Programming Throwdown

172: Transformers and Large Language Models

Intro topic: Is WFH actually WFC?

News/Links:

• Falsehoods Junior Developers Believe about Becoming Senior
  • https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/falsehoods-junior-developers-believe-about-becoming-senior/
• Pure Pursuit
  • Tutorial with python code: https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/software/control-algorithms/basic-pure-pursuit 
  • Video example: https://www...

Intro topic: Monitor setups

News/Links:

• BlueScuti, Willis, beats Tetris
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU
• PalWorld accused of being an AI Product
  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/22/palworld-accused-of-using-genai-with-no-evidence-so-far/?sh=26a9651b4239
• 4 Billion if-statements to determine if a number is even or odd
  • https://andreasjhkarlsson.github.io/jekyll/updat...

Predictions:
Jason 

• VR for Work
• Lowering AI training cost/ improved efficiency
• RISC-V takeoff

Patrick

• Ai claim of AGI
• Ai peer reviewer
• Ai Video Generator
• More space vehicles reaching orbit

Early career, finding role at FAANG, liaising vs shipping code. Startup?

3 part. 1. How and when current hype for AI will end? 2. Shape of the show 3. Upcoming in tech

What are essential programmer knowledge items?

CS Studen...

Intro topic: Testing your car battery

News/Links:

• Tech Layoffs still going on
  • https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/google-layoffs-california-companies-18465600.php 
• Real-time dreamy Cloudscapes with Volumetric Raymarching
  • https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/real-time-cloudscapes-with-volumetric-raymarching/
• Robot Rascals
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Rascals 
• Meta Quest 3 

Intro topic: What are expectations on developers that have nothing to do with programming

News/Links:

• Pushing for a lower dev estimate is like negotiating weather with a Meteorologist
  • https://smartguess.is/blog/your-estimate-is-less-than-that/
• Announcing python in excel
  • https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439
  ...

Intro topic: Jogging Metrics

News/Links:

• Unholy LLM
  • https://huggingface.co/Undi95/Unholy-v1-12L-13B 
• The reverse red herring  
  • https://www.blameless.com/blog/the-reverse-red-herring
• The "ens–tification" of TikTok
  • https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ 
• Response letter to Godot is not the new Unity
  • https://sampruden.github.io/posts/godot-is-not-the-new-unity/
  • ht...

- pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/

- Weekly series "5mins of Postgres": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDV_1Dz2Ixgl1nT_3DUZVFw

- How Postgres chooses which index to use: https://pganalyze.com/blog/how-postgres-chooses-index

- CMU databases courses: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/courses/

- Postgres community: https://www.postgresql.org/community/

As well as social links:

- Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@lukas

- Twitter/X: @pganaly...

Intro topic: Revisiting the power of Spreadsheets

News/Links:

• LK-99 Isn’t a Superconductor
  • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02585-7
• Normalizing Flows
  • https://pyro.ai/examples/normalizing_flows_i.html
• How is llama.cpp possible?
  • https://finbarr.ca/how-is-llama-cpp-possible/
• Chat with open source large language models
  • https://chat.lmsys.org/
    
    

Book of the Show

Things to consider when choosing a database

• Speed & Latency
• Consistency, ACID Compliance
• Scalability
• Language support & Developer Experience
• Relational vs. Non-relational (SQL vs. NoSQL)
• Data types
• Security
• Database environment
  • Client vs Server access

Info on Kris & Harper:

• Website: harperdb.io
• Twitter: @harperdbio, @kriszyp
• Github: @HarperDB, @kriszyp

Episode 163 - Recursion

Intro topic: Electric Cars

News/Links:

• Snake Game in 101 Bytes in a QR Code
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/15ab4ct/my_qr_code_snake_game_is_now_only_101_bytes/
• Superconductor Rumors abound
  • https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/whats-going-on-with-the-reports-of-a-room-temperature-superconductor/
• OpenWorm
  • https://github.com/openworm/O...

In the latest episode of Programming Throwdown, we delve into the captivating world of interactive fiction. We explore: Wordnet, Inform, and how games in the past have been the forerunners of today’s NLP challenges.

00:00:22 Introductions

00:00:39 To hard mode or not to hard mode

00:08:58 No moats in Google

00:16:37 Stable Diffusion blows Jason’s mind

00:21:31 Putting beats together

00:23:38 GPT4All

00:27:44 White Sand

00:35:28 F...

MosaicML’s VP Of Engineering, Hagay Lupesko, joins us today to discuss generative AI!  We talk about how to use existing models as well as ways to finetune these models to a particular task or domain.

00:01:28 Introductions

00:02:09 Hagay’s circuitous career journey

00:08:25 Building software for large factories

00:17:30 The reality of new technologies

00:28:10 AWS

00:29:33 Pytorch’s leapfrog advantage

00:37:24 MosaicML’s missio...

Where are you now? It’s a question that may seem easy to answer on the surface, but in truth hides more complexity than people expect. In today’s episode, we tackle the latest on AI, creative endeavors, and more before diving into the meaty discussion of position localization.

00:01:13 Steam Deck
00:11:22 Summoning Salt on Mario
00:16:49 100k stars
00:24:26 ChatGPT spam call
00:25:31 Build Your Own DB (from scr...

GraphQL is one of the biggest API enablers in software development, but just how complicated can things be? Tanmai Gopal – Hasura’s CEO extraordinaire – talks with Jason and Patrick about how the secret sauce gets made. They dive deeply from how APIs function to having them managed in practice – among several other topic, making this a must-listen episode. 

00:01:19 Introductions

00:01:48 Tanmai’s late start in programming

0...

In today’s episode, Jason and Patrick dive deeply with JFrog’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Bill Manning. With the conversation tackling the depth and complexity of software supply chains, vulnerabilities and more, Bill deftly offers grounded advice to listeners old and new.

00:00:26 Introductions

00:00:40 Bill’s plethora of job titles

00:09:33 The excitement of learning a language

00:15:08 Mechanical keyboards

00:21:17 Bill’s a...

There’s more than what meets the eye when it comes to Kubernetes, and Craig Box – ARMO’s VP of Open Source & Community –is one of several who have seen its many twists and turns since its inception. He talks with Jason and Patrick about Kubernetes’ origins in pop culture, utility in the modern workflow, and possible future in today’s episode. 

00:01:31 Introductions

00:03:39 Craig’s early internet speed experience

00:07:...

Should AI research be paused? How far ahead have deepfakes come? Join Patrick and Jason as they tackle their answers to these timely questions – plus an in-depth discussion on Perl in practice – with today’s episode of Programming Throwdown. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Join the Programming Throwdown Patreon community today: https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

News/Links:

• GPT4All & S...

When it comes to untangling the complexities of what lies ahead for search engines in this age of AI, few are as deeply versed in the subject as You.com Engineer Saahil Jain. Jason and Patrick talk with him in this episode about what search even is, what challenges lie ahead, and where the shift in paradigms can be found.

00:01:16 Introductions

00:02:06 How physics led Saahil to programming

00:07:20 Getting started at Micros...

A second Jason joins this episode of Programming Throwdown! Jason McDonald – Python evangelist, author, and more – talks to Patrick and Jason about his experience with the programming language, how his disability helped and hindered his software career, and where its strengths and weaknesses lie. 

00:01:05 Introductions

00:02:27 Jason’s pivotal Doctor Who regeneration

00:04:49 The power of dialog boxes

00:10:10 Python’s po...