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Comment by mr_coffee | Hacker News Reader

Serious question - how do you even learn all of the skills to do something like this? Where would you start?

You learn along the way by finding something you want done, never giving up.

I want to build a robot that does one simple thing - follow my voice and deliver something to it's original location. That means I need to learn batteries and power loads, electronics, audio processing, directional acoustics, more programming, soldering, and a half dozen other things.

AI + deep thinking about the problem.

The goal is not the objective but to learn everything along the way.

As others have said it's mostly just consistency of practice. There's a wealth of resources available freely online for these topics and you learn by doing. I would caution setting goals/expectations based on what others have achieved in youtube videos though - this guy was/is a computer science undergrad at Cambridge, so he certainly has a high capacity for learning hard stuff and has been exposed to some of the best schooling on offer.

I wanted to learn more about photography, I started asking an LLM and it helped me immensively. Definitely not the same realm but if you wanna pick up new skills, LLMs have tons of beginner friendly ways to explain things!

For optics through photography (not CCD operation or post processing which are vast subjects themselves) I highly recommend View Camera Technique 7th Edition and Scientific America Image, Object and Illusion as general audience applicable introductions.

Yes, I’ve spent a couple hours lately asking Gemini about various home improvement topics in fundamental detail. I’ve learned a lot about:

- How to correctly hang a pre-framed door (shim it, tack it in place with 16 gauge nails, and use one wood screw in the top 2 hinges to prevent the door from sagging)

- How to properly adhere MDF trim to the ceiling to hide a closet door track (screw a furring strip or a header board to the studs above the drywall, shim it so it’s level in case the ceiling is uneven, and then nail through the face of the trim into the strip)

- What the difference is between the 27 DAP putties and spackles in the paint aisle (turns out Painters Putty 53 is typically used to hide finish nail holes, because you tend to make a lot of them and can just smoosh it in and level it off with a palette knife!)

The best part about using an LLM for learning new things like that is not having to deal with snarky and snobby comments from the community members involved in them. Thanks to an LLM, I learned how to install, maintain, and winterize an above-ground pool. It's not rocket science, but it was not easy either. I peeked into the forums surrounding the pool communities for help first and they were always so hostile towards newcomers. It's very demotivating when you're excited about something new and half the people that are supposed to be helping you are just rude elitists; completely ruins the whole experience.

It definitely depends on the community, I personally have had mostly good experiences, but I also spend a couple hours searching & reading before asking anything. And to be fair to some communities: when you are constantly bombarded with noobs asking the same questions that could have been answered with a simple search (not insinuating you did this), it can be frustrating. It's also the reason why I stopped helping in a lot of forums I used to frequent.

But I do agree about using LLMs for learning new things - it's great to just get those answers, hopefully the LLM doesn't hallucinate too much and cause you to destroy your project in the process ;) On the flip side, it removes the useful skill of learning to communicate with fellow human beings, and atrophies the skill of how to ask questions, which often can lead to answers just by phrasing the question correctly. It also removes the chance to join a community of like-minded individuals. It's a completely soulless interaction. Maybe it's a boon for anti-social types, but I think it might also be creating more anti-social behaviors in humans, in a time when IMHO we should be learning to become more social and accepting of each other.

I can't answer for the OP, but for me it was mostly trying, reading, failing, discussions with smart friends and then trying again.

Even with the amount of open source software for this sort of application out there it will still take you at least a month but more likely two or three to get something that can be controlled.

If you want a nice place to start with building then I think Dhremflight's videos are an amazing resource as is liftoff on Steam because you can get some flying skills before you actually control something irl.

Serious answer - find something that you are so interested in that the problem is you can't stop. Become obsessed.

I went down a similar rabbit hole soon after covid started to build a small, eh, 'hand sanitizer factory' (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). By the time it was done I had a fully automated distillation setup complete with load cells, six different temperature readouts, solid state current control, flow/temp control for liebig condenser recycle, hierarchy of pid loops largely managing output flow and an attempt at live specific gravity testing. That with a nifty little dashboard to show live progress and compare metrics from various runs. Spent a couple grand on it in total and learned a LOT in the process.

Now with LLMs? Super easy. Just ask for step by step instructions to build a standard drone. You will learn about micro controllers, physics, pcbs, 3d printing etc.

If you have some time available definitely worth it.

A good engineering course would cover most (if not all) of the skills necessary to do this. This is notable because the person is young and wielding a broad slice of the discipline with maturity.

> Where would you start?

Exploration and tinkering! But you have to have passion and deep interest in that topic/problem

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