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

124 points akktor | 3 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.413s | 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!

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incomingpain ◴[09 Jun 25 13:42 UTC] No.44224446[source]▶
There's 2 big ones that I want to learn.

Quantum computer programming. I've dived a couple times into Qiskit from IBM. Also tried to get into dwave and ocean sdk but they never got back to me.

Qiskit tutorials are easy to blow through and i think even understand. But when trying to use it for my own purposes, just never get anywhere.

The other one for me with no success. Training my own specialized predicting AI models. Tensorflow, pytorch, and another.

I certainly prefer pytorch. Super simple to build models on simple stuff.

I'm trying to do something that literally nobody else has ever done. My lack of success has probably a lot more to do with that it's not perhaps actually doable.

Flipside, I might be re-approaching this now that i have the pycharm ai to help me in this progress.

>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.

Never be afraid to try. Always dare to fail; you only truly learn when failing. The easier you make it to fail, the quicker you learn.

replies(3): >>44240348 #>>44240437 #>>44240652 #
1. guywithahat ◴[10 Jun 25 19:16 UTC] No.44240348[source]▶
My concern with quantum computing is there's already such an outrageous overabundance of quantum computing PhD's the marked will likely be saturated for decades to come. It would be a ton of fun to learn, but I can't justify the time because there's no career progression
replies(2): >>44249977 #>>44250010 #
2. almostgotcaught ◴[11 Jun 25 17:43 UTC] No.44249977[source]▶
Lol where are people getting such ideas. First of all there are probably like 10 QC people graduating a year in the whole world (okay maybe 20). Second of all y'all people have no idea how far off usable QC is. It's like 50 years at best.
3. msgodel ◴[11 Jun 25 17:46 UTC] No.44250010[source]▶
It's not that hard to learn, you can do it in a few evenings. Grab something like Nielsen and mess around on qirk.

Now whether it's worth learning? Eh, maybe it's good to exercise some math skills that have been atrophying.