11 ms·

You’re Never Too Old to Become a Beginner

227 points by wallflower 6y ago

neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/qOHnx https://archive.is/qOHnx
pgp00 6y ago
Never too young either... I guess never a bad time!
DizzyDoo 6y ago
What are people from the community here going to start to learn for the first time this year? I'd be interested on hearing a range of different plans; creative, personal, business, technical and so on.
- Cribbin 6y ago
  I know I plan to pick up sewing this year. It isn't something I've ever given any thought, but I've fallen down a rabbit hole in the last few weeks and am excited to start mending my own clothes and creating new outfits.
  - thn-gap 6y ago
    One of my favorite things in life is to get into a rabbit hole of a new hobby. This usually comes with lots of energy from the excitement and learning something new. I also love listening to friends and others talk about whatever hobby they are deep into. It's fascinating how almost anything can become someone's main hobby and passion.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  It may be a meme, but using Gentoo for the first time. I did Linux From Scratch in a VM and it piqued my curiosity. Although I would prefer Nix or Guix due to their interesting declarative approach, I decided to go for Gentoo so I can have a better understanding of how to tweak the heck out of a real system. Also, probably getting more up-to-date on C++. I have let my skills slack, and some of the new things in C++20 seem intriguing. The only issue here is finding a good project to work on. Doing interview-style problems is basically "how to use the standard library proficiently in the scope of one file, and probably just ~5 methods", and other things seem difficult to approach. This seems very different from the clear progression one finds in other popular languages. (If anyone has any suggestions for such projects, please do share. I could use some help)
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    C++ has been my main programming language for the last 20+ years. (Dang this makes me feel old.) For my paid work (at multiple jobs), I've never been allowed to use C++ newer than C++11. At first it was due to incomplete compiler support, and later on it was because various customers were using older versions of RHEL whose standard version of GCC was something like 4.8. Anyone else experiencing this?
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      the vast majority of C++ dev out there is >= 11 per https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/cpp/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/cpp/ with C++14 / 17 being regularly used by >60% of respondants. Large libraries such as Qt now require C++17.
- artificialLimbs 6y ago
  At 40, after having a kid with my wife a couple years ago, I've just started getting serious about learning to program, after a lifetime of lazily dabbling in various i.t. things. Am now enrolled in uni to finish my bach in CS, which is also where I work. Have also began to learn about investing in 2020 and have had a lot of fun doing that. Highly recommend the Investing for Beginners podcast with Andrew Sather and Dave Ahern if you don't know anything (like me). Not afraid to say I've been contributing time to a nonprofit arts organization in my area, and have gotten on its board of directors. I run their web site and we're doing a frontend overhaul/server swap/Cloudflare DNS setup this month. Admittedly a bit scared because I've done this on my own setups but not on a site that gets traffic. Onward to 2021!
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    /r/wallstreetbets was a fantastic place to really get into the higher forms of investment until it garnered attention from the mainstream... now its full of idiotic "autist" and "retard" jokes. There was surprisingly high-level technical analysis going on there at one point.
- scarecrowbob 6y ago
  I've been trying to work on my outdoor skills... I already rock climb and ski a little bit. I am hoping to learn to lead easy ice climbs and get into the backcountry to ski this winter, including some overnight trips. We got out today, booted up a snowy canyon... only to find no ice. Oh well, that is the process: we just keep going out and doing progressively more difficult goals, and try not to get killed in a slide or a fall. Also, my company has hired someone to work directly under me, so I hope to learn to be a competent manager, which I've never done in a formal situation. I've been reading a lot and reflecting on my own experiences, and have been documenting our processes. I will have a plan to onboard the new person soon. Finally, if the covid situation eases up later in the year, I hope to return to performing music. I've been in a lot of bands and performed solo, or even one-off gigs with other musicians, but I hope to be able to build a band that a) I am fronting for > 80% of the material and b) brings in some income beyond what it takes to operate. That part of the business has its own set of learning curves, at least as far as I can tell from my years as a semi-professional side guy. The plan there is to start as a solo performer and gradually add other musicians, using low-rent bar gigs as rehearsals, but I am not sure how that will work out.
- vharuck 6y ago
  I'm going to continue learning Japanese. Focusing more on reading instead of just flash cards. I've also set a five-year goal to get a creative work published. The first two years will be dedicated to reading more good works and writing more (likely terrible) things. Not planning beyond the first two, because that'll likely change when I understand more about how one goes about getting published. Even if I give up after a year, I'll have enjoyed the prep work.
