8 ms·

Maker Skill Trees

478 points by saulpw 2y ago

engineer_22 2y ago
Maker merit badges
- genericone 2y ago
  a la eagle scouts? https://www.scouting.org/skills/merit-badges/eagle-required/ https://www.scouting.org/skills/merit-badges/eagle-required/
- willmeyers 2y ago
  I agree. These are fun badges to maybe collect and help move you along a path. I don't think they should be followed in a sequence. For example, if you look at the game development one... why do I need to write a game design document before making a game? Doesn't seem like the right approach in my opinion.
  - jagged-chisel 2y ago
    Notice that these are hexagonal and you can chart a path right around that tile.
throwway120385 2y ago
I thought the "House Building" one would include things like wiring, plumbing, drywall, mudding & taping, texturing, painting, finish carpentry, framing/formbuilding(rough carpentry), concrete, flooring, and so on. Instead it's more about doing feasability and stuff. The Renovation & Repair one lumps a lot of discrete skill sets together and maybe leaves a lot of stuff up to "experts." A lot of these "skill sets" have fractal complexity, where if you dig in on "Concrete work" you'll find yourself going down a rabbit hole of form building, hydrostatic pressure, foundation squaring, and so on. Even pouring an unreinforced slab for a patio requires some distinct skills. Plumbing is the same way where being able to replace a water heater could devolve into sweating new fittings. Is the intent here to document what you could do without knowing what the residential code is and how to pull permits in your area?
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  I would assume that you are not a carpenter: As a carpenter, I would include: Knowledge of Universal Building Codes, knowledge of local building codes, Local code checklists, Blue print reading, Site survey reading, and first hand knowledge of your local building department. (AHJ) Concrete forms, soil management, concrete testing, that is more than a rabbit hole, its a whole immense specialty. ( Ask Richard Sloan, who literally taught me how to finish concrete like glass... over very large areas. ) Tiling is deep also. ( Thanks Alejandro ). Even after more than 10 years work, texturing as a skill is still beyond me, and like far beyond me. Your point is well taken, but... This is an amazingly LARGE amount of work. Environmental skill?I cannot wait to see this one: I should make a Building a Desktop PC, Coaching, Transform your life. Truck Driving and Taking no sh*.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    >Tiling is deep [...] texturing is a skill beyond me. Interesting. Sounds like you have way more experience than me, but I feel pretty comfortable doing tiling and do a decent job, after doing a kitchen floor, backsplash, bathroom floor, and shower. The biggest risk with doing tiling is once you learn how to do it, you'll start noticing bad tiling jobs everywhere. Particularly lippage. I've also done decent jobs of texturing the couple attempts I've done. I don't love them, if I stare at them I think they look terrible but if I'm walking past I don't notice them. What in car racing they'd call a 50/50 paint job: looks good from 50 feet when it's going 50MPH. :-) But, what I'm starting to do, and what I did on my bathroom remodel, is doing a level 5 finish. It took me a while to get to where I was happy, but not having to texture and instead just painting the untextured wall came out pretty nice. I guess it's more common in "the west" to texture and level 5 in "the east" (USA).
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Perfection is just making sure any flaws are smaller than the observer's perceived level of detail. > you'll start noticing bad tiling jobs everywhere To me, that's the crux of it. There are structural and system jobs (load bearing carpentry, electrical, plumbing) and there's everything else (tiling, painting, countertops, cabinetry, etc). If you screw up the latter... it looks bad, and that's about the end of it. Which is to say, give it a go. Most people, with the proper investment of time and care, can do a better-than-contractor job on non-code/permit type work, simply by virtue of caring about it more.
stonethrowaway 2y ago
“Maker movement” is a hard commercialization angle of DIY, or really, doing anything. Not sure who came up with the label “Maker” but I’m personally not a fan. Maybe reading Christopher Tolkien has rubbed off on me. As someone who works hands on with a lot of things, I can’t help but feel like a cultural shift is taking place. I’m all for DIY so this is great, but you don’t have to be a “Maker” to get shit done.
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  To me it's less about DIY [0] and more about a production vs consumption attitude. The label "maker" is meant to distinguish someone who makes stuff, as opposed to consuming stuff (e.g. watch a TV show) or doing stuff (e.g. rock climbing). Sure, the word had been coopted to sell things. But so has DIY. And basically any label. If something is big enough to have a label that enough people use, someone else is going to use it to sell to that group. Our society commercializes the hell out of everything. [0] but of course there's overlap
- sandworm101 2y ago
  I have always understood "maker" to mean someone creating something new: Art, a new product, a bespoke bit of sports equipment. I do not believe that going whitewater rafting or reading an e-book qualifies as anything. Pouring cement or wiring a new light switch is more handyman than "maker" imho.
- gspencley 2y ago
  As with anything, the word starts to get applied to things that the originators didn't necessarily intend. My working definition of "maker" is someone who fabricates physical things. It's less DIY'er and more crafts & hobbies on steroids. The classic example is people who work in prop departments in movies and theatre. In that arena, you need to be a jack of all trades when it comes to fabricating physical anything. The skills include everything from woodworking and metalworking to mold making, model making, painting etc. The more you specialize the less the word "maker" applies as I conceive of it. A guitar luthier could certainly be considered a maker by some, I mean it is "making guitars" but the term is intentionally broader than someone who specializes in making something very specific. But consider the term "furniture maker." We have used the word "maker" in the past to describe someone who makes something specific. You just take off the qualifier and you have someone who makes all sorts of things. My wife and I are part time magicians and what I often say drives me to magic is that it is the ultimate "maker" hobby. It is extremely multi-disciplined. There's the strict "magic domain" (misdirection, sleight of hand) but depending on what you want to do you end up getting into all sorts of tangential skill development from costume and wardrobe fabrication to building illusions out of a variety of materials (woodworking & metal working) to making smaller hidden devices ("gimmicks" as magicians call them) to practical VFX (makeup, prosthetics etc.) All that being said, I completely agree that the term has become so overused as to start to border on meaningless.
sandworm101 2y ago
Advanced cooking skill: "Make Sushi" No. Do not attempt this casually. Every couple years someone in the northwest gets the idea to catch their own salmon and serve it up as sushi. Sushi is not an at-home thing. Either learn to freeze the fish yourself per local hygiene rules and in the correct freezer, or buy from the professionals. For reference, with tables listing the basic rules in various jurisdictions: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/E/2017/eb-raw-fish-parasites.pdf https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/E/2017/...
- tptacek 2y ago
  I haven't read it, but I assume "making sushi" starts with buying sashimi-safe proteins, not literally catching fish out of the water. Some proteins, like farmed Atlantic salmon, are safe enough that you can just buy them at Whole Foods. Bluefin tuna appears to actually be exempt from the FDA freezing rule, too. You can in fact casually make nigiri. It's not a big deal. I'd start with poke, though, because good nigiri is actually pretty hard to do. As someone commented on AskCulinary: the big no-no is random (non-exempt) raw wild catch.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    > I assume "making sushi" starts with buying sashimi-safe proteins, not literally catching fish Buying the proteins? Do you mean that or do you mean buying the fish, maybe?
