Maker Skill Trees

Advanced cooking skill: "Make Sushi"

No. Do not attempt this casually. Every couple years someone in the northwest gets the idea to catch their own salmon and serve it up as sushi. Sushi is not an at-home thing. Either learn to freeze the fish yourself per local hygiene rules and in the correct freezer, or buy from the professionals.

For reference, with tables listing the basic rules in various jurisdictions: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/E/2017/...

I thought the "House Building" one would include things like wiring, plumbing, drywall, mudding & taping, texturing, painting, finish carpentry, framing/formbuilding(rough carpentry), concrete, flooring, and so on. Instead it's more about doing feasability and stuff. The Renovation & Repair one lumps a lot of discrete skill sets together and maybe leaves a lot of stuff up to "experts."

A lot of these "skill sets" have fractal complexity, where if you dig in on "Concrete work" you'll find yourself going down a rabbit hole of form building, hydrostatic pressure, foundation squaring, and so on. Even pouring an unreinforced slab for a patio requires some distinct skills. Plumbing is the same way where being able to replace a water heater could devolve into sweating new fittings.

Is the intent here to document what you could do without knowing what the residential code is and how to pull permits in your area?

So much hate here in these comments and threads. I know for myself, sometimes it's good to even have an idea of small/medium/large sized projects / ideas to run with to consider as an "experience" in doing a new skill I've never worked in before.

It looks like these are an attempt to create units of work that are approachable and individually researchable to complete.

I think it's pretty great!

These skill trees are so awful. The computing one has "learn to type on a keyboard" after buying a domain, setting up an email domain, make a website, make a blog, or building your own computer. Their measure of advance in general is basically random.

Also they aren't trees.

“Maker movement” is a hard commercialization angle of DIY, or really, doing anything. Not sure who came up with the label “Maker” but I’m personally not a fan. Maybe reading Christopher Tolkien has rubbed off on me. As someone who works hands on with a lot of things, I can’t help but feel like a cultural shift is taking place. I’m all for DIY so this is great, but you don’t have to be a “Maker” to get shit done.

I'm going "meh" here for all the skill trees I'm actually familiar with. Using keyboard shortcuts has nothing to do with coding. Negronis don't require more skills than old-fashioneds. Change Bedsheets comes well before any deep cleaning. The music one is just utterly absurd ("learn a difficult lick" before "learn guitar"?)

I love the idea. The execution... leaves questions.

Maker merit badges

This is a brilliant idea but execution leaves a lot to be desired. I get that there's a lot of judgement calls going on here but I really wish this would become a popular project with lots of subject experts to weigh in.

Looking at the PCB design skill tree, it just doesn't look very realistic. "Use an Autorouting tool," for example, is second after "Learn PCB Software" when it should be in the top half of the tree (if not in the top few rows).

"Design an SMD PCB" is on the same horizontal line as "Hand solder SMD Parts", as is "Learn to Read a Schematic" and "Learn PCB Software"(?!) Learning the PCB design software is a process that must run in parallel with most of the skill tree.

"Use a reflow oven to solder a PCB" is two who levels above "Use a pick & place machine" and so on. I get that a lot of this is path dependent on experience but "Use SMD tweezers" should probably go alongside "Solder SMD parts"...

I checked out learn to code. Had things like write a quicksort, use a bitwise operator, teach a friend, give a speech on coding.

Probably not the most useful list.

I think that this is getting negative feedback because "skill trees" raise expectations that this doesn't satisfy. A skill tree would be a dependency graph showing which skills depend on which other skills. This is more of a template for a related set of skills stacked by difficulty. Maybe just call it "Maker Skill Stacks" to head off the disappointment.

Really wish these were called achievements instead of a skill tree to head off every discussion fixated on how these aren't actually tree structures and/or don't work like, or even have a similar intent as, video game skill trees.

Especially seeing them in practice, it's pretty clear to me that the goal is to fill in all the segments, which helps to identify which skills or projects might be be sitting in a blind spot. And especially in a group environment, helping to point out which people might be able to answer questions about specific tasks because it's easier to spot on a chart like this than asking each member the same questions.

Cooking has such a weird idea of basic vs. advanced.