- verma7 6y ago
  I am planning to learn how to write better. I am starting that by maintaining a stream of consciousness personal daily log. Also get more practice by commenting on Hacker News :)
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  In 2020, after 30 years in IT / simulation, I started as a volunteer in a raptor conservancy. It’s an outdoor job: in rain or shine, hot or cold, the birds still need their aviaries cleaning, and the weeds in the grounds don’t stop growing. The experts on the bird team are perhaps 30 years younger than me, and I will never be as good as they are at handling prima-donna falcons and flying-psychopath eagles. This has been a superb exercise in learning humility and the need to earn respect based on getting menial jobs done rather than one’s past glories. The pay off is the privilege of being able to help with the flying displays, and having these stunning birds fly to you over the heads of the excited audience when you correctly give the "I've got food" signal they've been trained to recognise. > What are people from the community here going to start to learn for the first time this year Continuing learning how to handle these magnificent animals and to work with them to create impressive experience for the visitors.
- nxc18 6y ago
  I’ve got a few plans that involved substantial learning. I try to get a head start on New Years, this time specifically because I moved cities and that’s a great opportunity to build new habits. 1. I’m forcing myself to push through with Linux on the desktop and managing a more robust network. This will help with 2. It’s going pretty well so far. The big insight has been to work around some of the harder parts rather than punish myself; e.g. I just don’t use the intel graphics and the nvidia graphics simultaneously. I bought a DisplayPort cable so I can use two monitors with my one nvidia card. Next up, I want to get a setup where I can run my self-hosted services reliably across several devices. I may do a kubernetes type setup across several raspberry pi servers and possibly a new dedicated x86 box. I’ve never used kubernetes so figuring out if that’s crazy will be part of the learning process. 2. I’ve always a wanted to take on a real-life 3D mapping project. I’ve got a 360 camera on the way, which I’ll be using at first with mapillary, then self-hosting with openstreetcam. The pieces are all there to build 3D models from that content, so that will be my opportunity to really learn how that stuff works and make it happen. I love the city at night so I’d like to build a full nighttime map if possible; it looks totally different than during the day, but there’s enough artificial light I think it should be possible, if not practical. 3. I’ve outfitted my kitchen and am committing myself to cooking all but one or two meals a week, and to try to do that well. I suck really bad, but I’m starting to build an intuition for how basic bread works, I’ve had some mild success with quick breads and am also starting to have intuition for corn bread specifically. I made butter chicken on Monday for the first time, from a recipe that suspiciously used no butter. It came out great but not quite like I’m used to at restaurants; I look forward to trying again. I’d love to get into sweets and pastries like croissants. Biggest lesson learned so far: hand-rolled butter is worth every last penny, despite being twice as expensive than the usual butter. It has a depth and complexity of flavor more like cheddar than the mass-produced stuff. 4. I’m learning piano and music theory through that. It is a lot of fun, but certainly not easy. This is the first time in a while I’ve get viscerally what it’s like to be a child learning to walk - getting my hands to do the right thing at the right time is very difficult, especially with two-handed playing. I’ve also been amazed at how quickly ability builds with regular practice. I still suck really bad, but I’m getting what I wanted out of it, including a deeper appreciation of the music I listen to, the ability to read very simple sheet music, and honestly just a humbling challenge. I highly recommend it if you haven’t learned music already; it so so different from my usual skills that it really is like building from scratch. The process is physically exhausting because of the amount of effort it takes to operate my hands and not press the wrong keys. I feel like I can feel how much my brain is changing to build those new pathways.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Piano. I am 48, but I love learning new things. Playing instrument is something what I wanted to do for a looong time. Bought myself an electric guitar last year, and I do practice a bit, but have nothing to show for it now. It appears to be going a bit easier with a piano (I still do practice guitar). Not willing to stick to self-learning only I've already made an arrangement with a piano teacher, will have my lessons when the quarantine is lifted. For now SimplePiano and Flowkey will do. Last year was when I got hooked on astrophotography, going very well so far (I have good skills at photography and image processing so it was way easier). Brought some satisfaction for not finishing my astrophysics PhD program.
- HalcyonicStorm 6y ago
  I'm planning on learning Unreal Engine this year. I had purchased some courses on Udemy including the Unreal Engine C++ Developer course. I've been wanting to pick this up for a while so my personal OKR is to finish this course in the next 3 months.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    That's nuts, I literally just downloaded UE yesterday and subscribed to Quixel to compliment my learning. I'd be very interested in knowing which courses you selected.