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Fish isn't the only option for protein in sushi. "Protein" is among other things cooking slang for "the thing in the dish that serves the purpose meat often does". In a tamago nigiri, egg would be the protein.
- thepasswordis 2y ago
  It's generally considered safe to eat raw Norwegian farmed salmon: https://www.fromnorway.com/stories-from-norway/a-perfect-environment/norwegian-salmon--already-perfect/ https://www.fromnorway.com/stories-from-norway/a-perfect-env...
ecshafer 2y ago
These skill trees are so awful. The computing one has "learn to type on a keyboard" after buying a domain, setting up an email domain, make a website, make a blog, or building your own computer. Their measure of advance in general is basically random. Also they aren't trees.
- mguerville 2y ago
  The entrepreneur one has "visit a coworking space" at the mid level of difficulty...
  - Handprint4469 2y ago
    Almost as if this whole thing was the output of an LLM, rather than an actual human... gasps
- alentred 2y ago
  You are reading it in the wrong direction. "Learn to type on a keyboard" is the basic skill (and I am pretty sure it means some form of touch typing, not a finger-poking), and "Buying a domain" is the advanced one.
  - justneedaname 2y ago
    Peak HN to clearly not even spend 1 minute to understand the content to then come in the comments ranting about how bad it is and that it's wrong. Sure, some of the ordering of difficulties may be off but a lot of it is subjective depending on what you already know I'd say. I think they're a good way of getting some motivation of projects to undertake
    - ecshafer 2y ago
      Even more peak Hackernews is assuming the OP is wrong when the author had between my comment and your comment, made a PR specifically changing my complaint. https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree/commit/752a13566430dfae973a3cac81cfceec4b63968e https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree/commit/752a1356...
Zondartul 2y ago
I applaud the effort, but, these templated skill trees are just not very good imo. I have only one issue but it's a big one: It's missing a tree structure, so there is no ordering of skills (learn easy stuff before hard stuff because there is a learning curve to anything). They might be good as prints to hang on your wall, but in the current state they're more "achievement lists" rather than anything resembling a tech tree.
- bhelkey 2y ago
  It looks like the easy stuff is at the bottom and the harder stuff is at the top. It's more of a skill line than a skill tree. That being said, I find the idea intriguing and the format appealing.
throwup238 2y ago
This is a brilliant idea but execution leaves a lot to be desired. I get that there's a lot of judgement calls going on here but I really wish this would become a popular project with lots of subject experts to weigh in. Looking at the PCB design skill tree, it just doesn't look very realistic. "Use an Autorouting tool," for example, is second after "Learn PCB Software" when it should be in the top half of the tree (if not in the top few rows). "Design an SMD PCB" is on the same horizontal line as "Hand solder SMD Parts", as is "Learn to Read a Schematic" and "Learn PCB Software"(?!) Learning the PCB design software is a process that must run in parallel with most of the skill tree. "Use a reflow oven to solder a PCB" is two who levels above "Use a pick & place machine" and so on. I get that a lot of this is path dependent on experience but "Use SMD tweezers" should probably go alongside "Solder SMD parts"...
- cbb330 2y ago
  If you contribute your expertise to improve the skill tree you can even get a cool sticker. https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree?tab=readme-ov-file#skill-tree-bug-bounties https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree?tab=readme-ov-f...
  - azeirah 2y ago
    I like stickers I will contribute :o
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Given the sheer breadths of topics (many non-tech), it'd be hard to to get expters to help cater every list. and of course, these kinds of skill workflows will always be opiionated. I can vouch in for game dev on a few odd sticklers: - There's definietely a lot of fluff in the beginning and a few odd side roads. Fluff is definitely fine in the beginning (yes, you ideally should play games, and especially bad ones), but some seem a bit useless without more direction. like following a dev stream or learning about accessibility features (which I think is great, but this is so far into the future unless your audience is someone who needs it. Accessibility is polish beyond polish). - There's an odd focus on tech that implies "more tools good". Make a game in Renpy, then make one in godot later on, then learn a 2d and 3d engine? as a nitpick I also find it funny that "make a game in Unreal Engine" either requires a game in Unity, a VR game, or this scenic route of level design and user research. What's your goal and game motivation? I go with the Bruce Lee mentality here. Pick a direction, pick a tool, then get really good at that tool. devs make games, not tools. - similar story with game features and ieas. AI (game AI not llm), procedural generation, voice acting, puzzles, modding, etc? Some people could go their entire careers and not need to use these for their games. It's a general purpose list but I guess this is where roadmaps could help. you definitely need different steps to work on a puzzle game compared to VN, compared to a procgen'd rougelite. - "fail to submit a game jam game before the deadline"... well, I didn't ask for a personal attack :(
groby_b 2y ago
I'm going "meh" here for all the skill trees I'm actually familiar with. Using keyboard shortcuts has nothing to do with coding. Negronis don't require more skills than old-fashioneds. Change Bedsheets comes well before any deep cleaning. The music one is just utterly absurd ("learn a difficult lick" before "learn guitar"?) I love the idea. The execution... leaves questions.
- BanazirGalbasi 2y ago
  After skimming the skills I'm familiar with, I came to the same conclusion. I was actually relieved when I saw that Blacksmithing isn't finished yet, and that's something that I'm definitely still an amateur at. I can't contribute anything meaningful to it, nor do I feel like it really needs an in-depth skill tree because most of it is just applying the same few basic skills in different orders. I feel like the author should have done a few for areas that they are actually knowledgeable in, then left the rest up to others. These feel too much like they were made by someone who tried to learn the surface of every topic they could access but doesn't know enough to organize any of what they learned.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  I generally agree, though a lot of these could be salvaged by a little bit of reordering. However, I have to pick: > Using keyboard shortcuts has nothing to do with coding. Unless you're coding with a pencil or a mouse, it very much does. People like to repeat the "most of my time coding is spend on thinking; typing speed is irrelevant" mantra quite mindlessly, and then they fail to appreciate just how much time they actually spend typing, miss that their bad typing ability is still impacting their overall speed (see: Amdahl's law) and is hindering them from working at a higher conceptual level than just characters and syntax tokens. Proficiency with keyboard shortcuts of your environment makes high-level operations like "swap these condition branches" or "move these functions over to that class" or "rename this function" atomic or near-atomic operations that you can use on the fly, without thinking much about it. This in turn makes you reason in those higher-level terms more, improving utilization of your thinking capabilities in the non-typing phase too. So yeah, I'd very much classify keyboard shortcut proficiency (including the associated mentality) as a mid-level critical coding skill.
delichon 2y ago
I think that this is getting negative feedback because "skill trees" raise expectations that this doesn't satisfy. A skill tree would be a dependency graph showing which skills depend on which other skills. This is more of a template for a related set of skills stacked by difficulty. Maybe just call it "Maker Skill Stacks" to head off the disappointment.
- lkbm 2y ago
