HACKER Q&A
📣 kylebenzle

What topic have you learned everything there is to know about?


I bet HN has more of this subset of people who get so obsessed with a topic that the goal is basically to just know everything there is to know about it. What have you guys learned EVERYTHING about?


  👤 h2odragon Accepted Answer ✓
I have issue with the assumption that it is possible to know "everything" about anything. There's always more fractal levels of detail to find in the real world.

People who have mastered some pursuit will often consider their knowledge inadequate vs what remains for them to learn.

There was a time I was quite well informed about RS232 serial ports and the flavors of things that connected to computers using them; but that was long ago and I have mercifully forgotten most of that. Did you know the standard specifies backup signals? There were the occasional items that used some of those lines. They were robust early GPIO and if you were lucky you might even find a interface cards where the RI line could trigger an interrupt.

I am good at "cutting things up"; be that carving foods with knives or trees with chainsaws. (Felling trees with knives is laborious, but possible: good practice to build up autonomic level muscle memory.) The real trick is to see how a thing is made, and where the stress points are most vulnerable to available tools. That skill serves many other applications. I can still learn new things from a tough roast or a wiry bramble patch.


👤 Quinzel
It’s not possible to know EVERYTHING about anything. If you think you know everything there is to know about something, then you don’t know enough.

👤 Gooblebrai
You can learn anything but you can't learn everything

👤 kleer001
What topics have a static field of knowledge?