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Ask HN: What's a surprisingly useful tech skill that's underrated today?

30 points Userrr | 2 comments | 12 Apr 25 08:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source

We often talk about mastering popular languages, frameworks, and AI tools. But what about the less-hyped skills that quietly make you 10x more effective?

For example:

Knowing how to write a custom shell script that replaces a SaaS tool

Building internal tools with no-code + cron + GitHub Actions

Understanding how to optimize a slow SQL query line-by-line

Crafting a bash one-liner that saves you hours every week

Using the command line like a superpower

I'm curious: What are the most underrated but highly valuable tech skills you've learned that more people should know about?

Would love to hear stories, examples, or even niche tools you swear by. Bonus points if it’s something you only discovered by accident or necessity, not through a tutorial.

1. herbst ◴[12 Apr 25 09:46 UTC] No.43662921[source]▶
Server Management might be one. People seem to waste a lot of money for fancy cloud solution they don't actually need. And you said a little bash can solve do many problems
replies(1): >>43663215 #
2. Userrr ◴[12 Apr 25 10:41 UTC] No.43663215[source]▶
Absolutely. It’s wild how much gets spent on over-engineered cloud setups when something lightweight and a bit of Bash could do the job just fine. Server management done right is underrated—there’s a lot of value in simplicity and knowing exactly what’s running under the hood.