"Make garlic bread" is near the bottom, and then "use fresh garlic or ginger in a meal" is five rows higher. Apparently using fresh garlic and ginger is more advanced than "make a daal", which I've never considered even doing without fresh ginger?

(And, wait, making popcorn is even more advanced?!)

These specifics aside, the big issue I have is that basic/advanced is the wrong axis. It should be fundamental building blocks going up to more complex things dependent on those building blocks: using fresh ginger is a building block you learn so you can cook daal. You don't learn how to cook daal and at a later date learn how to add spices!

Usually when I’m learning a new thing I work backwards: what do I want to do, and what do I need to understand to accomplish it? The reason is very simple. If you learn a huge list of “skills” or “tools” you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep, which isn’t really good enough to get anything done. You have to get your hands dirty.

This is also why (controversial take incoming) I don’t think calculus should be a prerequisite for computer science or even machine learning. Yes, it is possible you will need to know it. But most likely you won’t. Most people aren’t writing their own loss functions or backprop libraries. And if you are, great! You can learn it later. Way too many people stop before they ever get started because of unnecessary gatekeeps.

Were these skill "trees" the output of an LLM or something? Of the domains I have a lot of familiarity with, the ordering (if it can even be assumed the easy ones are at the bottom and the hard ones at the top) make little sense.

I think if I were a newbie in any of these subjects and followed the "trees" as presented I would be quickly discouraged and lost.

I applaud the effort, but, these templated skill trees are just not very good imo. I have only one issue but it's a big one:

It's missing a tree structure, so there is no ordering of skills (learn easy stuff before hard stuff because there is a learning curve to anything).

They might be good as prints to hang on your wall, but in the current state they're more "achievement lists" rather than anything resembling a tech tree.

For the uninitiated there are robust formal versions of this used by industry. My product bases higher ed and corporate assessment scoring on these. Check out ONET and Lightcast as a starting place.

I've had an idea for a while of a site... kinda like letterboxd, where you could log "learning paths" for textbooks and the like (for example to log what chapters you've gone through, exercises and the like).

I've built out some of it but would always get a bit lost in the weeds. I think there's a big challenge with self-learning in that you do kind of want feedback from people about whether you're going about some material the right way or not.

This sort of stuff looks fun though.

Fun lists but the "1 tile = 1 point" needs more realistic weights - for example "take a video" is equivalent to "make a short film" in points earned, where realistically pushing a button is not the same effort as making a short. Maybe there should be a logarithmic/exponential/multiplier scale associated with progressing up the list. Or determine an average time-to-complete metric from user feedback and indicate such on the skill progression.

these are great. under civics, I didn't see "file an Access to Information (FOIA) request" which would have been good. under IT security, it's actually not bad from a beginner perspective as you need to know those things to know what the next levels up are. the music tree could use some detail, but overall I shared it with friends.

I'm pretty amazed at the idea, and how many variations are already filled out. The ones I knew something about seemed really complete. Well done!

This is a fantastic idea, and I think the overall negativity misses the point of it being an evolving and collaborative project on github.

When you don't know what you don't know, any little map can be helpful to get one started.

When one desires to learn a skill they usually don't know what questions to ask to get started. This is one of the biggest challenges in learning, and there's a multibillion dollar industry devoted to easing that burden via textbooks and instructional videos. But equally important: beginners don't have a mental model for where that specific desired skill or knowledge lies on the continuum of the domain in which they're seeking to grow. This project puts skills in context, even if some of those contexts are (currently) very flawed.

For example, I've begun working with a couple of teenage garage bands that live near me. I have a lot of experience as a working musician, and they didn't have any at all-- but they knew they wanted to write, record, and perform teenage garage music. I noticed a "Music" domain on the maker tree. It could use improvement, but what it does is make clear that there's more to being a performing musician than learning guitar. In fact I've watched these kids go from "make a playlist" to "learn about copyright & licensing" to "produce a track with another person" to "play a ticketed show", and many of these steps were both required ("learn to keep a beat" springs to mind ;) ) and also not obvious to them when they started.