  Yeah, something like that would help—I might go with "achievement chart", since many aren't even "skills". But there's also a lot of people pointing out that the basic vs advanced sorting is really questionable in some cases. It's going to be impossible to get an objectively correct sorting, but some seem to just be completely wrong.
- blargey 2y ago
  Also since they’re not really “skills” so much as items in a bucket list for your hobby, spread out horizontally.
lkbm 2y ago
Cooking has such a weird idea of basic vs. advanced. "Make garlic bread" is near the bottom, and then "use fresh garlic or ginger in a meal" is five rows higher. Apparently using fresh garlic and ginger is more advanced than "make a daal", which I've never considered even doing without fresh ginger? (And, wait, making popcorn is even more advanced?!) These specifics aside, the big issue I have is that basic/advanced is the wrong axis. It should be fundamental building blocks going up to more complex things dependent on those building blocks: using fresh ginger is a building block you learn so you can cook daal. You don't learn how to cook daal and at a later date learn how to add spices!
- motohagiography 2y ago
  I like the idea. To cooking I would add: - rice and beans from three continents - make a good vinegrette - make three mother sauces (learn a roux, fond, etc) - brine, dress, and roast a chicken/poultry - hunt, field dress, and butcher venison - catch, filet, and serve fish - top of the skill heap would be a bouliabaisse, if heap didn't include baking
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freestyle24147 2y ago
Were these skill "trees" the output of an LLM or something? Of the domains I have a lot of familiarity with, the ordering (if it can even be assumed the easy ones are at the bottom and the hard ones at the top) make little sense. I think if I were a newbie in any of these subjects and followed the "trees" as presented I would be quickly discouraged and lost.
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago
  > Were these skill "trees" the output of an LLM or something My thoughts exactly. There’s a strong LLM flavor to them.
bhelkey 2y ago
I love the idea, I love the format. As others have mentioned this isn't really a skill tree, it is more of a skill line. It is extremely difficult to be an expert in ~50 different skills. Because of this, it is difficult to make ~50 high quality skill progressions. Have you considered trying to crowd source skill achievements and priorities for these progressions?
user3939382 2y ago
For the uninitiated there are robust formal versions of this used by industry. My product bases higher ed and corporate assessment scoring on these. Check out ONET and Lightcast as a starting place.
t-writescode 2y ago
So much hate here in these comments and threads. I know for myself, sometimes it's good to even have an idea of small/medium/large sized projects / ideas to run with to consider as an "experience" in doing a new skill I've never worked in before. It looks like these are an attempt to create units of work that are approachable and individually researchable to complete. I think it's pretty great!
- 4ndrewl 2y ago
  The great thing about open source is that it enables all the people with the time to post negative comments here to address the shortcomings that their keen eyes have spotted...right?
  - yen223 2y ago
    But then I would be missing out on the dopamine hit from dunking on someone else's project
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    It also enables people with time to work on other, higher quality projects. Of all of the countless projects work on, why would you chose one so misleadingly labeled? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41383114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41383114
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      we're literally bikeshedding at this point. Labels are trivial to change. Not worth dumping an entire project over. What "higher quality" project deserved to be worked on more than this in your mind.
      - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
        I'm sorry it just doesn't work like that. There are a near infinite number of projects and other pursuits people can devote their time to. It's not reasonable to try to bully anyone who complains about anything promoted on a news or social aggregator to put their free time into working on it. One project I contributed to in the past was Anki. Since I was using it a lot and getting a lot of value out of it, I felt motivated to contribute some translations for its UI so that the students at my school could use it.
ldayley 2y ago
This is a fantastic idea, and I think the overall negativity misses the point of it being an evolving and collaborative project on github. When you don't know what you don't know, any little map can be helpful to get one started. When one desires to learn a skill they usually don't know what questions to ask to get started. This is one of the biggest challenges in learning, and there's a multibillion dollar industry devoted to easing that burden via textbooks and instructional videos. But equally important: beginners don't have a mental model for where that specific desired skill or knowledge lies on the continuum of the domain in which they're seeking to grow. This project puts skills in context, even if some of those contexts are (currently) very flawed. For example, I've begun working with a couple of teenage garage bands that live near me. I have a lot of experience as a working musician, and they didn't have any at all-- but they knew they wanted to write, record, and perform teenage garage music. I noticed a "Music" domain on the maker tree. It could use improvement, but what it does is make clear that there's more to being a performing musician than learning guitar. In fact I've watched these kids go from "make a playlist" to "learn about copyright & licensing" to "produce a track with another person" to "play a ticketed show", and many of these steps were both required ("learn to keep a beat" springs to mind ;) ) and also not obvious to them when they started. Each one of these domains is massive and full of intrinsic, context-dependent experiential knowledge. But they make a great starting point. I already learned some things about, say, the PCB design domain and have a better catalog of what I'd need to search the internet for to begin that rabbit-hole. Edit: spelling, grammar
mikewarot 2y ago
I'm pretty amazed at the idea, and how many variations are already filled out. The ones I knew something about seemed really complete. Well done!
agumonkey 2y ago
Brilliant trick. I wonder how to pair this with spaced repetition for iterating smoothly on each step.
deleted 2y ago
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starkparker 2y ago
Really wish these were called achievements instead of a skill tree to head off every discussion fixated on how these aren't actually tree structures and/or don't work like, or even have a similar intent as, video game skill trees. Especially seeing them in practice, it's pretty clear to me that the goal is to fill in all the segments, which helps to identify which skills or projects might be be sitting in a blind spot. And especially in a group environment, helping to point out which people might be able to answer questions about specific tasks because it's easier to spot on a chart like this than asking each member the same questions.
- kragen 2y ago
  yeah, they're poorly named and that seems to be one of several ways they're poorly thought out. but, whatever, 90% of everything is crap, and maybe they'll get better
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  The design clearly wants to be a tree, though. I don't feel the intent was to fill out every skill tree, but the "start here" and direct graph structure implies some sort of roadmap. It's less appealing, but a more directly communicative design would be more of a difficulty "bucket". Do X% of tasks in tier 1 and then start trying to tap into tier 2, etc.
ipaddr 2y ago
I checked out learn to code. Had things like write a quicksort, use a bitwise operator, teach a friend, give a speech on coding. Probably not the most useful list.
- benatkin 2y ago
  LGTM
- Jensson 2y ago
  > write a quicksort, use a bitwise operator, teach a friend, give a speech on coding Sounds like a typical tech influencer.
jpc0 2y ago
I don't want to be negative at all so I'll ask for clarification. What is expected if you have filled in every single one of these "goals"? I would honestly expect for the three disciplines where I am fairly confident I am good at, ie 10+ years of experience in an actual working environment. I would expect a relatively new to the industry person to have completed most of the goals. Completing the "skill tree" is the start of the journey in those disciplines not the end. My take, if you have done this skill tree you are now equipped to know whether you actually want to become an expert in that field. If this skill tree is up to the hobbyist level then sure, it's not too bad.
