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

124 points akktor | 1 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | 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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jaccarmac ◴[11 Jun 25 22:00 UTC] No.44252294[source]▶
Over the past several years I have slowly patched the .NET version of Shen to run on Linux and modern .NET releases. I also learned about Higher-Order Perl the other year and have a dream of going through the book and implementing the exercises in Shen while tuning the compiler.

But while I have had a broad interest in compilers for years and years, it feels difficult-to-impossible to actually complete any of it. Part of it's general depression and time management, part is looking at the long story of these projects and the lack of progression: Stuck in a rut of mediocrity.

https://github.com/rkoeninger/ShenSharp https://github.com/jaccarmac/junkcode/tree/79ea647d4ddbe41cf...

replies(1): >>44252661 #
1. dapperdrake ◴[11 Jun 25 22:51 UTC] No.44252661[source]▶
No worries. One of my personal compiler projects took over ten years to complete. Still worth it, though. Sped up my programming by at least 20x. (Not kidding.)

Edit: Within confidence intervals that is a 22% per year improvement. Way ahead of Proebsting's law. Surprising.