Each one of these domains is massive and full of intrinsic, context-dependent experiential knowledge. But they make a great starting point. I already learned some things about, say, the PCB design domain and have a better catalog of what I'd need to search the internet for to begin that rabbit-hole.

Edit: spelling, grammar

I’m not familiar with these kinds of gamification concepts. The idea of a skill tree is that you have to work on prerequisite skills before getting to the outer reaches of the tree, no?

I wonder why the cocktail tree has “Ask a liquor store to stock a new ingredient” as one of the most advanced category? Sounds more like an achievement.

I don't want to be negative at all so I'll ask for clarification. What is expected if you have filled in every single one of these "goals"?

I would honestly expect for the three disciplines where I am fairly confident I am good at, ie 10+ years of experience in an actual working environment. I would expect a relatively new to the industry person to have completed most of the goals. Completing the "skill tree" is the start of the journey in those disciplines not the end.

My take, if you have done this skill tree you are now equipped to know whether you actually want to become an expert in that field.

If this skill tree is up to the hobbyist level then sure, it's not too bad.

Although https://roadmap.sh is developer-specific, it has the tree part

"Stippling" is misspelled in the Comic Artist skill tree. Which I can pretty much fill in given that I can fill in the blank spaces with checked-off things like "get cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them". But I can't fill it in with "get two Reuben nominations" like one of my friends can. Also I feel like "submit your work to publishers" and "get someone else to publish your stuff for you" is distinctly lacking. And pretty much a requirement for the "two Rube noms". Personally I'd remove "use hatching/crosshatching/stipling" and the other misspelling of "digitally adjust the hue/saturation/contaract etc".

The Visual Artist one mostly works though. I can fill pretty much all of that one in too.

wait, if i started using debian, even as admin, much of the stuff never applied to me. never installed java or python by hand, as it is not needed. never installed nixos.

Not saying, this is the way it should be (and i admit, i installed java by hand .. on freebsd once), but i am a bit skeptical.

Not really trees, are they?

Closer to "bingo" than a proper skill tree. I was expecting something more like this: https://roadmap.sh/

Quite a few commentators suggesting AI was used to generate the charts. Well, the README has been updated!

"Were these made with AI? No, these were made in collaboration with experts or using my own expertise, without any AI usage."

Same goes for anyone who wants to suggest a better nomenclature (and there are some good suggestions amongst the HN comments).

"Will you keep the 'Skill Trees' name when they aren't really traditional skill trees? While these templates are skill tree inspired, I'm working on some new name ideas, potentially 'Skill Trackers' or something else. Any suggestions appreciated!"

I love the idea, I love the format. As others have mentioned this isn't really a skill tree, it is more of a skill line.

It is extremely difficult to be an expert in ~50 different skills. Because of this, it is difficult to make ~50 high quality skill progressions.

Have you considered trying to crowd source skill achievements and priorities for these progressions?

Bought my first 3D printer 2 months ago. Probably have 2/3 of the 3D printing one filled out already lol. (Much of which is pretty much a freebie just by buying a Bambu Labs printer)

can someone say something about the entrepreneur skill tree? I've got the business Idea, want to solve via dropshipping and am stuck on finding makers and how to talk to them. Basically big-dog robot for granny, he can bring her food upstairs and follow her to the grocery. can't have complex smartphone controlls, a chip in your pocket so it follows you should be the default and so on - if you steal it, you're solving a problem for me, lol

Despite the criticism, I surprisingly like these and would love to see the concept expanded & executed better.

Brilliant trick. I wonder how to pair this with spaced repetition for iterating smoothly on each step.

I've always characterized "Makers" as "geeks who missed shop class" --- this sort of thing just underscores how our educational system fails when it doesn't include methodologies such as Sloyd:

https://rainfordrestorations.com/tag/sloyd/

Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others...

My personal complaint is that "jewelry making" is on their todo list....jewelry making is like 20 different hobbies!! I make chainmaille jewelry. I know nothing about wire wrapping, let alone working with heat. Then you can have beaded jewelry, where there's bead crochet/weaving/other techniques (I don't know much about beads). There's macrame, there's glass, you can do ceramics, resin, etc. And this is just materials, not talking about designing vs crafting. That is not one hobby!