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Writing toy software is a joy

blog.jsbarretto.com

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Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#241

Post by eikenberry »

zffr wrote: post #234
eikenberry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me 8 months of active shopping to find a job w/ 25 years of experience. Unless you are really good at interviewing with an interesting resume, I'd suggest caution until the job market recovers.

What do you think the bottleneck was in your search? Was it finding openings, getting interviews, or passing those interviews? In my niche I’m finding that there are very few opening in the city I live in, but that getting interviews might not be too hard. Not sure how easy it would be to pass those interviews.

Most of my issues were around interviewing, I got plenty of them but somewhere in the 3+ rounds of interviewing I'd choke. I have always been nervous during interviews and had previously got most of my positions through my network, but none of their companies were hiring. Next time this happens I'm going to try an interview tutor to see if that helps and probably take some Xanax or something to help settle my nerves.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#242

Post by cik »

dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

My LLM use case preference is exactly that - a google replacement. I've modified my prompts to ask for links to direct source material, thereby allowing me to go deeper. I find this in no way different then a search engine.

The downside however, is that at least 50% of the links cited no longer exists. This points to a general issue with LLMs, temporal knowledge. I tend to at least go to archive.org on a per-link basis when so inclined.. But clearly that's not ideal.

Does anyone have a better solution, short of just asking the LLM to remove the extra step, and link to the archive.org cache for the ingestion date (which frankly, I also don't have faith in being accurate).

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#243

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #44
dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

> Now with LLMs, I simply prompt the same with a little bit more of context "pros and cons of using mysql vs mongodb when storing photos. Link references". In near future, companies will probably be able to pay lots of money to have their products come up better in the comparison. LLMs are smart enough to make the result seem "organic" -- all verifiable information will be true and supported by references, it will on…

Would be funny if LLMs get SEO'd to death and go the same way as search engines

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#244

Post by norskeld »

jwr wrote: post #232
snackbroken wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few times I've used LLMs as question answering engines for anything moderately technical, they've given subtly-but-in-important-ways incorrect information such that taking them at face value would've likely lost me hours or days of pursuing something unworkable, even when I ask for references. Whether or not the "references" actually contain the information I'm asking for or merely something tangentially related…

Try perplexity — I found it to be very good at digging up information. It became a nearly complete replacement for web searches at this point.

This. I was skeptical at first, but it is indeed good at searching and answering questions without! That said, I still have to double-check results for niche queries or about stuff that is relatively new. Sometimes, the "sources" for the answers are just someone's opinions — unsubstantiated by any facts — on an old Reddit post that's only tangentially related to the topic. And sometimes, you simply know that manual search and digging through SO answers yourself will yield better results. At this point I've developed a gut feeling that helps me decide whether to prompt Perplexity or just g**gle it.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#245

Post by ponector »

dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

Cursor is awesome as search engine for your codebase. Extremely helpful if you are not familiar with it.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#247

Post by Teever »

ngriffiths wrote: post #169
Teever wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be a race between the attempts monetize online LLM services like this and the development of consumer owned hardware that can enable local LLMs with sufficient power to deliver the same service but ad free. Combined with RAG a self hosted LLM will definitely be able to deliver a more impartial and therefore better solution.

I don't think anyone can make a Google today that works as well as it did back then. Google shaped how new content was created, and that was probably a much bigger deal than any changes to the tool itself

Sure, but in the context of this thread where the usage case of modern LLMs was described as:

"Now with LLMs, I simply prompt the same with a little bit more of context "pros and cons of using mysql vs mongodb when storing photos. Link references"

locally hosted LLMs with RAG will absolutely be able to do this, better than Googling even back then could, and so the prospect of monetized LLMs with ads in them degrading the user experience for this sort of usage case is unlikely.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#248

Post by admiralrohan »

Good list of projects. I have to disagree on the point on usage of LLMs.

These projects are going to be sideprojects and with busy schedule it might get tough to find motivation. Using LLMs for some of the parts can give the momentum required to continue.

We can also learn from studying the output generated by LLMs.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#249

Post by fredrikholm »

eliasdorneles wrote: post #93

I quite enjoy the spirit of the article, and I believe joy in programming has become even more important in the AI agent coding age we're leaving. However, am I the only one finding those time estimates way too short? I'm not the fastest programmer on Earth, but I'm not the slowest either, and I think most of those projects would take me a lot more time than those estimates, specially if I'd be working only 2-3 hours…

I see error handling as the biggest culprit here.

When I use dynamically typed languages, it's not necessarily the lack of types that make me write code quicker, it's the fact that I can call anything from anywhere with a complete disregard for whether I should.

When I'm working in statically typed languages, esp. those with explicit error handling (Go, Rust, Haskell, Odin, Zig etc), I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about edge cases, bugs etc because I am forced to do so and find myself thinking in terms of engineering rather than exploring.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#250

Post by andhuman »

purplesyringa wrote: post #101

I'm surprised by the number of bad takes on LLMs in this thread. LLMs spoon-feed you with information about how things are implemented. You are not supposed to know how everything works when you start these projects. You're supposed to try your best, inevitably fail, then research the topic and understand where you went wrong, then adjust your approach. If you know how everything works and just follow the tutorial, y…

In the past we used to copy code verbatim from magazines. You have to start somewhere right?
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