3 ms·

> I'm able to get really great results out of LLMs because I have 20+ years of experience helping me know what questions to ask of them. While a direct answer

> I'm able to get really great results out of LLMs because I have 20+ years of experience helping me know what questions to ask of them. While a direct answer is nice, I like an iterative/explorative process because of all the things I pick up alongside it. An example is when I was working on an epub reader for macOS (side project). I wanted to a native layout engine instead of a webview and I decided to go with muPDF. This has lead me to know more about text layout and rendering, and embedding C inside Swift than I would if I just have direct answers for every problem (if I'd know the correct questions in the first place). I accumulate side quests like that until I can do a nice experiment to learn as much as I can for a particular domain space.

BoorishBears 3y ago
You're talking right past them though: you were working on a side quest you had interest and bandwidth to iterate on. I agree with the parent comment, my pipeline is already saturated with side quests, I'm already iterating on a bunch of random fun work, and side-project work and work work. So often times the most "LLM-heavy" projects of mine are things I straight up would not do if I didn't have something to get the ball rolling other than more of my own free time which is already in short supply. Hopping from direct answer to direct answer isn't where I find wonder/fun in programming anyways, but sometimes you don't have bandwidth for the side quest to be fun or wonderous.