rtpg 2y ago
I've had an idea for a while of a site... kinda like letterboxd, where you could log "learning paths" for textbooks and the like (for example to log what chapters you've gone through, exercises and the like). I've built out some of it but would always get a bit lost in the weeds. I think there's a big challenge with self-learning in that you do kind of want feedback from people about whether you're going about some material the right way or not. This sort of stuff looks fun though.
motohagiography 2y ago
these are great. under civics, I didn't see "file an Access to Information (FOIA) request" which would have been good. under IT security, it's actually not bad from a beginner perspective as you need to know those things to know what the next levels up are. the music tree could use some detail, but overall I shared it with friends.
cjonas 2y ago
Closer to "bingo" than a proper skill tree. I was expecting something more like this: https://roadmap.sh/ https://roadmap.sh/
egypturnash 2y ago
"Stippling" is misspelled in the Comic Artist skill tree. Which I can pretty much fill in given that I can fill in the blank spaces with checked-off things like "get cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them". But I can't fill it in with "get two Reuben nominations" like one of my friends can. Also I feel like "submit your work to publishers" and "get someone else to publish your stuff for you" is distinctly lacking. And pretty much a requirement for the "two Rube noms". Personally I'd remove "use hatching/crosshatching/stipling" and the other misspelling of "digitally adjust the hue/saturation/contaract etc". The Visual Artist one mostly works though. I can fill pretty much all of that one in too.
janalsncm 2y ago
Usually when I’m learning a new thing I work backwards: what do I want to do, and what do I need to understand to accomplish it? The reason is very simple. If you learn a huge list of “skills” or “tools” you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep, which isn’t really good enough to get anything done. You have to get your hands dirty. This is also why (controversial take incoming) I don’t think calculus should be a prerequisite for computer science or even machine learning. Yes, it is possible you will need to know it. But most likely you won’t. Most people aren’t writing their own loss functions or backprop libraries. And if you are, great! You can learn it later. Way too many people stop before they ever get started because of unnecessary gatekeeps.
- duped 2y ago
  One reason calculus is a good prerequisite for CS is that it's typically where you introduced to the concepts of limits and are taught how to look at a formula and see how it behaves at extrema and critical points, if you're good it can be done by eye or with some basic white boarding. And that's (in the broadest strokes) the key skill set for complexity analysis and software architecture. One of the worst trends I've seen in recent years is the dogma of benchmarking and profiling as the gods of performance analysis. Any decent software engineer should be able to reason about how a program behaves by reading it before reaching for automated tooling - which by the way, won't tell you why a benchmark is bad or why some section of the program is a bottleneck.
RheingoldRiver 2y ago
My personal complaint is that "jewelry making" is on their todo list....jewelry making is like 20 different hobbies!! I make chainmaille jewelry. I know nothing about wire wrapping, let alone working with heat. Then you can have beaded jewelry, where there's bead crochet/weaving/other techniques (I don't know much about beads). There's macrame, there's glass, you can do ceramics, resin, etc. And this is just materials, not talking about designing vs crafting. That is not one hobby!
aszantu 2y ago
can someone say something about the entrepreneur skill tree? I've got the business Idea, want to solve via dropshipping and am stuck on finding makers and how to talk to them. Basically big-dog robot for granny, he can bring her food upstairs and follow her to the grocery. can't have complex smartphone controlls, a chip in your pocket so it follows you should be the default and so on - if you steal it, you're solving a problem for me, lol
relwin 2y ago
Fun lists but the "1 tile = 1 point" needs more realistic weights - for example "take a video" is equivalent to "make a short film" in points earned, where realistically pushing a button is not the same effort as making a short. Maybe there should be a logarithmic/exponential/multiplier scale associated with progressing up the list. Or determine an average time-to-complete metric from user feedback and indicate such on the skill progression.
bdcravens 2y ago
Bought my first 3D printer 2 months ago. Probably have 2/3 of the 3D printing one filled out already lol. (Much of which is pretty much a freebie just by buying a Bambu Labs printer)
layman51 2y ago
I’m not familiar with these kinds of gamification concepts. The idea of a skill tree is that you have to work on prerequisite skills before getting to the outer reaches of the tree, no? I wonder why the cocktail tree has “Ask a liquor store to stock a new ingredient” as one of the most advanced category? Sounds more like an achievement.
dartos 2y ago
Not really trees, are they?
deknos 2y ago
wait, if i started using debian, even as admin, much of the stuff never applied to me. never installed java or python by hand, as it is not needed. never installed nixos. Not saying, this is the way it should be (and i admit, i installed java by hand .. on freebsd once), but i am a bit skeptical.
eric-s-landry 2y ago
Although https://roadmap.sh https://roadmap.sh is developer-specific, it has the tree part
arc-in-space 2y ago
Despite the criticism, I surprisingly like these and would love to see the concept expanded & executed better.
em1sar 2y ago
[dead]
bogle 2y ago
Quite a few commentators suggesting AI was used to generate the charts. Well, the README has been updated! "Were these made with AI? No, these were made in collaboration with experts or using my own expertise, without any AI usage." Same goes for anyone who wants to suggest a better nomenclature (and there are some good suggestions amongst the HN comments). "Will you keep the 'Skill Trees' name when they aren't really traditional skill trees? While these templates are skill tree inspired, I'm working on some new name ideas, potentially 'Skill Trackers' or something else. Any suggestions appreciated!"
WillAdams 2y ago
I've always characterized "Makers" as "geeks who missed shop class" --- this sort of thing just underscores how our educational system fails when it doesn't include methodologies such as Sloyd: https://rainfordrestorations.com/tag/sloyd/ https://rainfordrestorations.com/tag/sloyd/ >Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others...
eternityforest 2y ago
I love the idea, but I think "Modern and relevant" is almost impossible while still being compatible with what I think of as maker culture. Like... Writing a sorting algorithm comes before using a debugger? I've never written a sorting algorithm and don't expect I'm going to want to any time soon. I think ideally these would be simple markdown or JSON files with the cool tree layout generated automatically. I'd rather see a more fantasy game looking layout, I'm sure some would love a sci-fi or cyberpunk theme, and everyone would like easy pull requests and contributing. I think perhaps a true tree layout might be the best, because it could capture the orthogonality of different paths. Low level algorithms could be a totally different branch from "Regular old coding", to capture the orthogonality and extreme specialization of modern tech. I'd probably also keep the steps a lot more general. Like, for electronics, I would probably have firmware, analog (Branching to RF and power), hand assembly, digital, and DFM. Digital might go: * Blink an LED with Arduino * Build something with at least two outputs and two inputs * Use a discrete logic gate * Do something with an FPGA * Design a Linux or other OS capable PCB Analog could go: * Use an op amp * Sub microvolt signals * Megahertz * 10Mhz * Make an RF transmitter or receiver * Control something greater than 25 watts * Design a piece of uncommon scientific equipment

