Apart from the reasons in the article, I'm going to go ahead and say that, if you're on Hacker News, you should be learning how to if you don't know already. I

Apart from the reasons in the article, I'm going to go ahead and say that, if you're on Hacker News, you should be learning how to if you don't know already. If it gets you rooting around the balance sheets of publicly-traded companies, that has got to be a good thing for understanding how a company like Apple or Yahoo runs. You should at least get a sense of why someone would pick a stock. It's a great way to turn analytical interest into business knowledge. And beating the averages picking stocks is not that different than doing so with a startup. Startup founders, in aggregate, never outperform their opportunity cost. Is that going to discourage you? I really hope not. Besides, when you learn about this kind of stuff, sometimes you happen upon gems like this: http://paste.lisp.org/display/14576 http://paste.lisp.org/display/14576