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Writing toy software is a joy

blog.jsbarretto.com

291–300 of 318 posts

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#291
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would read the official documentation of each db, forums, blog posts, stackoverflow entries, etc. It was time consuming on the searching side. The time it took to read all the sources was fine for me (it's learning time, so that's always welcomed). This learning time that you welcomed is what you will now miss out on. The LLM gives you an answer, you don't know how good it is, you use it, and soon enough, if runn…

Only if you use LLMs wrong. Today's models have deep research which will generate a comprehensive analysis with proper citations

I think you either didn't read my response or missed the point. No matter if the LLM output is useful or not, the learning outcome is hugely impacted. Negatively.

It's like copying on your homework assignments. Looks like it gets the job done, but the point of a homework assignment is not the result you deliver, it's the process of creating that result which makes you learn something.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#293
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…

I primarily use it this way or as a rubber duck. I pretty much use it as a replacement for going on a Google adventure. When I use it for code, it's mostly as a glorified auto-complete or write some boilerplate I can't be bothered to type.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

This would be the Kessler Syndrome of the Internet, and it will be glorious.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#295
post #11

One of the best things that I’ve done for myself, career-wise, came during a 6-month sabbatical between jobs. I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to do, but I kept finding myself stymied by scope creep - when you don’t have any constraints, it’s hard to decide how big a project should be, and the projects would grow to these massive unfinishable beasts. I decided to constrain myself to one week per project - what…

I am in such a phase as I write this. What should have been a week-long project has already gone through three and not finished. This is a simple multi-platform app I am building in Flutter.

One challenge I face is to be able to build something useful within a week. In two projects, I could make wirhin two days each.

For the Flutter one mentioned above, it took me two-three days just to get the tooling/SDKs to work and get me to a hello-world program working on Windows. Then it took about a week to program with all features I needed.

And then, damned again -- Took me a couple days to get it to build APK (random errors; the issue in the build tooling is still open). And then a week of craziness to sort out Android permissions. I still have the latter unresolved.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#296

The first example in the article, a regex engine, clicked for me. I had read the book on beautiful code #, and the first short story was about a regex thing by none other than Dennis Ritchie. As Fate would have it, my job required me to make a tool for web scraping. Inspired by that book I created a pattern matching language for dom trees. And a click and point tool to create those patterns. At the best time or compa…

Took a minute to track that down (Oran is spelled Oram?) https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/beautiful-code/97805965...

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#297
post #272

Very nice collection of toy projects, I resonate with you, I also wrote a ton of toy projects in sabbaticals, check the better ones out here : https://milgra.com/

A one-sentence description would be a great addition to these projects. "SOV|APP|VIDEO|SOURCE" doesn't really invite a click.
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