Maker Skill Trees

478 points by saulpw 2y ago

engineer_22 2y ago

Maker merit badges

genericone 2y ago
a la eagle scouts? https://www.scouting.org/skills/merit-badges/eagle-required/ https://www.scouting.org/skills/merit-badges/eagle-required/
willmeyers 2y ago
I agree. These are fun badges to maybe collect and help move you along a path. I don't think they should be followed in a sequence. For example, if you look at the game development one... why do I need to write a game design document before making a game? Doesn't seem like the right approach in my opinion.
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  Notice that these are hexagonal and you can chart a path right around that tile.

throwway120385 2y ago

I thought the "House Building" one would include things like wiring, plumbing, drywall, mudding & taping, texturing, painting, finish carpentry, framing/formbuilding(rough carpentry), concrete, flooring, and so on. Instead it's more about doing feasability and stuff. The Renovation & Repair one lumps a lot of discrete skill sets together and maybe leaves a lot of stuff up to "experts." A lot of these "skill sets" have fractal complexity, where if you dig in on "Concrete work" you'll find yourself going down a rabbit hole of form building, hydrostatic pressure, foundation squaring, and so on. Even pouring an unreinforced slab for a patio requires some distinct skills. Plumbing is the same way where being able to replace a water heater could devolve into sweating new fittings. Is the intent here to document what you could do without knowing what the residential code is and how to pull permits in your area?

ForOldHack 2y ago
I would assume that you are not a carpenter: As a carpenter, I would include: Knowledge of Universal Building Codes, knowledge of local building codes, Local code checklists, Blue print reading, Site survey reading, and first hand knowledge of your local building department. (AHJ) Concrete forms, soil management, concrete testing, that is more than a rabbit hole, its a whole immense specialty. ( Ask Richard Sloan, who literally taught me how to finish concrete like glass... over very large areas. ) Tiling is deep also. ( Thanks Alejandro ). Even after more than 10 years work, texturing as a skill is still beyond me, and like far beyond me. Your point is well taken, but... This is an amazingly LARGE amount of work. Environmental skill?I cannot wait to see this one: I should make a Building a Desktop PC, Coaching, Transform your life. Truck Driving and Taking no sh*.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  >Tiling is deep [...] texturing is a skill beyond me. Interesting. Sounds like you have way more experience than me, but I feel pretty comfortable doing tiling and do a decent job, after doing a kitchen floor, backsplash, bathroom floor, and shower. The biggest risk with doing tiling is once you learn how to do it, you'll start noticing bad tiling jobs everywhere. Particularly lippage. I've also done decent jobs of texturing the couple attempts I've done. I don't love them, if I stare at them I think they look terrible but if I'm walking past I don't notice them. What in car racing they'd call a 50/50 paint job: looks good from 50 feet when it's going 50MPH. :-) But, what I'm starting to do, and what I did on my bathroom remodel, is doing a level 5 finish. It took me a while to get to where I was happy, but not having to texture and instead just painting the untextured wall came out pretty nice. I guess it's more common in "the west" to texture and level 5 in "the east" (USA).
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Perfection is just making sure any flaws are smaller than the observer's perceived level of detail. > you'll start noticing bad tiling jobs everywhere To me, that's the crux of it. There are structural and system jobs (load bearing carpentry, electrical, plumbing) and there's everything else (tiling, painting, countertops, cabinetry, etc). If you screw up the latter... it looks bad, and that's about the end of it. Which is to say, give it a go. Most people, with the proper investment of time and care, can do a better-than-contractor job on non-code/permit type work, simply by virtue of caring about it more.

stonethrowaway 2y ago

“Maker movement” is a hard commercialization angle of DIY, or really, doing anything. Not sure who came up with the label “Maker” but I’m personally not a fan. Maybe reading Christopher Tolkien has rubbed off on me. As someone who works hands on with a lot of things, I can’t help but feel like a cultural shift is taking place. I’m all for DIY so this is great, but you don’t have to be a “Maker” to get shit done.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago
To me it's less about DIY [0] and more about a production vs consumption attitude. The label "maker" is meant to distinguish someone who makes stuff, as opposed to consuming stuff (e.g. watch a TV show) or doing stuff (e.g. rock climbing). Sure, the word had been coopted to sell things. But so has DIY. And basically any label. If something is big enough to have a label that enough people use, someone else is going to use it to sell to that group. Our society commercializes the hell out of everything. [0] but of course there's overlap
sandworm101 2y ago
I have always understood "maker" to mean someone creating something new: Art, a new product, a bespoke bit of sports equipment. I do not believe that going whitewater rafting or reading an e-book qualifies as anything. Pouring cement or wiring a new light switch is more handyman than "maker" imho.
gspencley 2y ago
As with anything, the word starts to get applied to things that the originators didn't necessarily intend. My working definition of "maker" is someone who fabricates physical things. It's less DIY'er and more crafts & hobbies on steroids. The classic example is people who work in prop departments in movies and theatre. In that arena, you need to be a jack of all trades when it comes to fabricating physical anything. The skills include everything from woodworking and metalworking to mold making, model making, painting etc. The more you specialize the less the word "maker" applies as I conceive of it. A guitar luthier could certainly be considered a maker by some, I mean it is "making guitars" but the term is intentionally broader than someone who specializes in making something very specific. But consider the term "furniture maker." We have used the word "maker" in the past to describe someone who makes something specific. You just take off the qualifier and you have someone who makes all sorts of things. My wife and I are part time magicians and what I often say drives me to magic is that it is the ultimate "maker" hobby. It is extremely multi-disciplined. There's the strict "magic domain" (misdirection, sleight of hand) but depending on what you want to do you end up getting into all sorts of tangential skill development from costume and wardrobe fabrication to building illusions out of a variety of materials (woodworking & metal working) to making smaller hidden devices ("gimmicks" as magicians call them) to practical VFX (makeup, prosthetics etc.) All that being said, I completely agree that the term has become so overused as to start to border on meaningless.

sandworm101 2y ago

Advanced cooking skill: "Make Sushi" No. Do not attempt this casually. Every couple years someone in the northwest gets the idea to catch their own salmon and serve it up as sushi. Sushi is not an at-home thing. Either learn to freeze the fish yourself per local hygiene rules and in the correct freezer, or buy from the professionals. For reference, with tables listing the basic rules in various jurisdictions: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/E/2017/eb-raw-fish-parasites.pdf https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/E/2017/...

