Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2022?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627124

by tmaly • 5 years ago

65 67 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If I wanted to keep my skill set sharp. What top 3 tech skills should I learn in 2022 to keep providing the most value in your opinion?

cpach• 5 years ago

In what domain? Are you into frontend, backend, data science, embedded, etc?

bigdict• 5 years ago

Basic math, basic CS, written communication.

giantg2• 5 years ago

Skill alignment to ncrease potential value depends on the business problem and tech stack.

codingdave• 5 years ago

It depends on what you already know. Picking up new skills that are similar to what you already know isn't a big value add. But picking something up that is completely alien to your current skills not only adds a new skill, but makes it easier to pick up anything similar.

replete• 5 years ago

What is the best vegetable to eat for dinner?

k4c9x• 5 years ago

False.

jamil7• 5 years ago

Tobacco

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

Spinach and Kale.

chubot• 5 years ago

Shell, SQL, Python

mikewarot• 5 years ago

In 2032 it will be possible to correctly answer that question, with 9 years of hindsight to assist. ;-)

I'm thinking that having experience with a capability based operating system such as Fuchsia or Genode as a daily driver will be quite valuable, as you'll be ahead of the adoption curve. I hope to have this happen myself next year.

If you haven't already, I recommend doing the Advent of Code puzzles, all of them, in whatever language you are comfortable in. Redo them in whatever language you want to learn, ad infinitum. I personally haven't gotten through all them in Pascal yet. I did last year in real time, and except for day 19, and current in 2021.

I suggest you learn a little bit of practical machining, that done in machine shops. The process of using machine tools to make things, otherwise known as subtractive manufacturing. I'd also suggest you learn additive manufacturing as well. It is good to understand how the atoms around you came to be configured as they are.

There you go, 3 things to learn for 2022.

mofeeta2• 5 years ago

I've wanted to dip my toe into the machining world. I have basic tools, mainly for routine home maintenance. Is there a book, website or course you'd recommend to get started?

prova_modena• 5 years ago

I'm not who you are replying to, but I would recommend the textbook "Machining Fundamentals" by Walker and Dixon. It's the best 101-level introduction to the topic that I have found.

The tool manufacturer Sandvik also has a decent free online set of courses that I found helpful.[0] I have also heard people mention the Titans of CNC online training courses,[1] although I have not checked them out personally.

Finally, "Machinery's Handbook" is also a venerable resource that deserves mention, but more a desk reference than something to read through as a learner. They come out with new editions regularly, but older ones are still very useful (and have better quality bindings).

Overall I would recommend seeking out resources that are addressing a professional audience, rather than a hobbyist one. Hobby-level discourse and instruction about machining varies widely in quality.

[0] https://www.sandvik.coromant.com/en-us/services/education/pa...

[1] https://academy.titansofcnc.com/

f0e4c2f7• 5 years ago

AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.

brisad• 5 years ago

Prolog

worik2• 5 years ago

2022 not 1992

bovermyer2• 5 years ago

You should be aware that implementations of Prolog are still being released. Erlang was originally based on it.

I'm guessing from your comment that you don't work on anything related to AI.

echelon• 5 years ago

What a horrible answer.

Prolog is hard to write. When you modify it, you have to understand the logical world state.

Outside of academia, there's no use for prolog.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

Outside of academia, there's no use for prolog.

Prolog certainly has been used in industry; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog#Use_in_industry has some useful discussion, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29539384 talks about its use in network software.

Jtsummers• 5 years ago

It's not a horrible answer, though it wouldn't make my top 3 list. Learning different models of programming is almost always worthwhile, though how much time you put in will depend on your objectives. Languages and systems in the declarative/logical/relational vein like Prolog, minikanren, and others are worth examining at least once. If you grok them, it can be very handy with prototyping, even if it doesn't make it into production. And if you really grok them, you can Greenspun a Prolog into your system more effectively when it turns out its model is actually appropriate to a portion of the system.

With regard to this, though:

When you modify it, you have to understand the logical world state.

That's true of any non-trivial program someone may write and/or modify. Changing without understanding is just going to get your garbage (perhaps functional garbage, but still garbage).

tmaly3• 5 years ago

I used it one time professionally to build an expert system to fill out a very complex financial form for 4k accounts.

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

I don’t see any job ads requiring Prolog. So maybe not the best choice.

computershit• 5 years ago

Data pipeline / ETL orchestration.

