Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#121

Post by philote » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #109

zkmon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning/goal of life is to reproduce. Food (and everything else) is only a means to it. Reproduction is the only root goal given by nature to any life form. All resources and qualities are provided are only to help mating.

Reproduction is the goal of genes . Food (not dying) is the goal of organisms.

I'd argue genes nor life has a "goal". They are what they are because they've been successful at continuing their existence. Would you say a rock's goal is not to get broken?

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#122

Post by philipallstar » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

BrokenCogs wrote: post #114

tantalor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even cool projects can learn from others. Maybe they missed something that could benefit the project, or made some interesting technical choice that gives a different result. For the readers/learners, it's useful to understand the differences so we know what details matter, and which are just stylistic choices. This isn't art; it's science & engineering.

But it isn't the OP's responsibility to compare their project to all other projects. The GP could themselves perform the comparison and post their thoughts instead of asking an open ended question.

> it isn't the OP's responsibility to compare their project to all other projects

No one, including the GP, said it was.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#123

Post by nobodyandproud » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

Thanks. Tinkering is how I learn and this is what I’ve been looking for.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#124

Post by Leomuck » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

Wow that is such a cool idea! And honestly very much needed. LLMs seem to be this blackbox nobody understands. So I love every effort to make that whole thing less mysterious. I will definitely have a look at dabbling with this, may it not be a goldfish LLM :)

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#125

Post by tantalor » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

philote wrote: post #121

tantalor wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproduction is the goal of genes . Food (not dying) is the goal of organisms.

I'd argue genes nor life has a "goal". They are what they are because they've been successful at continuing their existence. Would you say a rock's goal is not to get broken?

Only because genes/organisms can make choices (changes to its programming, or decisions) to optimize their path towards their goal.

A rock is maybe not a good counterexample, but a crystal is because it can grow over time. So in some sense, it tries not to break. However a crystal cannot make any choices; it's behavior is locked into the chemistry it starts with.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#126

Post by rpdaiml » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

This is a nice idea. A tiny implementation can be way more useful for learning than yet another wrapper around a big model, especially if it keeps the training loop and inference path small enough to read end to end.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#127

Post by MarkusQ » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

algoth1 wrote: post #87

This really makes me think if it would be feasible to make an llm trained exclusively on toki pona ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona )

There isn't enough training data though, is there? The "secret sauce" of LLMs is the vast amount of training data available + the compute to process it all.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#128

Post by CaseFlatline » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

I am trying to find how the synthetic data was created (looking through the repo) and didn't find it. Maybe I am missing it - Would love to see the prompts and process on that aspect of the training data generation!

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#129

Post by hca » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #86

_2fnr wrote: post #50

[flagged]

Meaning/goal of life is to reproduce. Food (and everything else) is only a means to it. Reproduction is the only root goal given by nature to any life form. All resources and qualities are provided are only to help mating.

No, evolution has encoded lust. It has not yet allowed for condoms. But it's a process.

Re: Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work

#130

Post by fg137 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

BrokenCogs wrote: post #114

tantalor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even cool projects can learn from others. Maybe they missed something that could benefit the project, or made some interesting technical choice that gives a different result. For the readers/learners, it's useful to understand the differences so we know what details matter, and which are just stylistic choices. This isn't art; it's science & engineering.

But it isn't the OP's responsibility to compare their project to all other projects. The GP could themselves perform the comparison and post their thoughts instead of asking an open ended question.

It isn't, but such information will be immensely helpful to anyone who wants to learn from such projects. Some tutorials are objectively better than others, and learners can benefit from such information.