tptacek 2y ago
I haven't read it, but I assume "making sushi" starts with buying sashimi-safe proteins, not literally catching fish out of the water. Some proteins, like farmed Atlantic salmon, are safe enough that you can just buy them at Whole Foods. Bluefin tuna appears to actually be exempt from the FDA freezing rule, too. You can in fact casually make nigiri. It's not a big deal. I'd start with poke, though, because good nigiri is actually pretty hard to do. As someone commented on AskCulinary: the big no-no is random (non-exempt) raw wild catch.
- deleted 2y ago
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- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  > I assume "making sushi" starts with buying sashimi-safe proteins, not literally catching fish Buying the proteins? Do you mean that or do you mean buying the fish, maybe?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Fish isn't the only option for protein in sushi. "Protein" is among other things cooking slang for "the thing in the dish that serves the purpose meat often does". In a tamago nigiri, egg would be the protein.
thepasswordis 2y ago
It's generally considered safe to eat raw Norwegian farmed salmon: https://www.fromnorway.com/stories-from-norway/a-perfect-environment/norwegian-salmon--already-perfect/ https://www.fromnorway.com/stories-from-norway/a-perfect-env...

ecshafer 2y ago

These skill trees are so awful. The computing one has "learn to type on a keyboard" after buying a domain, setting up an email domain, make a website, make a blog, or building your own computer. Their measure of advance in general is basically random. Also they aren't trees.

mguerville 2y ago
The entrepreneur one has "visit a coworking space" at the mid level of difficulty...
- Handprint4469 2y ago
  Almost as if this whole thing was the output of an LLM, rather than an actual human... gasps
alentred 2y ago
You are reading it in the wrong direction. "Learn to type on a keyboard" is the basic skill (and I am pretty sure it means some form of touch typing, not a finger-poking), and "Buying a domain" is the advanced one.
- justneedaname 2y ago
  Peak HN to clearly not even spend 1 minute to understand the content to then come in the comments ranting about how bad it is and that it's wrong. Sure, some of the ordering of difficulties may be off but a lot of it is subjective depending on what you already know I'd say. I think they're a good way of getting some motivation of projects to undertake
  - ecshafer 2y ago
    Even more peak Hackernews is assuming the OP is wrong when the author had between my comment and your comment, made a PR specifically changing my complaint. https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree/commit/752a13566430dfae973a3cac81cfceec4b63968e https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree/commit/752a1356...

Zondartul 2y ago

I applaud the effort, but, these templated skill trees are just not very good imo. I have only one issue but it's a big one: It's missing a tree structure, so there is no ordering of skills (learn easy stuff before hard stuff because there is a learning curve to anything). They might be good as prints to hang on your wall, but in the current state they're more "achievement lists" rather than anything resembling a tech tree.

bhelkey 2y ago
It looks like the easy stuff is at the bottom and the harder stuff is at the top. It's more of a skill line than a skill tree. That being said, I find the idea intriguing and the format appealing.

throwup238 2y ago

This is a brilliant idea but execution leaves a lot to be desired. I get that there's a lot of judgement calls going on here but I really wish this would become a popular project with lots of subject experts to weigh in. Looking at the PCB design skill tree, it just doesn't look very realistic. "Use an Autorouting tool," for example, is second after "Learn PCB Software" when it should be in the top half of the tree (if not in the top few rows). "Design an SMD PCB" is on the same horizontal line as "Hand solder SMD Parts", as is "Learn to Read a Schematic" and "Learn PCB Software"(?!) Learning the PCB design software is a process that must run in parallel with most of the skill tree. "Use a reflow oven to solder a PCB" is two who levels above "Use a pick & place machine" and so on. I get that a lot of this is path dependent on experience but "Use SMD tweezers" should probably go alongside "Solder SMD parts"...

cbb330 2y ago
If you contribute your expertise to improve the skill tree you can even get a cool sticker. https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree?tab=readme-ov-file#skill-tree-bug-bounties https://github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree?tab=readme-ov-f...
- azeirah 2y ago
  I like stickers I will contribute :o
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Given the sheer breadths of topics (many non-tech), it'd be hard to to get expters to help cater every list. and of course, these kinds of skill workflows will always be opiionated. I can vouch in for game dev on a few odd sticklers: - There's definietely a lot of fluff in the beginning and a few odd side roads. Fluff is definitely fine in the beginning (yes, you ideally should play games, and especially bad ones), but some seem a bit useless without more direction. like following a dev stream or learning about accessibility features (which I think is great, but this is so far into the future unless your audience is someone who needs it. Accessibility is polish beyond polish). - There's an odd focus on tech that implies "more tools good". Make a game in Renpy, then make one in godot later on, then learn a 2d and 3d engine? as a nitpick I also find it funny that "make a game in Unreal Engine" either requires a game in Unity, a VR game, or this scenic route of level design and user research. What's your goal and game motivation? I go with the Bruce Lee mentality here. Pick a direction, pick a tool, then get really good at that tool. devs make games, not tools. - similar story with game features and ieas. AI (game AI not llm), procedural generation, voice acting, puzzles, modding, etc? Some people could go their entire careers and not need to use these for their games. It's a general purpose list but I guess this is where roadmaps could help. you definitely need different steps to work on a puzzle game compared to VN, compared to a procgen'd rougelite. - "fail to submit a game jam game before the deadline"... well, I didn't ask for a personal attack :(

groby_b 2y ago

I'm going "meh" here for all the skill trees I'm actually familiar with. Using keyboard shortcuts has nothing to do with coding. Negronis don't require more skills than old-fashioneds. Change Bedsheets comes well before any deep cleaning. The music one is just utterly absurd ("learn a difficult lick" before "learn guitar"?) I love the idea. The execution... leaves questions.

BanazirGalbasi 2y ago
After skimming the skills I'm familiar with, I came to the same conclusion. I was actually relieved when I saw that Blacksmithing isn't finished yet, and that's something that I'm definitely still an amateur at. I can't contribute anything meaningful to it, nor do I feel like it really needs an in-depth skill tree because most of it is just applying the same few basic skills in different orders. I feel like the author should have done a few for areas that they are actually knowledgeable in, then left the rest up to others. These feel too much like they were made by someone who tried to learn the surface of every topic they could access but doesn't know enough to organize any of what they learned.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
I generally agree, though a lot of these could be salvaged by a little bit of reordering. However, I have to pick: > Using keyboard shortcuts has nothing to do with coding. Unless you're coding with a pencil or a mouse, it very much does. People like to repeat the "most of my time coding is spend on thinking; typing speed is irrelevant" mantra quite mindlessly, and then they fail to appreciate just how much time they actually spend typing, miss that their bad typing ability is still impacting their overall speed (see: Amdahl's law) and is hindering them from working at a higher conceptual level than just characters and syntax tokens. Proficiency with keyboard shortcuts of your environment makes high-level operations like "swap these condition branches" or "move these functions over to that class" or "rename this function" atomic or near-atomic operations that you can use on the fly, without thinking much about it. This in turn makes you reason in those higher-level terms more, improving utilization of your thinking capabilities in the non-typing phase too. So yeah, I'd very much classify keyboard shortcut proficiency (including the associated mentality) as a mid-level critical coding skill.

delichon 2y ago

I think that this is getting negative feedback because "skill trees" raise expectations that this doesn't satisfy. A skill tree would be a dependency graph showing which skills depend on which other skills. This is more of a template for a related set of skills stacked by difficulty. Maybe just call it "Maker Skill Stacks" to head off the disappointment.