Prefect: https://www.prefect.io

Dagster: https://dagster.io

pella• 5 years ago

- https://julialang.org/

- https://clickhouse.com/

- https://kubernetes.io/

or you can choose any from https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar

adamnemecek2• 5 years ago

It kind of depends on your goals but Rust, WebGPU (wgpu), Julia.

ozarkerD• 5 years ago

Really excited to see where wgpu and Rust graphical software goes in general the next few years

adamnemecek2• 5 years ago

Dope GUIs toolkits that's where.

bovermyer2• 5 years ago

Not enough information provided.

"Tech skills" is an enormously broad category on its own. You provide no context, so there's no way to narrow it down.

What do you want to do in your career? Answer that question first.

tmaly3• 5 years ago

I was simply looking for your opinion.

nikivi• 5 years ago

Karabiner (https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements) + Deno/Go as nice scripting languages.

AceJohnny23• 5 years ago

Communication.

Learn how to share your ideas and opinions in a concise, engaging way. Learn to advocate for (or against) something in a way that will have people engaged (first point: never be combative, people will mostly dismiss you as immature or emotionally compromised).

Yeah it doesn't sound like a "tech skill" but it absolutely is and I think too many "tech" people severely undervalue it, preferring instead pure "lone wolf" kind of skills that don't require the squishy, dirty aspects of dealing with other humans (speaking from personal experience here).

You can accomplish a lot on your own with the right talent and skills. But you can always accomplish more if you can engage more people.

Maintain a blog of interesting things you've learned, hiring managers will value the demonstrated writing skills.

davidw• 5 years ago

Was going to write the same thing, but you wrote it in a clearer, more concise way than I could have!

AceJohnny23• 5 years ago

I'll admit that I've honed my writing through online comments, though in a direction I'm not sure is valuable elsewhere ;)

jjice2• 5 years ago

The concise part is one I've been working on. I find that I've said everything I need to and I keep presenting a feature by just repeating what I've already said in a different way. Same with text via email and Slack, but I've been pretty good at catching myself recently.

Anyone have any tips for communicating more concisely?

AceJohnny23• 5 years ago

I've been working on reducing the habit of repetition. I think it comes from (feeling like) people not listening to you.

Some things that have helped me:

- care less that people listen to you (see also: The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck). If they didn't get you the first time, their loss.

- Keep in mind that repeating points doesn't actually help most listeners, as you're just overloading them with information. (for advanced writers only: there's an art to repeating points for reader memorization)

- Remove a random sentence. Does your point still make sense? Then the sentence wasn't crucial. Does it not make sense anymore? Then can you add a qualifier or clause to another sentence to make sense again? Counter to this: make your sentences as short as possible. Be liberal in splitting your sentences. Iterate these two steps.

- Remove adjectives and adverbs

- (always valid) review what you wrote 5, 10 minutes, and/or a day later. It's fascinating how a bit of distance makes you realize the flaws in your past writing. When you're writing, you still have your idea clear in your head, and your understanding of what you wrote is informed by the live idea. After you step away, you're left with just what you wrote, and it must make sense on its own.

Addendum: are you feeling that people aren't listening to you because they're not acknowledging you? Many people are bad at acknowledging what they hear, so learn to do without. Conversely, learn to acknowledge what someone else is saying ;)

tmaly3• 5 years ago

I agree with you 100 percent on this. Communication is sort of a super power. It can go a long way.

godDLL• 5 years ago

2022 is going to be even more about communication, with many of you working remote.

And unstructured, dispersed, realtime communication is not going to cut it.

The skill to develop is time-boxing and scheduling communication, as well as avoiding communication silos.

PaulMest• 5 years ago

The biggest gains I'd recommend for just about everybody in a tech field:

1) Continuing to stoke the flames of curiosity and discipline within yourself so that you genuinely love to learn and get slightly better every day without fear of perpetual burnout.

2) Confidence to ask questions in group settings so that you can quickly get to a collective understanding of the problem space and challenges at play.

3) Communication. Litmus test is being able to present what you're doing in an understandable and approachable manner that can get the right people engaged.

And to answer the spirit of your question more directly, some technologies that my team have found to be super valuable:

A) Hasura (GraphQL/ORM layer to interface with Postgres)

B) Pulumi (TypeScript IaaC)

C) React (nothing super new here, it just continues to be incredibly valuable to us)

D) NestJS (TypeScript-friendly framework that is like Angular for the backend)

legerdemain• 5 years ago

Pulumi supports 5-6 languages, not just TypeScript.

Also, Pulumi feels like a distant second to Terraform.

