←back to thread

Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

124 points akktor | 4 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.617s | source

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

1. dijksterhuis ◴[10 Jun 25 19:07 UTC] No.44240253[source]▶
digital signal processing for synths and audio stuff.

maths :/ brain hurt.

i did some digital signal processing in my phd but i need to go through and implement a bunch of things from scratch to learn/relearn and it’ll just be a bit of a grind. i’m avoiding doing that by working on data file parsing / project management utils for the elektron octatrack instead, which is useful, but tangential to what i want to do.

long term would be rad to build software for old synth hardware and the like. sort of like midiquest, but without the price tag.

replies(2): >>44240394 #>>44240700 #
2. net_ ◴[10 Jun 25 19:20 UTC] No.44240394[source]▶
I've heard The Audio Programmer discord is a great resource for this sort of thing. Worth checking out: https://www.theaudioprogrammer.com/
replies(1): >>44240673 #
3. dijksterhuis ◴[10 Jun 25 19:45 UTC] No.44240673[source]▶
thanks, although i’m a member already. it’s not really resources that’s the issue. i’ve read Julius Smith’s books in the past etc. in the rust audio discord etc.

i just have a mental block similar to the one i had with rust. avoided learning it for a long while until i made a decision to finally to do it.

i just keep avoiding making the same decision here for some reason. not sure why. probably the old “it’s going to be really hard” thing i had with rust (which turned out to be rubbish, it just took time and repeating stuff over and over and learning from mistakes over and over).

4. rented_mule ◴[10 Jun 25 19:48 UTC] No.44240700[source]▶
Will Pirkle has a couple of books that go through this. I've found them quite helpful. https://www.willpirkle.com/