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Ask HN: What is the most exciting thing you have learnt this year till now?

by curious16 on 8/10/23, 2:22 PM with 112 comments

• by mabbo on 8/10/23, 3:27 PM

  That I can survive being laid off.

  That emotionally, it won't crush me to find out my company decided I was in the 20% that wasn't needed anymore. That financially, my family can get by if I spend 11 weeks unemployed. That I can accept a job that pays significantly less than I used to make.

  I really did think that the entire experience was going to leave me the empty shell of my former self, that the mental toll would leave me severely depressed, and that my world would be shattered. None of that happened. I had a great summer.

  My exciting discovery is that I no longer define myself purely in terms of my career.

• by ativzzz on 8/10/23, 3:29 PM

  I'm a new parent this year and I was not mentally prepared for it (lol is anyone?)

  For a few months, I regretted my decision to have kids almost constantly. It gnawed on me. Then I stumbled upon the regretfulparents subreddit. Seeing the posts was pitiful. I saw how destructive it is to our psyches to carry around regret and let it wear us down. I cringed seeing the posts, mostly because I felt the same way they did, and man it does not look pretty. I do not want to be like the people on that subreddit. It almost disgusted me

  I remember when I was younger I always said I don't regret anything I do. I seem to have forgotten that mantra, so I picked it back up

  I no longer regret being a parent. I still don't enjoy it the majority of the time. But it is what it is. There's no point of drowning myself in my own mental garbage when life is trying to drown me already.

  So what I (re)learned is not to live with regret, and sometimes shared suffering can remind me that it's really not that bad and I don't need to force suffering on myself for no reason

• by menshiki on 8/10/23, 3:25 PM

  Not an achievement at all considering we are on HN, but earlier this year I made my first website. It’s just a little personal site that’s hosted on GitHub pages. It’s a skill I’ll definitely utilize again in the future so I’m quite happy about it :).

• by solarmist on 8/10/23, 3:16 PM

  * How to feel my emotions and not suppress them or push them away. And why that matters in everyday life.

  * The power of letting go of perceived control or outcomes and just focusing on what I can do now in the moment.

  * How to be open and vulnerable and why it matters for building relationships.

• by SteveNuts on 8/10/23, 3:34 PM

  That I in fact, DO have ADHD, and that's at least part of the reason I failed so miserably in high school, couldn't finish college, and struggle to finish tasks at work despite feeling highly motivated.

  Not only that, treatment is working for me.

• by pzo on 8/10/23, 3:57 PM

  Not as the most exciting thing but some lifehack to reduce daily chore:

  I bought electric shaver. I tried decade ago one but didn't enjoy. I always hated chore of shaving - you have to soften your skin, put some foam, make sure your razor is sharp (many time it isn't and you run out of new one), do many runs with razor on your skin, hit razor on the sink so it's not clogged, after shaving clean yourself and razor again and dry yourself and hopefully you don't have any cuts.

  With electric razor:

  - these days they are small and can be charged with usb-c

  - don't require and water or foam (just dry shaving)

  - all your face hairs are inside the shaver head and not floating everywhere around your sink

  - shaver is magnetic and easy to remove and then just dump down your hairs to sink

  - don't have any cuts and don't have to change shaving head (probably one a year or less)

  - I bought cheap one (Enchen) with 3 heads for like 20$

  If you procrastinate to shave yourself every (second) day give it a try.

• by Taikonerd on 8/10/23, 3:22 PM

  OK, my "most exciting thing" is pretty boring, which says something about me ;-) But I discovered how easy it is to make oven fries: [0]

  Easy, customizable, and healthier than regular French fries. I love them!

  [0]: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/oven-fries/

• by Exuma on 8/10/23, 3:26 PM

  Trivial things: The busy beaver fast growing function, and how turning machines represent "all things computable". Somehow this was an epiphany I never realized... I always thought "x can be represented on a turing machine", and this itself always seemed like "so what." All it really means to me is you can play doom in your _random thing_ thats turing complete. Once I learned about the busy beaver function however, and n state turing machines, I had a massive epiphany that ive been thinking about it backwards. Whats better is to think that some N-State turing machine can represent EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT CAN BE COMPUTED (!!!). And its like starting at the top of a very large infinitely tall pyramid, with an N(1) state turing machine and all its permutations of computation, and then N(2) and onwards. In this case, all the answers of the universe (or at least within the computational realm) exist within some N state turing machine in this pyramid.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmAc1nDizu0

  Work things: typescript, nuxt 3, and converting my ENTIRE 10+ year vim config to fancy Neovim with full LSP support.