Also-also, writing Terraform code for SRE/infrastructure tasks mostly feels like unrewarding grunt work.

baron816• 5 years ago

Google, Stack Overflow, Copy/Paste.

simonw• 5 years ago

GitHub Actions.

thom• 5 years ago

Depends if you mean “providing the most value” or “most likely to keep providing value”. The latter is kinda boring. The former is more interesting but depends on what you’re interested in:

1) Data infrastructure. This is the inner loop of a lot of tech companies. Speed it up, reduce the cycle time, reduce the AWS spend and you’re a god.

2) Data science. Provide better insights into a domain or its customers, or as above, provide a better platform for others to experiment and discover the same, and again, be worshipped.

3) Customer success. Discover that your business is in a local maxima but could shift to provider vastly more value for customers, ditto.

4) Hiring. Forget how great you are, if you can hire great(er) people then you are an almost exponential factor in your company’s success.

mgraczyk• 5 years ago

I'm a former startup founder and staff engineer at a big tech company. It depends a lot on where you want to be. Here's my take.

You want to be an engineer at a small startup:

* Typescript and be familiar with common libraries and frameworks. I believe TS is going to become more common everywhere, frontend, backend, DevOps, etc.

* Learn python if you don't already know it

* Learn some kind of data science stack you can use to analyze small data sets (under 100GB). Pandas+numpy+scipy, Julia, whatever. Just be good at answering data questions and building small models.

Big company:

* Writing and communication. Practice writing about projects you've worked on and write down the projects you want to build with enough details that a junior engineer could build it.

* Be aware of how much companies are paying and be willing to leave for better compensation, work-life balance, or responsibilities. Practice interviewing.

* Read all the major postmortems from incidents at a big tech company and try to find patterns related to your area or part of the stack.

lido• 5 years ago

python, unix, and protocols.

mianos• 5 years ago

Prefect Orion, already love Prefect and I think the applications for a DAG workflow engine are much wider than anyone even imagines Pytorch, finally picked up a Jetson. Back to VHDL, Sparkfun just released a new tutorial with the old Lattice board. VXLans. The new C++ coroutines.

nanna2• 5 years ago

Emacs.

b20000• 5 years ago

negotiation

nanna2• 5 years ago

Hostage?

midrus• 5 years ago

For me it is going to be Laravel and PHP.

hu32• 5 years ago

Svelte, TypeScript and Docker

Can't go wrong with any of those.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

You can certainly go wrong with Docker if you wander too far off the reservation. Do what most people are doing with it and be fine, or you could end up in a hellhole of using different related tools (ahem Podman) that fail to live up to their promises.

Otherwise yeah, Svelte and Typescript are pretty dope.

hu32• 5 years ago

You can certainly go wrong with Docker if you wander too far off the reservation.

Such broad generalization can can be said about any technology.

You probably meant things like Kubernetes right? Well, that's no longer Docker. Kubernetes even work with Podman so it's not a Docker-only thing.

Stick with Docker and you'll be alright as far as technology to learn for 2022.

0x008• 5 years ago

The best answer to this in my opinion is universally: Learn things that compound.

Learn stuff that will enable you to be better at what you are doing. This might be

* tools, techniques for development

* techniques for learning

* understanding of the underlying systems

* understanding of the processes involved

yayitswei• 5 years ago

Solidity.

shahbaby• 5 years ago

Leetcode

chupkarkhotay• 5 years ago

How to write code and not blog about it, in Rust.

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

You need to figure out what your goal is first. And then pick the skills that are most likely to help you achieve that goal. If your goal is to broaden your general understanding of programming then learning Elm or Haskell is a good choice. If your goal is to become a web developer then Typescript + React is a good choice. If your goal is to become a game programmer then Unity or Unreal is a good choice. Etc. Etc.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

Blockchain

Smart contracts

k8s

k3s

k9s

No-code

Web Assembly

Quantum Computing

GPT-3

muzani• 5 years ago

My personal plans for 2022:

Low risk: React

Medium risk: Android Jetpack or Flutter

High risk: OpenAI Codex

vfulco2• 5 years ago

AWS serverless all the things

gaws• 5 years ago

all the things

Include removing "all the things" from your vernacular. It's not 2010.

andrei_says_• 5 years ago

Learn to be kind to yourself, while being kind to others, and vice versa.

taubek• 5 years ago

It all depends on your background. Maybe brush up Markdown skills?

stonecharioteer• 5 years ago

Algorithms and data structures. Get really good at solving leetcode problems. You'll maximize your total compensation in no time.

Ask HN: Top Skills to Learn for 2022?

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