    - HalcyonicStorm 6y ago
      I'm doing https://www.udemy.com/share/101WeuA0EbdFZbR3w=/ https://www.udemy.com/share/101WeuA0EbdFZbR3w=/
- JoeDaDude 6y ago
  As a grown man (with grown children!) I find it incredibly humbling to learn to read all over again. I am learning Hiragana as a necessary step to learning Japanese.
- clxxx 6y ago
  Downsizing our current company has given me some more free time (which is bittersweet, as it seems to signal the beginning of the end for us, but liberating at the same time) to pursue some non-career oriented goals. I’m learning statistics and probability. I’ve found that learning an academic subject, without the academic pressure, is a very productive way to learn for me. Doing the exercises feel more like a rigor of learning rather than for a grade, which is a refreshing and unfamiliar feeling for me.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  I already picked some stuff up in 2020, so I'll probably continue with that. I started painting miniatures - it's something I've always wanted to do but never really did. I also bought some cheap ones so my kids can paint along. Working on my text MUD. Which involves learning more about Elixir. And spending more leisure time reading books - I don't have that much exposure, and want to get some worldbuilding inspiration.
- ED_Radish 6y ago
  I'm mostly planning on spending my time honing in on the skills that I started learning in 2020. That is music production and art. I've been doing music production on and off, but this year i plan to really hone in and try to improve . I also got an art tablet after half a year of doing pixel animation, and digital art is really rewarding! It helps that I already have the basics of art down.
Swizec 6y ago
The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best is now. In some years you’ll be 40. Time passes whether you use it or not. Try to use it. The hard part is realizing when it’s time to become a beginner (because you’ve stopped growing) and try something new. Choosing the new thing is tough.
- deltron3030 6y ago
  >The hard part is realizing when it’s time to become a beginner (because you’ve stopped growing) and try something new. You know it's time when you look back at things you did years ago and find them still pretty stunning. The future within that discipline can only hold different variations of that feeling. The only way to change this is by branching out and come back with fresh perspectives.
- paulpauper 6y ago
  no, it would be 9 years ago, 8 years ago, etc. That is my favorite rebuttal to that overused quote
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Reminds me of, “war is not the answer.” It really depends on the question! “What is a three letter word for...”
- hotcrossbunny 6y ago
  -> In some years you'll be 40 ...noting value for "some" may not necessarily be positive
  - Swizec 6y ago
    Yep, 10 years ago I wouldve used “30”. It’s a useful mindset at any age. You aren’t done until you say you’re done.
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
simonw 6y ago
Many years ago I heard about someone who started learning the piano at 70 and was a concert pianist at 80. That's stuck in my head ever since as a counter argument to any time that I think it's too late for me to start learning something new.
- drzaiusapelord 6y ago
  That's both inspiring and horrifying. I'm a little older than the demographic here and sometimes see myself on this somewhat stressful hamster wheel of "Okay I tired of x, now I should explore y." Then y becomes tiresome and I move on to z. Over and over. I wondered when that would end. I guess it never does. No one talks about what happens when your life becomes steady. You just get unsatisfied in other ways so then your hobbies take over. Worse, if you don't do anything like this and just become a TV/social media addict then you brain ages worse than being a productive forever learner. I think about the Buddhist idea of suffering and being forever unsatisfied here a lot and wonder if the meditation crowd has this better figured out.
  - scsilver 6y ago
    I think the other solution is diving into more interpersonal relationships. Atleast those can be extremely fulfilling over a long time.
- riffnote 6y ago
  That's super inspiring. I'm learning piano improvisation and music composition at 50. If you have the name of this person, please share and I'll write his story on my blog.
derekp7 6y ago
When you are young and inexperienced, you don't know the difficulty of a subject. So as long as each step you take to advance your skill is achievable, and the feedback loop is good enough, you'll keep going. But as soon as you realize that you've only scratched maybe 1% of what is needed for mastery (when prior to that realization you felt like you were 90% there), it can be difficult to keep going. As you get older and more experienced you get exposed to many things that appear to be "easy" but you then find out how much work it is (after you've sunk a bunch of time and effort into it). After enough of this exposure you realize that any skill that isn't realized by a majority of the population takes an immense amount of dedication and opportunity cost. So after a while you tend to stick with what you already know (sunk cost). Of course your life satisfaction can improve with more skills you have, especially if they are skills that don't become too obsolete. For example being able to do some maintenance on your car (brake job, oil change, tire rotations, radiator flush...) can save money at a mechanic. And being able to take apart a sewer trap under a sink to clean out the hair clog is better than pouring a strong alkaline solution down the drain and hoping it works. So it is really important to learn enough life skills while you are young to help build up a health and satisfying life later.
