Interesting because I advise the exact opposite: do not waste time reading HN, just find one thing that is interesting and master it. Then repeat.
As much as I like HN there is a lot of noise here. Novice mind can easily fall into a trap looking for signal here.
* Avoid headlines that make me angry, unless the news is really important. The discussion is never worthwhile, don't even bother.
* WSJ, Bloomberg, and WaPo won't let me read articles with w3m, so I skip the article. If the topic is tremendously interesting, I'll check the comments.
* TED and nautil.us are the information verison of empty calories. I've never gained any long term benefit from reading them.
* Javascript framework churn is intense. It's not worth trying to keep up with the details unless you do web development. If, like me, you don't, it's still worth reading the headlines to keep abreast of what frameworks are popular, what paradigms they embody, and who's pushing them. This changes every six months or so.
* It's always worth scanning the comments in threads about programming languages. There are some really interesting people who sometimes jump into those threads and blow your mind.
* Know your prejudices and look for information that challenges them. My prejudices are that I think Windows is lame, that MacOS is infuriating, that Javascript is terrible, that vim is better than emacs, and emacs is better than IDEs, and object orientation is a failed paradigm. So I look out for articles that have a different point of view. I've learned that Microsoft has some really interesting technology, that Apple is infuriating even to its own users but it doesn't matter because they're sitting on the world's biggest pile of dollar bills, that Javascript is usually unnecessary but occasionally useful, that kakoune is even better than vim, and that nobody agrees about what object orientation even is.
I spent a long time trying to become good at C++. This was also a mistake.
I ignored Python for a good 2 years because of indentation. Again, a huge mistake.
Great suggestion on anger inducing articles/comment sections. I was just thinking it would be nice to do sentiment analysis and incorporate the emotional vector into both the dynamic rules and the layout. At least put a badge on the discussion so I can know to stay away.
w3m, nice! I tried lynx, w3m, eww (emacs) lately, and liked w3m the most, but found it terribly slow on many sites. In particular GitHub. Just measured 12 seconds for loading my Profile. lynx takes 5s. Opera takes 2s.
Do you have similar experiences?
> Know your prejudices and look for information that challenges them.
How do you prevent the two of these from coming into conflict?
uh... wtf?
See also Mike Acton (Engine Director @ Insomniac Games): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc
This is true. However, much of what I know about how software development can work, I've learned from reading HN. I've learned loads about cloud, containers, micro services, project problems, etc. This helps me understand all the discussions around me while I was a junior and allowed me to successfully lead development of a SaaS product. If I just focused on learning a single thing, I wouldn't have been able to grasp all the other stuff that is necessary to actually build a product from scratch.
Broadening your knowledge to be aware of other stuff is also useful though. The most useful people are those who understand how multiple things work and fit together.
Mastering something is expensive, one should have multiple good justifications for doing so.
Deep familiarity is what people usually need, beyond exposure, but below mastery/trial by fire.
