4 ms·
Andrej doesn't need to do this. He's done it because he evidently loves it, and wants to share his hard-earned knowledge with the rest of the world. He may be
by cs702 4y ago
Andrej doesn't need to do this.
He's done it because he evidently loves it, and wants to share his hard-earned knowledge with the rest of the world.
He may be a product of the ivory tower, but he's been in the trenches. He knows firsthand how f-ing hard it is to ship a product.
And here he is, sharing useful personal code with everyone.
This github repo now has collected ~4K stars and its antecessor (minGPT) has collected ~11K stars over the past couple of years. In my experience, the number of people who clone, copy, view or otherwise use code from a repo is one to two orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who star it, so we can safely say that Andrej has helped at least a few hundred thousand -- but likely more than a million -- individuals around the world learn how to build and tinker with GPT models.
Remarkably, as I write this, no one else here has said thank you yet, so let me say it on everyone's behalf:
THANK YOU ANDREJ.
--
EDITS: I changed the wording in response to latexr's comments below.
- adam_arthur 4y agoI’m all for thanking open source contributors, but your excessively prostrating wording is a bit much for me.
- 1986108 4y ago[flagged]
- idiotsecant 4y agocan't tell if you're making some kind of clever quip or if this is some random spambot just entering a random reverse DNS lookup line.
- cs702 4y agoIf I overdid it, I'm sorry. I promise it wasn't intentional. My comment was spur-of-the-moment, motivated by sincere gratitude :-)
- mrg3_2013 4y agoThoughtful post! Everything so true! I am always amazed by individuals who truly are educators of the world.
- isoprophlex 4y agoPedantry time! A million people building GPT models means that one in 8000 humans on earth has built one. That seems wildly off. Linkedin has about 100.000 profiles of data scientists. Assume generously that the actual number is 10x higher. Not correcting for the fact that a data scientist isn't always a machine learning expert, etc etc, there's just no way every single one of them even KNOWS what a GPT-like model is.
- cs702 4y agoNot only building. Also tinkering, using, testing out of curiosity, etc. There are around ~30 million software developers worldwide today (source: googled it). Around ~7 million of them are registered users of Github (source: googled it). 1M+ seems likely to me. BTW, I appreciate that you preceded your comment with "Pedantry time!" -- nice gesture :-)
- LeoPanthera 4y agoI love italics. They're good.
- cs702 4y agoIn hindsight, yes, I may have overused them out of excitement. Sorry! :-)
- latexr 4y agoEdit: the OP has updated their wording to make it clear they meant any kind of viewing or usage. I don’t think any of us would disagree more people use code than star repos. Original comment left below with original quote, since this has gotten a number of replies that would stop making sense with a larger edit. > Normally, the number of people who clone or copy code from a repo is one to two orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who take the time to star it Intuitively, I’m having trouble believing that. Starring takes considerably less effort than cloning or copying code. The “time to star” is a literal second, maybe two if you have to scroll up. From anecdotal observation, repos with more forks and/or external contributors than stars are far from the norm. I’ve seen many mentioning they star repos as a way of bookmarking they seldom go back to, or as an easy way to send kudos to the developer even when they don’t use the project. In no way is this a comment on the value of Andrej’s work (I’m not familiar with it). I am only interested in the source of your “orders of magnitude” claim, which if proven will update my mental model of the coding community.
- hahamrfunnyguy 4y agoI've stared maybe 2-3 repositories over the past 15 years, contributed to probably a half dozen and used hundreds (if not more) in my applications. To me using means using that project in an application you develop. Typically I get them from NPM or Nuget and I contribute when a) the project owner thinks my feature idea is a good idea or b) I run into a bug that I can fix. Starring is just not that useful to me so I can see why users or contributors would be much higher. I typically star repos if it's an unpopular or old repository that doesn't have NPM or Nuget packages.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 4y agoIf I want to use a repository, my first step is to either download a released binary or clone the repository. Forking is much further down the line for me, when I've used the code, encountered a problem, fixed it, and decided to polish the fix up to make a PR. I star something when I either have used it and like it, or when I think I want to use it in the future and want to bookmark it (though the former more often than the latter). I have given out about 50% more stars than I've forked, and have probably cloned an order of magnitude more than I've forked or starred. Of course not everyone is the same, but I'd be surprised if overall clones were less than an order of magnitude more than forks or stars, and find two or even three orders of magnitude believable depending on the target group of the repo.
- canadianfella 4y ago[dead]
- tomComb 4y agoHim doing this is not like when your average bloke does it. He appears to be building a business and maintaining his profile. And there is nothing wrong with that - I admire him for for pursuing his career in this positive and helpful way. But random folks do this sort of thing everyday with no such career goals and little recognition, so I'm not sure it is this specific contribution that needs to be called out.