You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

AABoyles comments on What steep learning curve do you wish you'd climbed sooner? - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: Stabilizer 04 September 2014 12:03AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (41)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: AABoyles 17 September 2014 03:54:21PM 2 points [-]

Statistics. I took it in High school, but it was so poorly taught that I learned almost nothing from it. Now I use statistics every day.

Scripting Languages. I learned Java in High School and rode that knowledge all the way through my CS degree. But when I got a job as a software engineer, Java was among the worst languages available for solving the type of problems with which I was dealing. Looking back at my old code, I could have saved hundreds of hours if I had learned Python instead of Java.

Related, curves I haven't climbed but wish I could/would/intended to:

A European foreign language. I dabbled in a variety of languages in school and settled on Chinese, wasting many years and having little to show for it. If it had been an Alphabetic language (and better yet, a Latin-alphabet language), I'd have a much higher level of proficiency.

A Martial Art. I love the martial arts, but I've never been able to devote myself to any one of them.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 18 September 2014 08:48:43PM 2 points [-]

Seconding statistics.