH, ROUTE, TSHOOT, NX-OS, ISE, JNCIA