• by neontomo on 8/10/23, 3:45 PM

  That I'm a slow and careful thinker who needs peaceful days and a slow life. Little things like looking at the sky, drinking coffee, writing in my journal, taking analog photos, these bring me a sense of self and calmness that I need in order to process life properly, and I shouldn't try to be anything else in order to fit in.

• by yla92 on 8/10/23, 3:41 PM

  I recently learned about the (Linux) sockets. Wrote two simple "echo client" and "echo server". Then monitored the traffic over Wireshark and witness the 3 way TCP handshake. Then make the server to use "selectors" and learned a bit more about the names I have been hearing for a while: 'select', 'poll', 'epoll'.

  This is when things start to "click" for me.

  Nothing astounding but these little things got me excited!

  PS: Too excited that I even made a presentation to share with people from work. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LAdJ4iK-RJVxuIo61RLU...

• by ScarZy on 8/10/23, 3:30 PM

  Learned how far I can push myself physically and mentally in my first Ultra Cycling event (2400km).

  Not sure I'll do another one, but it was a good experience and at at an age where performance will start decreasing from here. I need to do a write-up.

• by sshine on 8/10/23, 4:05 PM

    2020: To not busywait.
    2021: To be humble.
    2022: That I work for myself.
    2023: That not spending money makes me happier than spending money.

• by fredgrott on 8/10/23, 3:27 PM

  That stacking stimulants is the wrong approach...instead stack weak stimulants along with herb MAO inhibitors to optimize output.

  My bias is that I have ADHD with anxiety mixed in. Best way to describe is that if one takes Adderall one gets a push pull effect where you are in focus robot mode whereas with this approach its a focus mode with whole environment awareness without the uncomfortable push pull effects.

• by zamalek on 8/10/23, 3:56 PM

  Building circuits. I'm still at the stage of merely soldering things together over I2C/SPI/UART, but it's tons of fun. My current project is designing a keyboard from scratch - I plan to have a central 'hub' with an LCD connected to N auxiliary devices: two to start (a split keyboard). I plan to add a macropad and a rotary encoder later on.

• by matricaria on 8/10/23, 3:34 PM

  I started using LaTeX, Vim and Emacs this year. Steep learning curve but so worth it, especially Vim. Thank you, Bram!

• by yayitswei on 8/10/23, 3:46 PM

  I discovered Electric Clojure and built a few toy apps with it. Turns out unifying frontend and backend code simplifies web app development greatly! Exciting to me because it drastically lowers my activation energy for building new projects.

• by doublerabbit on 8/10/23, 3:29 PM

  To activate the sauna steam button in my local swimming pool, you actually have to pour water over it. It's not a push button like I thought.

• by anavette on 8/10/23, 3:40 PM

  Likely trite, but: I learned that I'm continuously learning far more than I realize— but that if I don't log what I learn somehow (journal, notes, essays), I'm left with a far fainter sense of accumulation & a far weaker understanding overall.

  Practically, I learned how to fully clean stainless steel pans (boil vinegar after cooking; baking soda scrub if really filthy).

• by maxk42 on 8/10/23, 3:27 PM

  I learned to lose weight by eating more fat.

• by elpocko on 8/10/23, 3:38 PM

  I can run generative AI (text and images) on my measly laptop. It's not the fastest thing I've ever seen, but it's a lot of fun. Desperately hoping for a "Stable Diffusion for audio" that you can run locally in the near future.

• by OliveMate on 8/10/23, 4:10 PM

  Mechanical keypad locks dont require you to input the code in a certain order. If the code is 0451 you can unlock it with 1054 or any other combination of those numbers. It's not exciting exciting, but it's oddly novel to show off.

• by Lyngbakr on 8/10/23, 3:45 PM

  I can't say that I "learned Lisp" this year, but I took my first tentative steps in Lisp. It has been eye opening for sure and I'm excited to learn more.

• by hiAndrewQuinn on 8/10/23, 3:48 PM

  fzf! I even wrote a whole tutorial on it :) https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/

  Excitement for me is measured on a scale of how fast I go from "wtf is this" to "omg think of the possibilities" and given that I was working as a very shell-heavy cloud admin for the first half of this year this quite handily topped the list for me.

• by tracerbulletx on 8/10/23, 3:25 PM

  I started searching for pasta recipes in Italian and it worked fantastically, feels like learning the things that will become a trend in english youtube videos 3 years from now. I feel like I've learned so many useful techniques and ideas that I can just improvise really really high quality pastas whenever I want now. It's fantastic.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:38 PM

  I learned that people often take offense to questions, especially “why” questions.

