I had the same question and decided to get into the basics at least. I highly recommend the fast.ai course.
Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
31–40 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#32It's your choice, but it's definitely not ,,just another tool''. Most of my LLMs made lots of mistakes, but Codex with $200 subscription changed my workflow totally, and now I'm having 40 pull requests/day merged. Treat LLMs as interns, increase your test coverage with them to the point that they can't ruin your codebase and get really good at reviewing code and splitting tasks up to smaller digestible ones, and prom…
You can review and approve 40 PR's a day from intern quality work?
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#33IMO, you're a woodworker, a craftsman that builds solid products. You've been using a hacksaw and hammer all these years, now someone invented a circular saw and drill and people can move a lot faster. And now even relatively previously inept people are able to do woodwork. Do you need to understand how the circular saw and drill are made?
To continue with your analogy: maybe they don't need understand every detail, but they should know how they function, what safety precautions to take, and when it is a better/more useful tool compared to what they're currently using.
That doesn't mean knowing every single bit there is to know about it, but a basic understanding will go a long way in correctly using it.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#34Depends on what you want to do. But my 2 cents are that like all new technology, LLMs will become a commodity. Which means that everybody uses them but few people are able to develop them from scratch. It's not different from other things like databases, GPU drivers, 3D engines for games, etc. That all involves a lot of hardcore computer science and math. But lots of people use these things without being hindered by such skills.
It probably helps a little to understand some of the internals and math. Just to get a feel for what the limitations are.
But your job as a software engineer is probably to stick things together and bang on them until they work. I sometimes describe what I do as being a glorified plumber. It requires skills but surprisingly few skills related to math and algorithms. That stuff comes in library form mostly.
So, get good at using LLMs and integrating what they do into agentic systems. Figure out APIs, limitations, and learn about different use cases. Because we'll all be doing a lot of work related to that in the next few years.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#35> Is this another bubble that might burst
I see this a lot, but I think it's irrelevant. Even if this is a bubble, and even if (when?) it bursts, the underlying tech is not going anywhere. Just like the last dotcom bubble gave us FAANG+, so will this give us the next letters. Sure, agentsdotcom or flowsdotcom or ragdotcom might fail (likely IMO), but the stack is here to stay, and it's only gonna get better, cheaper, more integrated.
What is becoming increasingly clear, IMO, is that you have to spend some time with this. Prompting an LLM is like the old google-fu. You need to gain experience with it, to make the most out of it. Same with coding stacks. There are plenty of ways to use what's available now, as "tools". Play around, see what they can do for you now, see where it might lead. You don't need to buy into the hype, and some skepticism is warranted, but you shouldn't ignore the entire field either.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#36I come from a more traditional (PhD) ML/DL background. I wouldn't recommend getting into (1) because the field is incredibly saturated. We have hundreds of new, mostly low quality, papers each day. If you want to get into AI/ML on a more fundamental level now is probably the worst time in terms of competition. There are probably 100x more people in this field than there are jobs, and most of them have a stronger back…
Looks like OP’s curiosity isn’t just about deep diving LLMs —he’s probably itching to dig into adjacent topics like RAG, AI pipelines, and all the other adjacent LLM rabbit holes. So in that case I don’t see why not?
I just wanted to second the previous comment, and this is even for adjacent fields. Also a PhD AI/ML grad, and so many of us are out of work at the moment that we'll happily settle for prompt engineering roles, let alone RAG etc., just to maintain appearances on CVs/eligibilty for possible future roles.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#37When I was in my postdoc (applied human genetics), my advisor's rule was that you needed to understand the tools you were using at a layer of abstraction below your interface with them. For example, if we wanted to conduct an analysis with a new piece of software, it wasn't enough to run the software: we needed to be able to explain the theory behind it (basically, to be able to rewrite the tool). From that standpoin…
> my advisor's rule was that you needed to understand the tools you were using at a layer of abstraction below your interface with them.
Very wise advice! And the more complex systems are, the more this is truly needed.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#38My 2 centes: 1. Learn basic NNs at a simple level, build from scratch (no frameworks) a feed forward neural network with back propagation to train against MNIST or something as simple. Understand every part of it. Just use your favorite programming language. 2. Learn (without having to implement with the code, or to understand the finer parts of the implementations) how the NN architectures work and why they work. Wh…
Agreed with most of this except the last point. You are never going to make a foundational model, although you may contribute to one. Those foundational models are the product, yes, but if I could use an analogy: foundational models are like the state of the art 3D renderers in games. You still need to build the game. Some 3D renderers are used/licensed for many games. Even the basic chat UI is a structure built arou…
I agree that instrumenting the model is useful in many contexts, but I don't believe it is something so unique to value Cursor such valuation, or all the attention RAG, memory, MCP get. If people say LLMs are going to be commodities (we will see) imagine the layer about RAG, tool usage, memory...
The progresses we are seeing in agents are 99% due to new LLMs being semantically more powerful.
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#39[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
#40https://stanford-cs336.github.io/spring2025/
Just learn this and its prerequisites