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Writing toy software is a joy

blog.jsbarretto.com

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Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#301

Post by paulddraper »

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.

It's my default search engine.

It is annoying when I really do want just a link. In that case, I would tab select the Google search engine in Chrome.

But for a lot else, Perplexity very nice.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#302

Post by chrz »

eikenberry wrote: post #241
zffr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Take it or leave it - I tell myself i already failed the incomming interview and whenever I notice i get nervous I tell myself im just talking with friends

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#303

Post by dakiol »

Gormo wrote: post #271
ngriffiths wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it the same way. The feeling is that I'm back in ~2010 when Googling stuff felt like a superpower. I could find anything back then. Of course, it didn't last long, and trying to Google now is an exercise in pain and frustration. Lots of people have complained about the various things Google and marketers have done to get there, idk, I just don't like how it works now. Top LLMs feel amazingly good at rapidly sur…

If you do a web search and find a random blog post full of spelling errors and surrounded by ads, you're not going to trust that at the same level as a Stack Overflow post with a hundred upvotes, or an article with a long comment thread on HN. But an LLM digests everything, and then spits out information with the same level of detail, same terminology, and same presentation regardless of where it came from. It strips…

> Sure, you can follow references from an LLM, but at that point you're just using it a fuzzier form of web search.

That's exactly the superpower, isn't it? Web search without having to dig deep around (especially now that Google's quality has declined over the years). Sure thing, LLMs are capable of more.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#304

Post by dakiol »

yusina wrote: post #252
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…

> 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…

I think it depends. LLMs can link references of where they took the content they throw at you. You can go and read such references. I like what LLMs provide, and at the same time I don't wanna blindly follow them, so I always allocate time for learning whether it's with LLMs or not.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#305

Post by shoomkloom »

n4r9 wrote: post #151
pietmichal wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was already a problem in a world without LLMs. Reputation is the only human mechanism that mitigates this.

Technology is a catalyser. It has a knack of turning things from "already a problem" to "now a catastrophe".

Now LLMs will create your bugs for you!

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#306

Post by fulafel »

alganet wrote: post #59
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just add that gen AI can actually be a fantastic aid when you're building some toy projects just for yourself. I am primarily a backend engineer, though I am capable on the front end, just not particularly fast. I am especially slow at the voodoo that is CSS. In the past, I would have been turned off from doing some end-to-end personal projects because I know I would have been bogged down just battling CSS fo…

A good reality check is: if a stranger asks you about a specific part of your toy project, would you be able to explain it? If you can't, it means there's something there you don't understand, and you lost an opportunity to learn. Of course, this is also true for reusing libraries and stuff. Within a job, what matters is the _team learning_, and it's roughly the same idea. At least one person in the team should be ab…

> If you can't, it means there's something there you don't understand, and you lost an opportunity to learn. Of course, this is also true for reusing libraries and stuff.

Yeah, in libraries that's the aim, software composability and reusability, you don't need to keep everything in your head. Same here.

A "lost opportunity to learn" can be preferable to not making the thing or making it much slower.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#307

Post by eikenberry »

chrz wrote: post #302
eikenberry wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Take it or leave it - I tell myself i already failed the incomming interview and whenever I notice i get nervous I tell myself im just talking with friends

Thanks.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#308

Post by guappa »

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…

> Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine?

Do you often find the need to search for APIs that do not exist but wish they did, and what the code using these imaginary APIs might look like?

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#309

Post by ac2u »

animal531 wrote: post #264

>An ECS framework, 1-2 weeks That gave me a good chuckle. Yeah look, you can change your data layout to be in more of an ECS format, make some optimizations and call it a day; but in reality you're still going to be pretty far from the real thing. I can say this because I've been working on one for some months now, of course I'm going for a production build and also to turn it into a Unity asset that's worthy of bein…

Have you seen where he’s using it though? His GBA Mario 64 port is one of the most impressive homebrew projects I’ve seen in years.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#310

Post by bookofjoe »

gus_massa wrote: post #268
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…

> Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? Google agree with you and now at the top there is a AI generated answer, clearly labeled as AI generated, and it cites the sources. I was trying to escape AI, but I have to recognize the implementation by Google is quite good.

Perplexity Pro is even better. True, it costs $20/month, but you don't have to look at that dog's breakfast of Google's homepage...
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