- Cribbin 6y ago
  Well the counter-argument to that is: why do you need to achieve mastery? You can be happy with the slow progress you make along the way. You don't need to be Picasso to enjoy painting.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Yea, the counter to mastery is the realization that you can get to a useful place in most areas with 100 hours or less of effort. It’s nowhere near enough time to become say a short order cook, but plenty of time to learn to make bacon and eggs for breakfast in whatever specific way you want it.
    - _huayra_ 6y ago
      Learning when to stop at a satisfactory level is equally hard as learning when to floor it and push against some difficult goal. I think even 100 honest hours learning something will get you further than you probably need to go, e.g. basic home maintenance stuff that is just 1. find the right youtube video, 2. have the tools, 3. don't be a moron. god knows that my far beyond satisfactory level of dotfile / config tweaking has probably paid fewer dividends than I'd like to think...
yrimaxi 6y ago
Going by some sentiments on this site, too old is when you pass the age of twelve and haven’t by some innate instinct been drawn to hacker/tinkerdom.
- tmh88j 6y ago
  Silicon Valley captured this perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXKdRoB9Wk&t=1m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXKdRoB9Wk&t=1m10s
  - wowlookatme 6y ago
    It's quite ironic the kid is a fraud.
rmelhem 6y ago
having changed profession completely 3 times in the last 10 years, I need to completely agree with the article
paulpauper 6y ago
>From queuing to Zoom to mask etiquette, we were faced with an unsettling societal learning curve. The biggest nuisance with masks was forgetting to bring it with me when I go out. Now I just always keep one in my pocket.
cabaalis 6y ago
I saw an advertisement for an "apprenticeship" at a UK game development tool company that I'm a fan of. It said applicants must be aged 16 to 24. Is that standard practice in UK? How is that not age descrimination?
- jlokier 6y ago
  It's because the UK offered apprenticeship grants to companies, but only for people age 16 to 24. It was age discrimination, but it wasn't the company discriminating. The rules have changed. Similar grants are available for anyone 16 or older now, so the opportunity should be available at any employable age. There's still an age bias, but it's in the amount of money now. The total grant amount is higher for younger people than older people, with several steps. But on the other hand, the minimum wage is lower for younger people, and other things like housing benefit are also lower for younger people.
agumonkey 6y ago
3 years ago ~ I powered an led on a breadboard. It felt more magical than deriving a y combinator in my own lambda calculus. Strange (and beautiful feeling (and counter intuitive))
eyeball 6y ago
I seem to be unable to muster the energy and focus needed to learn anything new. (40s) “Over the hill” feels very real
stanrivers 6y ago
Reminds me of Cicero - On Old Age > For when Caecilius speaks of ” the old fools of the comic stage,” he has in mind old men characterized by credulity, forgetfulness, and carelessness, which are faults, not of old age generally, but only of an old age that is drowsy, slothful, and inert. > Yet his literary culture must have been of a high order. He learned Greek in his old age, after despising the language and its writers during the whole of his earlier life. He was a friend and patron of the poet Ennius, and brought him to Rome, though manifestly without any generous provision for his subsistence; for Ennius led in Rome as poor and straitened a life as he could have left in Sardinia, where Cato found him. https://www.butwhatfor.com/on-old-age-with-cicero/ https://www.butwhatfor.com/on-old-age-with-cicero/
leftnode 6y ago
I completely agree, especially if you are, like I imagine most HN readers are, already at the top of your professional field. In 2019, I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It's had a dramatic improvement on every aspect of my life: health, weight loss, stress relief, mental fortitude, friendships, breathing, everything. And in starting BJJ, you're going to be _awful_ at it. No matter how athletic you are, you're going to get destroyed (choked or joint locked) many, many, many times by people younger, older, weaker, stronger than you simply because they know more and have better technique. You really truly do start at the bottom. It's exhilarating. Every day after work (or before), you and a bunch of friends go into a padded room, put on pajamas with a thick belt, and attempt to strangle and/or joint lock one another. You learn new techniques, body mechanics, and actual fighting techniques. When you're rolling with someone else, literally every other stress in the world melts away as you're trying to stop your opponent from submitting you while you're trying to submit them. It truly is physical chess, and there's nothing better than switching from the drudgery of a job to a night of martial arts.
alchemism 6y ago
On a certain level Western Tarot is said to be a journey of mastery from 0, The Fool, backwards through the Major Arcana from 21 down to 1, The Magus. The only place to go upon reaching 1 is back to being The Fool, 0, to start the journey again.

