Techstructive Weekly #83
Week #83
It was a lazy week, I’ll put it straight. I don’t know what I should be doing or not doing. LLMs are crazy. I can get lost in them without realizing how much time has been spend (also cost). Same thing happened with books this week, I almost read 700 pages this week. I don’t know how, I just was lost in the books. I finished the harry potter series. I was struggling with the half blood prince on 25% last week, but I powered through it and completed both the books and here I am.
This is not a book rating newsletter but I say one thing. Reading books can change your perspective and not restricted to any one field. I think I saw a lot of inspiration for fighting against the dark arts or LLMs. No, not fighting against LLMs but sort of understanding when to let it rip through itself and when to strike. It was like Horcrux and Hallow. Not quite but something. No I am not trying to mash up anything I read to LLMs, it was just natural. I’ll leave it for another article.
But the point is, its getting lost. The art of code, its already is. We can’t write, the hard work is automated, just like that in a puff. There were people around me who always told me “Code is the last thing to care about”. But I was of the other opinion. Because writing code gave me clarity, it gave me direction, it was a validation of where I am going. But now its not quite like it. You can’t enjoy without feeling. I am an idiot here, stubborn talking about it. Next week I might be euphoric about using LLMs. No point in blabbering and hating it.
Quote of the week
“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”
A touch of gold that quote is. Summarizes the full series in beautiful words. Just brilliantly done. Changes the perspective of the mind, the intention and the affection. I was literally crying after reading that, I was numb after reading that quote and didn’t read for minutes. That line just moved me.
Pity for the living who live without love. What a hitting stone. Pity the LLMs, pity the people who can’t fathom the care for art. I am just dropping that quote here. I just have no words to describe what I feel. Its beyond senses. Beyond the power of words, because to feel the words you need to experience pain and life, for life is sometimes pain.
Read
“The biggest challenge in adopting agentic engineering practices is getting comfortable with the consequences of the fact that writing code is cheap now.”
Banger, yes can agree to that. Turning that code to production grade is hell of a task. It seems so flawless that its tempting to just push it straight. But tests my god tests are like verataserum for those ai slop.
“Delivering new code has dropped in price to almost free... but delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than that.”
Yes totally.
“These best practices are still being figured out across our industry. I’m still figuring them out myself.”
Honestly he is the best one to put this way. Everyone thinks they know how it works, but having that probabilistic factor is very rough especially for thinking of code in a new way.
Hoard things you know how to do
This is an interesting idea, I can think that those all things that we can do could be a test on how good or bad the models are getting. Right now there are a few things that I can do and feels a bit awkward to do, so LLMs are a good point to tuck in.
Also the labour job of writing code is away now, no denying that. It was in the ChatGPT phase too. But now it can do at scale with the full context.
Google API Keys weren’t Secrets but then Gemini arrived
This is funny and scary at the same time. Funny because how carelessly the single API Key exposed the full Google access, scary because how can such thing at Google scale happen.
Kind of wired how they handled these. It felt a bit rushed and then never looked at. They wanted AI to be in the hands of everyone and everything. So I think that might be a decision somewhere that for AI studio it should be that but they mistakenly made it for all products accessible from the API Key.
It is always different right? In tech, no change is the same, that’s why its called change right? But people think every change as revolution, and this is like that which hits like a truck after the hype has faded out.
The indian region looks full of street views, shows how conjusted and cramped everything in India is. Peace is a luxury in India, though people have a unique way of finding peace in chaos.
We build a app to read books with LLMs - Merrilin
This looks good, I want to build something like this. Recently I have been devouring books like crazy and have found myself typing 100s of queries to google (not GPT) to understand the plot deeper and certain quotes that I didn’t understand.
Might not be a good thing to add while reading a book, but as a companion to talk to is a good direction.
Watched
I don’t want to start another week of dunking on Anthropic but this doesn’t seem to end.
They think using their APIs is against rights, but scraping internet and training claude is not? Well they should get more of these now, let them taste their own medicine.
I am starting to get a hatred for them now. Can’t bear them.
This was a fun one. Really enjoyed the banter. I was also a novice gamer with my friends in teens. I used to play Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Brawl Stars, Minecraft. Those were the times.
Now it feels like a dread and creep, almost like wastage of life, not time even. I know, I know I am not a productive-rambling person. But it just, I don’t like playing games anymore, there are other things for me to enjoy and sip my soul in.
Learnt
Its quite a problem to now say yourself a software developer.
The right term would be a “good software developer”. Because software has become a commodity. Models can write code and build software, but “good” is a relative term.
The taste, the experience, the curiosity and the grit. These qualities are not in LLMs (yet). But there are others which humans can’t compete like speed, intelligence and availability.
I don’t know who would trade of which things for humans but it looks a good trade of if someone just wants to get the foot on the market. The bar has not lowered though, the steps have. The gate is still tall to climb.
Tech News
This looks another bump in image generation models. I think image generation has plateaued. Except for Sora and Nano Banana, we haven’t seen any growth in the past year.
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That’s it from this week. Hoping to get something out in the next week with code. Weekend is all packed with plans. A bit humanesque-friend gathering after almost a year, I am tired of talking with LLMs. See ya next week.
Till then keep churning tokens!
Happy Coding :)