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How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#11

Post by inerte »

Use ChatGPT or Claude for your day to day questions, technical or not. You'll quickly figure out in which areas using Google is still better. ChatGPT can probably do more than you think and handle more complex request than you're probably assuming.

Regarding your projects, either just brute force into an existing one, or start a new project. For the former, the purpose isn't to make the product better (exactly) but for you to learn. For the later, OpenAI and Anthropic APIs are good enough to mess around and build a lot of different things. Don't let analysis paralysis stop you, start messing around and finding out.

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#12

Post by heavyset_go »

Ignoring the hype, there are applications of ML that a suited for some general problems.

Would your product benefit from recommender systems, natural language input/output, image detection, summarization, pattern matching and/or analyzing large datasets?

If so, then maybe ML can help you out.

I'm of the opinion that if you need ML, you'll eventually realize it because the solutions to your problem you find will be served by applications of ML.

That's to say, while doing research, due diligence, etc, you will inevitably stumble upon approaches that use ML successfully or unsuccessfully.

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#16

Post by conwy »

If you're looking to maximise employability / pay scale, maybe you can do some small side projects, just enough to showcase curiosity/open-mindedness.

Examples:

- Build a useful bash script using ChatGPT prompts and blog about it

- Build a text summariser component for your personal blog using Xenova / Transformers.js

- Build an email reply bot generator that uses ChatGPT prompt with sentiment analysis (doesn't have to actually send email, it could just do an API call to ChatGPT and print the message to the screen).

Just a few small examples and maybe a course or two (e.g. Prompt Engineering for Developers) should look great.

However I question how many companies really care about it right now. Most interviews I've done lately didn't bring it up even once.

But that said, maybe in a few months or year or so it will become more essential for most engineers.

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#17

Post by whynotkeithberg »

conwy wrote: post #16

If you're looking to maximise employability / pay scale, maybe you can do some small side projects, just enough to showcase curiosity/open-mindedness. Examples: - Build a useful bash script using ChatGPT prompts and blog about it - Build a text summariser component for your personal blog using Xenova / Transformers.js - Build an email reply bot generator that uses ChatGPT prompt with sentiment analysis (doesn't have…

Do you really think a useful bash script using ChatGPT prompts is worth blogging about? I'm genuinely asking. I've been wanting to start my blog back up I was always primarily a sysadmin, although I've had to move more into DevOps to keep with the times and instead of being more an SRE/sysadmin like I used to be I'm now DevOps meets sysadmin where I'm not helping write our companies application but I do everything else from CI/CD, monitoring, log dashboards, to creation of infrastructure using terraform, ansible etc.

So I don't want you to think my question was being sarcastic... I'm genuinely curious if you think this sort of thing would be a useful or interesting thing to blog about or only in the cases of a resume building thing?

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#18

Post by ketzo »

whynotkeithberg wrote: post #17
conwy wrote: post #16

If you're looking to maximise employability / pay scale, maybe you can do some small side projects, just enough to showcase curiosity/open-mindedness. Examples: - Build a useful bash script using ChatGPT prompts and blog about it - Build a text summariser component for your personal blog using Xenova / Transformers.js - Build an email reply bot generator that uses ChatGPT prompt with sentiment analysis (doesn't have…

Do you really think a useful bash script using ChatGPT prompts is worth blogging about? I'm genuinely asking. I've been wanting to start my blog back up I was always primarily a sysadmin, although I've had to move more into DevOps to keep with the times and instead of being more an SRE/sysadmin like I used to be I'm now DevOps meets sysadmin where I'm not helping write our companies application but I do everything el…

I think programming-with-chatbot is still such a new skill that a concrete, well-written example is a very useful document!

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#19

Post by al_borland »

It sounds like you are aware of a technology and in search of a problem. Don’t force it. Most things don’t need AI. Personally, I find it to be a turnoff when a product tries to force AI into a product that doesn’t need it. It makes me write off the entire thing.

I am in a similar position to you… I have a job they the application of AI to that job isn’t readily apparent. My posture during all this is to use AI products as they become available that are appropriate and help me, but ultimately I’m waiting for the market to mature so I can see if and how I should move forward once the bubble pops and directions are more clear. I have little interest in running on the hamster wheel that is bleeding edge AI development, especially when I already have a job that doesn’t need it.

Re: How to keep up with AI/ML as a full stack dev?

#20

Post by [deleted] »

localghost3000 wrote: post #9

> I most often can’t see any use case for AI/ML I'm admittedly a skeptic on all this so take what I am about to say with a grain of salt: You should trust that voice. We're in a hype cycle. It was VR before and crypto before that. Big tech is trying _very_ hard to convince you that you need this. They need you to need this tech because they are lighting billions on fire right now trying to make it smart enough to do…

[deleted]
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