lkbm 2y ago
Yeah, something like that would help—I might go with "achievement chart", since many aren't even "skills". But there's also a lot of people pointing out that the basic vs advanced sorting is really questionable in some cases. It's going to be impossible to get an objectively correct sorting, but some seem to just be completely wrong.
blargey 2y ago
Also since they’re not really “skills” so much as items in a bucket list for your hobby, spread out horizontally.

lkbm 2y ago

Cooking has such a weird idea of basic vs. advanced. "Make garlic bread" is near the bottom, and then "use fresh garlic or ginger in a meal" is five rows higher. Apparently using fresh garlic and ginger is more advanced than "make a daal", which I've never considered even doing without fresh ginger? (And, wait, making popcorn is even more advanced?!) These specifics aside, the big issue I have is that basic/advanced is the wrong axis. It should be fundamental building blocks going up to more complex things dependent on those building blocks: using fresh ginger is a building block you learn so you can cook daal. You don't learn how to cook daal and at a later date learn how to add spices!

motohagiography 2y ago
I like the idea. To cooking I would add: - rice and beans from three continents - make a good vinegrette - make three mother sauces (learn a roux, fond, etc) - brine, dress, and roast a chicken/poultry - hunt, field dress, and butcher venison - catch, filet, and serve fish - top of the skill heap would be a bouliabaisse, if heap didn't include baking

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

freestyle24147 2y ago

Were these skill "trees" the output of an LLM or something? Of the domains I have a lot of familiarity with, the ordering (if it can even be assumed the easy ones are at the bottom and the hard ones at the top) make little sense. I think if I were a newbie in any of these subjects and followed the "trees" as presented I would be quickly discouraged and lost.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago
> Were these skill "trees" the output of an LLM or something My thoughts exactly. There’s a strong LLM flavor to them.

bhelkey 2y ago

I love the idea, I love the format. As others have mentioned this isn't really a skill tree, it is more of a skill line. It is extremely difficult to be an expert in ~50 different skills. Because of this, it is difficult to make ~50 high quality skill progressions. Have you considered trying to crowd source skill achievements and priorities for these progressions?

user3939382 2y ago

For the uninitiated there are robust formal versions of this used by industry. My product bases higher ed and corporate assessment scoring on these. Check out ONET and Lightcast as a starting place.

t-writescode 2y ago

So much hate here in these comments and threads. I know for myself, sometimes it's good to even have an idea of small/medium/large sized projects / ideas to run with to consider as an "experience" in doing a new skill I've never worked in before. It looks like these are an attempt to create units of work that are approachable and individually researchable to complete. I think it's pretty great!

4ndrewl 2y ago
The great thing about open source is that it enables all the people with the time to post negative comments here to address the shortcomings that their keen eyes have spotted...right?
- yen223 2y ago
  But then I would be missing out on the dopamine hit from dunking on someone else's project
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  It also enables people with time to work on other, higher quality projects. Of all of the countless projects work on, why would you chose one so misleadingly labeled? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41383114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41383114
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    we're literally bikeshedding at this point. Labels are trivial to change. Not worth dumping an entire project over. What "higher quality" project deserved to be worked on more than this in your mind.
    - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
      I'm sorry it just doesn't work like that. There are a near infinite number of projects and other pursuits people can devote their time to. It's not reasonable to try to bully anyone who complains about anything promoted on a news or social aggregator to put their free time into working on it. One project I contributed to in the past was Anki. Since I was using it a lot and getting a lot of value out of it, I felt motivated to contribute some translations for its UI so that the students at my school could use it.

ldayley 2y ago

This is a fantastic idea, and I think the overall negativity misses the point of it being an evolving and collaborative project on github. When you don't know what you don't know, any little map can be helpful to get one started. When one desires to learn a skill they usually don't know what questions to ask to get started. This is one of the biggest challenges in learning, and there's a multibillion dollar industry devoted to easing that burden via textbooks and instructional videos. But equally important: beginners don't have a mental model for where that specific desired skill or knowledge lies on the continuum of the domain in which they're seeking to grow. This project puts skills in context, even if some of those contexts are (currently) very flawed. For example, I've begun working with a couple of teenage garage bands that live near me. I have a lot of experience as a working musician, and they didn't have any at all-- but they knew they wanted to write, record, and perform teenage garage music. I noticed a "Music" domain on the maker tree. It could use improvement, but what it does is make clear that there's more to being a performing musician than learning guitar. In fact I've watched these kids go from "make a playlist" to "learn about copyright & licensing" to "produce a track with another person" to "play a ticketed show", and many of these steps were both required ("learn to keep a beat" springs to mind ;) ) and also not obvious to them when they started. Each one of these domains is massive and full of intrinsic, context-dependent experiential knowledge. But they make a great starting point. I already learned some things about, say, the PCB design domain and have a better catalog of what I'd need to search the internet for to begin that rabbit-hole. Edit: spelling, grammar

mikewarot 2y ago

I'm pretty amazed at the idea, and how many variations are already filled out. The ones I knew something about seemed really complete. Well done!

agumonkey 2y ago

Brilliant trick. I wonder how to pair this with spaced repetition for iterating smoothly on each step.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

starkparker 2y ago

Really wish these were called achievements instead of a skill tree to head off every discussion fixated on how these aren't actually tree structures and/or don't work like, or even have a similar intent as, video game skill trees. Especially seeing them in practice, it's pretty clear to me that the goal is to fill in all the segments, which helps to identify which skills or projects might be be sitting in a blind spot. And especially in a group environment, helping to point out which people might be able to answer questions about specific tasks because it's easier to spot on a chart like this than asking each member the same questions.

kragen 2y ago
yeah, they're poorly named and that seems to be one of several ways they're poorly thought out. but, whatever, 90% of everything is crap, and maybe they'll get better
johnnyanmac 2y ago
The design clearly wants to be a tree, though. I don't feel the intent was to fill out every skill tree, but the "start here" and direct graph structure implies some sort of roadmap. It's less appealing, but a more directly communicative design would be more of a difficulty "bucket". Do X% of tasks in tier 1 and then start trying to tap into tier 2, etc.

ipaddr 2y ago

I checked out learn to code. Had things like write a quicksort, use a bitwise operator, teach a friend, give a speech on coding. Probably not the most useful list.

benatkin 2y ago
LGTM
Jensson 2y ago
> write a quicksort, use a bitwise operator, teach a friend, give a speech on coding Sounds like a typical tech influencer.

jpc0 2y ago

I don't want to be negative at all so I'll ask for clarification. What is expected if you have filled in every single one of these "goals"? I would honestly expect for the three disciplines where I am fairly confident I am good at, ie 10+ years of experience in an actual working environment. I would expect a relatively new to the industry person to have completed most of the goals. Completing the "skill tree" is the start of the journey in those disciplines not the end. My take, if you have done this skill tree you are now equipped to know whether you actually want to become an expert in that field. If this skill tree is up to the hobbyist level then sure, it's not too bad.