227 points by wallflower 6y ago

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/qOHnx https://archive.is/qOHnx

pgp00 6y ago

Never too young either... I guess never a bad time!

DizzyDoo 6y ago

What are people from the community here going to start to learn for the first time this year? I'd be interested on hearing a range of different plans; creative, personal, business, technical and so on.

Cribbin 6y ago
I know I plan to pick up sewing this year. It isn't something I've ever given any thought, but I've fallen down a rabbit hole in the last few weeks and am excited to start mending my own clothes and creating new outfits.
- thn-gap 6y ago
  One of my favorite things in life is to get into a rabbit hole of a new hobby. This usually comes with lots of energy from the excitement and learning something new. I also love listening to friends and others talk about whatever hobby they are deep into. It's fascinating how almost anything can become someone's main hobby and passion.
_huayra_ 6y ago
It may be a meme, but using Gentoo for the first time. I did Linux From Scratch in a VM and it piqued my curiosity. Although I would prefer Nix or Guix due to their interesting declarative approach, I decided to go for Gentoo so I can have a better understanding of how to tweak the heck out of a real system. Also, probably getting more up-to-date on C++. I have let my skills slack, and some of the new things in C++20 seem intriguing. The only issue here is finding a good project to work on. Doing interview-style problems is basically "how to use the standard library proficiently in the scope of one file, and probably just ~5 methods", and other things seem difficult to approach. This seems very different from the clear progression one finds in other popular languages. (If anyone has any suggestions for such projects, please do share. I could use some help)
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  C++ has been my main programming language for the last 20+ years. (Dang this makes me feel old.) For my paid work (at multiple jobs), I've never been allowed to use C++ newer than C++11. At first it was due to incomplete compiler support, and later on it was because various customers were using older versions of RHEL whose standard version of GCC was something like 4.8. Anyone else experiencing this?
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    the vast majority of C++ dev out there is >= 11 per https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/cpp/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/cpp/ with C++14 / 17 being regularly used by >60% of respondants. Large libraries such as Qt now require C++17.
artificialLimbs 6y ago
At 40, after having a kid with my wife a couple years ago, I've just started getting serious about learning to program, after a lifetime of lazily dabbling in various i.t. things. Am now enrolled in uni to finish my bach in CS, which is also where I work. Have also began to learn about investing in 2020 and have had a lot of fun doing that. Highly recommend the Investing for Beginners podcast with Andrew Sather and Dave Ahern if you don't know anything (like me). Not afraid to say I've been contributing time to a nonprofit arts organization in my area, and have gotten on its board of directors. I run their web site and we're doing a frontend overhaul/server swap/Cloudflare DNS setup this month. Admittedly a bit scared because I've done this on my own setups but not on a site that gets traffic. Onward to 2021!
- cbozeman 6y ago
  /r/wallstreetbets was a fantastic place to really get into the higher forms of investment until it garnered attention from the mainstream... now its full of idiotic "autist" and "retard" jokes. There was surprisingly high-level technical analysis going on there at one point.
scarecrowbob 6y ago
I've been trying to work on my outdoor skills... I already rock climb and ski a little bit. I am hoping to learn to lead easy ice climbs and get into the backcountry to ski this winter, including some overnight trips. We got out today, booted up a snowy canyon... only to find no ice. Oh well, that is the process: we just keep going out and doing progressively more difficult goals, and try not to get killed in a slide or a fall. Also, my company has hired someone to work directly under me, so I hope to learn to be a competent manager, which I've never done in a formal situation. I've been reading a lot and reflecting on my own experiences, and have been documenting our processes. I will have a plan to onboard the new person soon. Finally, if the covid situation eases up later in the year, I hope to return to performing music. I've been in a lot of bands and performed solo, or even one-off gigs with other musicians, but I hope to be able to build a band that a) I am fronting for > 80% of the material and b) brings in some income beyond what it takes to operate. That part of the business has its own set of learning curves, at least as far as I can tell from my years as a semi-professional side guy. The plan there is to start as a solo performer and gradually add other musicians, using low-rent bar gigs as rehearsals, but I am not sure how that will work out.
vharuck 6y ago
I'm going to continue learning Japanese. Focusing more on reading instead of just flash cards. I've also set a five-year goal to get a creative work published. The first two years will be dedicated to reading more good works and writing more (likely terrible) things. Not planning beyond the first two, because that'll likely change when I understand more about how one goes about getting published. Even if I give up after a year, I'll have enjoyed the prep work.
verma7 6y ago
I am planning to learn how to write better. I am starting that by maintaining a stream of consciousness personal daily log. Also get more practice by commenting on Hacker News :)
KineticLensman 6y ago
In 2020, after 30 years in IT / simulation, I started as a volunteer in a raptor conservancy. It’s an outdoor job: in rain or shine, hot or cold, the birds still need their aviaries cleaning, and the weeds in the grounds don’t stop growing. The experts on the bird team are perhaps 30 years younger than me, and I will never be as good as they are at handling prima-donna falcons and flying-psychopath eagles. This has been a superb exercise in learning humility and the need to earn respect based on getting menial jobs done rather than one’s past glories. The pay off is the privilege of being able to help with the flying displays, and having these stunning birds fly to you over the heads of the excited audience when you correctly give the "I've got food" signal they've been trained to recognise. > What are people from the community here going to start to learn for the first time this year Continuing learning how to handle these magnificent animals and to work with them to create impressive experience for the visitors.
