Ask HN: What's the best thing you've learnt in 2020?

I discovered Julia. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've learned it, but it hits all the pain points I've had with every other language. It honestly feels like a gift from the universe that shouldn't, by rights, exist; a fast, dynamic, elegant language that seems to do The Right Thing at every turn. I do believe it will gradually eat the world, in the way that Python did.

I've already replaced some little utilities I wrote in C with Julia equivalents. They were easier to write, handle errors more gracefully, and run several times faster (because free multithreading).

I've learned very little this year compared to previous years. I've been concentrating on not burning out from overwork and lack of contact with people during lockdown.

2020 has been a super weird year. If all you've done is survive that's OK.

That the legal system is severely messed up and full of incompetent people.

(Trooper made tons of mistakes, trooper lied to judge, trooper violated civil rights, original judge was arrested for gambling with campaign money, new judge doesn't understand the principle of dismissing with prejudice, and much more. All for an unleashed dog...)

I learnt that I could handle doing a full time job working from home (new to me), while looking after 2 young children 3 days a week or more. I also did my first big project as a software architect on a large programme of work for 2 big UK companies which is a new career development for me (from developer).

I also moved forward on my path of being a good parent and being able to cope with being alone for a long period of time. I started singing and recording songs with friends online too!

I have closely followed the coronavirus sanitary crisis. I would like to share a quote from Didier Raoult that makes you think.

Didier Raoult is a French physician and microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult).

Original excerpt from: https://madeinmarseille.net/82251-mediterranee-du-futur-les-...

"les molécules chimiques sont éternelles. Nous avons un patrimoine de molécules chimiques absolument considérable, dont beaucoup d’entre elles sont d’origine naturelle et ont des actions multiples, qui n’ont pas été évaluées et qui ne pourront pas l’être, car elles ne sont pas rentables et parce que notre système est basé sur un brevet qui s’épuise au bout de 20 ans"

Translation (Google Translate):

"chemical molecules are eternal. We have an absolutely considerable heritage of chemical molecules, many of them of natural origin and have multiple actions, which have not been evaluated and which cannot be evaluated, because they are not profitable and because our system is based on a patent which expires after 20 years"

Poker :) Having a concrete game, where you can track your progress, experience the ups and downs of randomness, control your emotions, etc. etc. is such a great way of focusing on what you can control to win.

that the fear of employees finding off-shore home-office job offers can be used to increase your wages and negotiation leverage.

Shit can hit the fan pretty quickly so better be prepared.

Tried to teach myself a bunch of programming stuff but never managed to stay long on any of them.

I learned Go and built an API with it. It was worth it. I also learned a ton about interpreters and compilers.

1. Things that I consider “simple” or “easy” still require time and energy to do. The time/energy required does not scale linearly with difficulty.

2. This is why side project usually go nowhere.

3. It’s ok to have side projects just for fun.

This 2020 I learned a lot about AWS and hosting services on AWS Furthermore, I also did machine learning where I wrote text classification models which completely new for me

If you want to avoid the bandwidth limits imposed on Youtube by your company while on the company network, 144p isn't all that bad, especially for audio-only stuff.

Jonathan Haidt's 6 dimension model of human morality:

https://righteousmind.com/

How to balance my energy even when around other people and some ways to handle being a superempath.