  I don't have the attribution but love this quote: “A good question doesn’t give advice, check hypotheses, impose a perspective, share an opinion, make a suggestion or leave the other person feeling judged or cornered.”

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:36 PM

  Large corps don't care about you. I’ve realized that going above and beyond by putting in 10 times the effort doesn’t always earn the recognition one might expect; it can even lead to unforeseen challenges.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:54 PM

  My family started implementing a “poor week” or as my wife prefers a “free week” where we pick 1 week a month that we don’t spend any money. This has greatly reduced our overall spending.

• by PaulHoule on 8/10/23, 3:34 PM

  How color management works.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:42 PM

  I learned that air frying is the most efficient, and clean way to cook a steak. It doesn't smoke up the house(the smoke is also harmful), cooks fast, and tastes delicious.

• by yitongovo on 8/10/23, 3:46 PM

  Make some food with my tiny oven. Before this year, I just only use the tiny oven to heat frzen food. But now I realize cured meat with common seasoning are very easy and it taste good.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:49 PM

  I’ve discovered that spreadsheets with checklists are more effective for personal and recurring tasks than any to-do list app I’ve tried – plus, you control the data.

• by huijzer on 8/10/23, 5:16 PM

  Power laws and how many there are once you start to recognise them.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:58 PM

  Learned: Always over-communicate all system changes, no matter how small

  Learned: Asynchronous daily chat updates are just as effective as stand-ups

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:40 PM

  I learned that Marijuana is not as innocuous as it seems and causes major social withdrawal symptoms, sleep and memory issues.

• by mattbgates on 8/10/23, 5:07 PM

  Might need to have your ambitions, dreams, hopes, prayers, and goals, but life has a way of working itself out every time.

• by jlarocco on 8/10/23, 3:28 PM

  How to ride a motorcycle.

• by zs234465234165 on 8/11/23, 12:44 PM

  I learned to stop scheduling meetings on Mondays or Fridays

• by nathants on 8/10/23, 6:40 PM

  high performance gamedev with cpp17, physx, wickedengine, clion, and linux.

  it feels amazing to be able to spend time inside the program as it develops.

• by jodrellblank on 8/10/23, 6:03 PM

  That there's actually reasonable arguments for biking without a helmet[1]. That bicycling is way more fun than walking or running. Even slow casual bicycling around a local area. Even on an old low cost bike.

  I used to have to force myself to go jogging; walking for exercise is so so so boring even with podcasts/audiobooks. Now I positively want to go out biking most days. I had a mountain bike ~15 years ago and all the clip-on shoes and helmet and drove to hills and cycled off-road and it was huge effort and work, and I never enjoyed it as much as my friends did. Now I have a basic heavy squeaky bike and get on it and ride.

  I like being able to sprint and coast, instead of sprint and stop while jogging. Being able to zig-zag side to side and feel the dynamics of the bike and my balance as it moves. Being able to move faster than walking while putting in less effort than walking. Feeling the wind as if I'm in a car with open windows or no roof (less intensley, but the same kind of pleasant sensation). Riding with no hands on the handlebar, feels like how bikes 'should' be ridden - more like the motions of walking but moving faster. Or maybe I would like one with higher, curved back handlebars for a more relaxed riding position.

  [1] don't just stop wearing a helmet in a North American city riding on an 8-lane stroad with highway speed traffic, or a ride on the British A roads alongside traffic. But Dutch people don't normally wear helmets because their city design prioritises keeping bikes and cars separate, and keeping bike routes safe at crossings and junctions, and they aren't riding fast or racing. Most injuries of non-racing urban bicyclists involve motor vehicles, and the idea that an inch of polystyrene will protect you from a Ford F250 doing 60mph should be a head scratcher not a no-brainer. I would link "Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet" by former editor-in-chief of Bicycling, the world’s largest cycling magazine - https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped... but it appears to be gone from the site and from the Wayback machine. He also made the point that people say they wear helmets (or make their children wear them) for safety, but then choose helmets based on price and style, rather than safety rating and crash test results, which suggests they don't do it for safety. Also children should wear them.

  The reason I'm making a point of "without helmet" is because it reduces the friction of going out and riding, and it reduces the sweaty head, untidy hair, "where do I put my helmet while in the shop" concerns, and having something strapped to your face/head feels bad. Plus nobody hounds the elderly to wear helmets when out walking in case they fall, but if safety was your top concern, you would.