nxc18 6y ago
I’ve got a few plans that involved substantial learning. I try to get a head start on New Years, this time specifically because I moved cities and that’s a great opportunity to build new habits. 1. I’m forcing myself to push through with Linux on the desktop and managing a more robust network. This will help with 2. It’s going pretty well so far. The big insight has been to work around some of the harder parts rather than punish myself; e.g. I just don’t use the intel graphics and the nvidia graphics simultaneously. I bought a DisplayPort cable so I can use two monitors with my one nvidia card. Next up, I want to get a setup where I can run my self-hosted services reliably across several devices. I may do a kubernetes type setup across several raspberry pi servers and possibly a new dedicated x86 box. I’ve never used kubernetes so figuring out if that’s crazy will be part of the learning process. 2. I’ve always a wanted to take on a real-life 3D mapping project. I’ve got a 360 camera on the way, which I’ll be using at first with mapillary, then self-hosting with openstreetcam. The pieces are all there to build 3D models from that content, so that will be my opportunity to really learn how that stuff works and make it happen. I love the city at night so I’d like to build a full nighttime map if possible; it looks totally different than during the day, but there’s enough artificial light I think it should be possible, if not practical. 3. I’ve outfitted my kitchen and am committing myself to cooking all but one or two meals a week, and to try to do that well. I suck really bad, but I’m starting to build an intuition for how basic bread works, I’ve had some mild success with quick breads and am also starting to have intuition for corn bread specifically. I made butter chicken on Monday for the first time, from a recipe that suspiciously used no butter. It came out great but not quite like I’m used to at restaurants; I look forward to trying again. I’d love to get into sweets and pastries like croissants. Biggest lesson learned so far: hand-rolled butter is worth every last penny, despite being twice as expensive than the usual butter. It has a depth and complexity of flavor more like cheddar than the mass-produced stuff. 4. I’m learning piano and music theory through that. It is a lot of fun, but certainly not easy. This is the first time in a while I’ve get viscerally what it’s like to be a child learning to walk - getting my hands to do the right thing at the right time is very difficult, especially with two-handed playing. I’ve also been amazed at how quickly ability builds with regular practice. I still suck really bad, but I’m getting what I wanted out of it, including a deeper appreciation of the music I listen to, the ability to read very simple sheet music, and honestly just a humbling challenge. I highly recommend it if you haven’t learned music already; it so so different from my usual skills that it really is like building from scratch. The process is physically exhausting because of the amount of effort it takes to operate my hands and not press the wrong keys. I feel like I can feel how much my brain is changing to build those new pathways.
rimliu 6y ago
Piano. I am 48, but I love learning new things. Playing instrument is something what I wanted to do for a looong time. Bought myself an electric guitar last year, and I do practice a bit, but have nothing to show for it now. It appears to be going a bit easier with a piano (I still do practice guitar). Not willing to stick to self-learning only I've already made an arrangement with a piano teacher, will have my lessons when the quarantine is lifted. For now SimplePiano and Flowkey will do. Last year was when I got hooked on astrophotography, going very well so far (I have good skills at photography and image processing so it was way easier). Brought some satisfaction for not finishing my astrophysics PhD program.
HalcyonicStorm 6y ago
I'm planning on learning Unreal Engine this year. I had purchased some courses on Udemy including the Unreal Engine C++ Developer course. I've been wanting to pick this up for a while so my personal OKR is to finish this course in the next 3 months.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  That's nuts, I literally just downloaded UE yesterday and subscribed to Quixel to compliment my learning. I'd be very interested in knowing which courses you selected.
  - HalcyonicStorm 6y ago
    I'm doing https://www.udemy.com/share/101WeuA0EbdFZbR3w=/ https://www.udemy.com/share/101WeuA0EbdFZbR3w=/
JoeDaDude 6y ago
As a grown man (with grown children!) I find it incredibly humbling to learn to read all over again. I am learning Hiragana as a necessary step to learning Japanese.
clxxx 6y ago
Downsizing our current company has given me some more free time (which is bittersweet, as it seems to signal the beginning of the end for us, but liberating at the same time) to pursue some non-career oriented goals. I’m learning statistics and probability. I’ve found that learning an academic subject, without the academic pressure, is a very productive way to learn for me. Doing the exercises feel more like a rigor of learning rather than for a grade, which is a refreshing and unfamiliar feeling for me.
bcrosby95 6y ago
I already picked some stuff up in 2020, so I'll probably continue with that. I started painting miniatures - it's something I've always wanted to do but never really did. I also bought some cheap ones so my kids can paint along. Working on my text MUD. Which involves learning more about Elixir. And spending more leisure time reading books - I don't have that much exposure, and want to get some worldbuilding inspiration.
ED_Radish 6y ago
I'm mostly planning on spending my time honing in on the skills that I started learning in 2020. That is music production and art. I've been doing music production on and off, but this year i plan to really hone in and try to improve . I also got an art tablet after half a year of doing pixel animation, and digital art is really rewarding! It helps that I already have the basics of art down.

