blackenedstrang

Anti-hype LLM reading list

Goals: Add links that are reasonable and good explanations of how stuff works. No hype and no vendor content if possible. Practical first-hand accounts of models in prod eagerly sought.

Foundational Concepts

Pre-Transformer Models

Newb's Guide to installing Arch Next to Pre-installed Windows 10

The steps I took to dual boot Arch Linux alongside the preinstalled Windows 10 that came with my new Lenovo Ideapad. I used Ubuntu exclusively for the last 6 years so I'm Window's illiterate. I don't know a whole lot about the inner workings of Linux either.

Pre-Instllation Steps

Prepare the preinstalled Windows to share the system.

Verify the boot mode...

The default formula use by AWS RDS to calculate the max_connections parameter is: LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392},5000)

But It's hard to find the exact value of DBInstanceClassMemory.

So, here are the values I got when I ran the SQL commmand: show max_connections; in some RDS instances:

Instance type	RAM (GB)	max_connections
db.t2.small	2	198
db.t2.medium	4	413

FWIW: I (@rondy) am not the creator of the content shared here, which is an excerpt from Edmond Lau's book. I simply copied and pasted it from another location and saved it as a personal note, before it gained popularity on news.ycombinator.com. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the exact origin of the original source, nor was I able to find the author's name, so I am can't provide the appropriate credits.

Effective Engineer - Notes

By Edmond Lau
Highly Recommended 👍
http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/

What's an Effective Engineer?

The Imposter's Handbook

This a collection of interesting links found in The Imposter's Handbook by Rob Conery.

Content:

Introduction
A Little History
The Tools
Customizing The Terminal

Async Await Best Practices Cheat Sheet

Summary of Asynchronous Programming Guidelines

Name	Description	Exceptions
Avoid async void	Prefer async Task methods over async void methods	Event handlers
Async all the way	Don't mix blocking and async code	Console main method
Configure context	Use `ConfigureAwait(false)` when you can	Methods that require context

System Design Cheatsheet

Picking the right architecture = Picking the right battles + Managing trade-offs

Basic Steps

Clarify and agree on the scope of the system

User cases (description of sequences of events that, taken together, lead to a system doing something useful)
- Who is going to use it?
- How are they going to use it?

References from my talk 'Without Resilience, Nothing Else Matters'

String interpolation

var x = 1;

// same as string.Format("A {0} B", x) 
var y1 = $"A {x} B"; // y == "A 1 B"

// $@ for multiline
var y2 = $@"A

	namespace Analogy
	{
	/// <summary>
	/// This example shows that a library that needs access to target .NET Standard 1.3
	/// can only access APIs available in that .NET Standard. Even though similar the APIs exist on .NET
	/// Framework 4.5, it implements a version of .NET Standard that isn't compatible with the library.
	/// </summary>INetCoreApp10
	class Example1
	{
	public void Net45Application(INetFramework45 platform)