rtpg 2y ago

I've had an idea for a while of a site... kinda like letterboxd, where you could log "learning paths" for textbooks and the like (for example to log what chapters you've gone through, exercises and the like). I've built out some of it but would always get a bit lost in the weeds. I think there's a big challenge with self-learning in that you do kind of want feedback from people about whether you're going about some material the right way or not. This sort of stuff looks fun though.

motohagiography 2y ago

these are great. under civics, I didn't see "file an Access to Information (FOIA) request" which would have been good. under IT security, it's actually not bad from a beginner perspective as you need to know those things to know what the next levels up are. the music tree could use some detail, but overall I shared it with friends.

cjonas 2y ago

Closer to "bingo" than a proper skill tree. I was expecting something more like this: https://roadmap.sh/ https://roadmap.sh/

egypturnash 2y ago

"Stippling" is misspelled in the Comic Artist skill tree. Which I can pretty much fill in given that I can fill in the blank spaces with checked-off things like "get cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them". But I can't fill it in with "get two Reuben nominations" like one of my friends can. Also I feel like "submit your work to publishers" and "get someone else to publish your stuff for you" is distinctly lacking. And pretty much a requirement for the "two Rube noms". Personally I'd remove "use hatching/crosshatching/stipling" and the other misspelling of "digitally adjust the hue/saturation/contaract etc". The Visual Artist one mostly works though. I can fill pretty much all of that one in too.

janalsncm 2y ago

Usually when I’m learning a new thing I work backwards: what do I want to do, and what do I need to understand to accomplish it? The reason is very simple. If you learn a huge list of “skills” or “tools” you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep, which isn’t really good enough to get anything done. You have to get your hands dirty. This is also why (controversial take incoming) I don’t think calculus should be a prerequisite for computer science or even machine learning. Yes, it is possible you will need to know it. But most likely you won’t. Most people aren’t writing their own loss functions or backprop libraries. And if you are, great! You can learn it later. Way too many people stop before they ever get started because of unnecessary gatekeeps.

duped 2y ago
One reason calculus is a good prerequisite for CS is that it's typically where you introduced to the concepts of limits and are taught how to look at a formula and see how it behaves at extrema and critical points, if you're good it can be done by eye or with some basic white boarding. And that's (in the broadest strokes) the key skill set for complexity analysis and software architecture. One of the worst trends I've seen in recent years is the dogma of benchmarking and profiling as the gods of performance analysis. Any decent software engineer should be able to reason about how a program behaves by reading it before reaching for automated tooling - which by the way, won't tell you why a benchmark is bad or why some section of the program is a bottleneck.

RheingoldRiver 2y ago

My personal complaint is that "jewelry making" is on their todo list....jewelry making is like 20 different hobbies!! I make chainmaille jewelry. I know nothing about wire wrapping, let alone working with heat. Then you can have beaded jewelry, where there's bead crochet/weaving/other techniques (I don't know much about beads). There's macrame, there's glass, you can do ceramics, resin, etc. And this is just materials, not talking about designing vs crafting. That is not one hobby!

aszantu 2y ago

can someone say something about the entrepreneur skill tree? I've got the business Idea, want to solve via dropshipping and am stuck on finding makers and how to talk to them. Basically big-dog robot for granny, he can bring her food upstairs and follow her to the grocery. can't have complex smartphone controlls, a chip in your pocket so it follows you should be the default and so on - if you steal it, you're solving a problem for me, lol

relwin 2y ago

Fun lists but the "1 tile = 1 point" needs more realistic weights - for example "take a video" is equivalent to "make a short film" in points earned, where realistically pushing a button is not the same effort as making a short. Maybe there should be a logarithmic/exponential/multiplier scale associated with progressing up the list. Or determine an average time-to-complete metric from user feedback and indicate such on the skill progression.

bdcravens 2y ago

Bought my first 3D printer 2 months ago. Probably have 2/3 of the 3D printing one filled out already lol. (Much of which is pretty much a freebie just by buying a Bambu Labs printer)

layman51 2y ago

I’m not familiar with these kinds of gamification concepts. The idea of a skill tree is that you have to work on prerequisite skills before getting to the outer reaches of the tree, no? I wonder why the cocktail tree has “Ask a liquor store to stock a new ingredient” as one of the most advanced category? Sounds more like an achievement.

dartos 2y ago

Not really trees, are they?

deknos 2y ago

wait, if i started using debian, even as admin, much of the stuff never applied to me. never installed java or python by hand, as it is not needed. never installed nixos. Not saying, this is the way it should be (and i admit, i installed java by hand .. on freebsd once), but i am a bit skeptical.

eric-s-landry 2y ago

Although https://roadmap.sh https://roadmap.sh is developer-specific, it has the tree part

arc-in-space 2y ago

Despite the criticism, I surprisingly like these and would love to see the concept expanded & executed better.

em1sar 2y ago

[dead]

bogle 2y ago

Quite a few commentators suggesting AI was used to generate the charts. Well, the README has been updated! "Were these made with AI? No, these were made in collaboration with experts or using my own expertise, without any AI usage." Same goes for anyone who wants to suggest a better nomenclature (and there are some good suggestions amongst the HN comments). "Will you keep the 'Skill Trees' name when they aren't really traditional skill trees? While these templates are skill tree inspired, I'm working on some new name ideas, potentially 'Skill Trackers' or something else. Any suggestions appreciated!"

WillAdams 2y ago

I've always characterized "Makers" as "geeks who missed shop class" --- this sort of thing just underscores how our educational system fails when it doesn't include methodologies such as Sloyd: https://rainfordrestorations.com/tag/sloyd/ https://rainfordrestorations.com/tag/sloyd/ >Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others...

eternityforest 2y ago

I love the idea, but I think "Modern and relevant" is almost impossible while still being compatible with what I think of as maker culture. Like... Writing a sorting algorithm comes before using a debugger? I've never written a sorting algorithm and don't expect I'm going to want to any time soon. I think ideally these would be simple markdown or JSON files with the cool tree layout generated automatically. I'd rather see a more fantasy game looking layout, I'm sure some would love a sci-fi or cyberpunk theme, and everyone would like easy pull requests and contributing. I think perhaps a true tree layout might be the best, because it could capture the orthogonality of different paths. Low level algorithms could be a totally different branch from "Regular old coding", to capture the orthogonality and extreme specialization of modern tech. I'd probably also keep the steps a lot more general. Like, for electronics, I would probably have firmware, analog (Branching to RF and power), hand assembly, digital, and DFM. Digital might go: * Blink an LED with Arduino * Build something with at least two outputs and two inputs * Use a discrete logic gate * Do something with an FPGA * Design a Linux or other OS capable PCB Analog could go: * Use an op amp * Sub microvolt signals * Megahertz * 10Mhz * Make an RF transmitter or receiver * Control something greater than 25 watts * Design a piece of uncommon scientific equipment