Swizec 6y ago

The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best is now. In some years you’ll be 40. Time passes whether you use it or not. Try to use it. The hard part is realizing when it’s time to become a beginner (because you’ve stopped growing) and try something new. Choosing the new thing is tough.

deltron3030 6y ago
>The hard part is realizing when it’s time to become a beginner (because you’ve stopped growing) and try something new. You know it's time when you look back at things you did years ago and find them still pretty stunning. The future within that discipline can only hold different variations of that feeling. The only way to change this is by branching out and come back with fresh perspectives.
paulpauper 6y ago
no, it would be 9 years ago, 8 years ago, etc. That is my favorite rebuttal to that overused quote
- sethammons 6y ago
  Reminds me of, “war is not the answer.” It really depends on the question! “What is a three letter word for...”
hotcrossbunny 6y ago
-> In some years you'll be 40 ...noting value for "some" may not necessarily be positive
- Swizec 6y ago
  Yep, 10 years ago I wouldve used “30”. It’s a useful mindset at any age. You aren’t done until you say you’re done.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago

simonw 6y ago

Many years ago I heard about someone who started learning the piano at 70 and was a concert pianist at 80. That's stuck in my head ever since as a counter argument to any time that I think it's too late for me to start learning something new.

drzaiusapelord 6y ago
That's both inspiring and horrifying. I'm a little older than the demographic here and sometimes see myself on this somewhat stressful hamster wheel of "Okay I tired of x, now I should explore y." Then y becomes tiresome and I move on to z. Over and over. I wondered when that would end. I guess it never does. No one talks about what happens when your life becomes steady. You just get unsatisfied in other ways so then your hobbies take over. Worse, if you don't do anything like this and just become a TV/social media addict then you brain ages worse than being a productive forever learner. I think about the Buddhist idea of suffering and being forever unsatisfied here a lot and wonder if the meditation crowd has this better figured out.
- scsilver 6y ago
  I think the other solution is diving into more interpersonal relationships. Atleast those can be extremely fulfilling over a long time.
riffnote 6y ago
That's super inspiring. I'm learning piano improvisation and music composition at 50. If you have the name of this person, please share and I'll write his story on my blog.

derekp7 6y ago

When you are young and inexperienced, you don't know the difficulty of a subject. So as long as each step you take to advance your skill is achievable, and the feedback loop is good enough, you'll keep going. But as soon as you realize that you've only scratched maybe 1% of what is needed for mastery (when prior to that realization you felt like you were 90% there), it can be difficult to keep going. As you get older and more experienced you get exposed to many things that appear to be "easy" but you then find out how much work it is (after you've sunk a bunch of time and effort into it). After enough of this exposure you realize that any skill that isn't realized by a majority of the population takes an immense amount of dedication and opportunity cost. So after a while you tend to stick with what you already know (sunk cost). Of course your life satisfaction can improve with more skills you have, especially if they are skills that don't become too obsolete. For example being able to do some maintenance on your car (brake job, oil change, tire rotations, radiator flush...) can save money at a mechanic. And being able to take apart a sewer trap under a sink to clean out the hair clog is better than pouring a strong alkaline solution down the drain and hoping it works. So it is really important to learn enough life skills while you are young to help build up a health and satisfying life later.

Cribbin 6y ago
Well the counter-argument to that is: why do you need to achieve mastery? You can be happy with the slow progress you make along the way. You don't need to be Picasso to enjoy painting.
- Retric 6y ago
  Yea, the counter to mastery is the realization that you can get to a useful place in most areas with 100 hours or less of effort. It’s nowhere near enough time to become say a short order cook, but plenty of time to learn to make bacon and eggs for breakfast in whatever specific way you want it.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Learning when to stop at a satisfactory level is equally hard as learning when to floor it and push against some difficult goal. I think even 100 honest hours learning something will get you further than you probably need to go, e.g. basic home maintenance stuff that is just 1. find the right youtube video, 2. have the tools, 3. don't be a moron. god knows that my far beyond satisfactory level of dotfile / config tweaking has probably paid fewer dividends than I'd like to think...

yrimaxi 6y ago

Going by some sentiments on this site, too old is when you pass the age of twelve and haven’t by some innate instinct been drawn to hacker/tinkerdom.

tmh88j 6y ago
Silicon Valley captured this perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXKdRoB9Wk&t=1m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXKdRoB9Wk&t=1m10s
- wowlookatme 6y ago
  It's quite ironic the kid is a fraud.

rmelhem 6y ago

having changed profession completely 3 times in the last 10 years, I need to completely agree with the article

paulpauper 6y ago

>From queuing to Zoom to mask etiquette, we were faced with an unsettling societal learning curve. The biggest nuisance with masks was forgetting to bring it with me when I go out. Now I just always keep one in my pocket.

cabaalis 6y ago

I saw an advertisement for an "apprenticeship" at a UK game development tool company that I'm a fan of. It said applicants must be aged 16 to 24. Is that standard practice in UK? How is that not age descrimination?

jlokier 6y ago
It's because the UK offered apprenticeship grants to companies, but only for people age 16 to 24. It was age discrimination, but it wasn't the company discriminating. The rules have changed. Similar grants are available for anyone 16 or older now, so the opportunity should be available at any employable age. There's still an age bias, but it's in the amount of money now. The total grant amount is higher for younger people than older people, with several steps. But on the other hand, the minimum wage is lower for younger people, and other things like housing benefit are also lower for younger people.

agumonkey 6y ago

3 years ago ~ I powered an led on a breadboard. It felt more magical than deriving a y combinator in my own lambda calculus. Strange (and beautiful feeling (and counter intuitive))

eyeball 6y ago

I seem to be unable to muster the energy and focus needed to learn anything new. (40s) “Over the hill” feels very real

stanrivers 6y ago

Reminds me of Cicero - On Old Age > For when Caecilius speaks of ” the old fools of the comic stage,” he has in mind old men characterized by credulity, forgetfulness, and carelessness, which are faults, not of old age generally, but only of an old age that is drowsy, slothful, and inert. > Yet his literary culture must have been of a high order. He learned Greek in his old age, after despising the language and its writers during the whole of his earlier life. He was a friend and patron of the poet Ennius, and brought him to Rome, though manifestly without any generous provision for his subsistence; for Ennius led in Rome as poor and straitened a life as he could have left in Sardinia, where Cato found him. https://www.butwhatfor.com/on-old-age-with-cicero/ https://www.butwhatfor.com/on-old-age-with-cicero/

leftnode 6y ago

I completely agree, especially if you are, like I imagine most HN readers are, already at the top of your professional field. In 2019, I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It's had a dramatic improvement on every aspect of my life: health, weight loss, stress relief, mental fortitude, friendships, breathing, everything. And in starting BJJ, you're going to be _awful_ at it. No matter how athletic you are, you're going to get destroyed (choked or joint locked) many, many, many times by people younger, older, weaker, stronger than you simply because they know more and have better technique. You really truly do start at the bottom. It's exhilarating. Every day after work (or before), you and a bunch of friends go into a padded room, put on pajamas with a thick belt, and attempt to strangle and/or joint lock one another. You learn new techniques, body mechanics, and actual fighting techniques. When you're rolling with someone else, literally every other stress in the world melts away as you're trying to stop your opponent from submitting you while you're trying to submit them. It truly is physical chess, and there's nothing better than switching from the drudgery of a job to a night of martial arts.

alchemism 6y ago

On a certain level Western Tarot is said to be a journey of mastery from 0, The Fool, backwards through the Major Arcana from 21 down to 1, The Magus. The only place to go upon reaching 1 is back to being The Fool, 0, to start the journey again.