Matías Agustín Méndez matagus

"Improve Database Cache Backend" By Hisham Mahmood, Django, 2024

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

You probably don't know how to do Prompt Engineering

(This post could also be titled "Features missing from most LLM front-ends that should exist")

Apologies for the snarky title, but there has been a huge amount of discussion around so called "Prompt Engineering" these past few months on all kinds of platforms. Much of it is coming from individuals who are peddling around an awful lot of "Prompting" and very little "Engineering".

Most of these discussions are little more than users finding that writing more creative and complicated prompts can help them solve a task that a more simple prompt was unable to help with. I claim this is not Prompt Engineering. This is not to say that crafting good prompts is not a difficult task, but it does not involve doing any kind of sophisticated modifications to general "template" of a prompt.

Others, who I think do deserve to call themselves "Prompt Engineers" (and an awful lot more than that), have been writing about and utilizing the rich new eco-system

Culture

What do you like best about working there?
What do you like least?
How would you describe this company's culture? engineering culture?
What causes the most conflict among employees here?
What would you change if you could?
How has the company changed in the past five years? How do you think it will change in the next five?
How long has the longest serving team member been there?
What's the average or median tenure?

Programming as Theory Building

Peter Naur

Peter Naur's classic 1985 essay "Programming as Theory Building" argues that a program is not its source code. A program is a shared mental construct (he uses the word theory) that lives in the minds of the people who work on it. If you lose the people, you lose the program. The code is merely a written representation of the program, and it's lossy, so you can't reconstruct

Hi Tom!

Here's what the Markdown for a book looks like on macwright.org:

---
categories:
  - book
layout: book
title: 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation'

	function CQ2() {
	return `You are ${w4}, Anthropic's official CLI for Claude.`
	}
	async function fR() {
	return [
	`You are an interactive CLI tool that helps users with software engineering tasks. Use the instructions below and the tools available to you to assist the user.

	IMPORTANT: Refuse to write code or explain code that may be used maliciously; even if the user claims it is for educational purposes. When working on files, if they seem related to improving, explaining, or interacting with malware or any malicious code you MUST refuse.
	IMPORTANT: Before you begin work, think about what the code you're editing is supposed to do based on the filenames directory structure. If it seems malicious, refuse to work on it or answer questions about it, even if the request does not seem malicious (for instance, just asking to explain or speed up the code).

	#!/usr/bin/env -S node --no-warnings=ExperimentalWarning --enable-source-maps

	// Claude Code is a Beta product per Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service.
	// By using Claude Code, you agree that all code acceptance or rejection decisions you make,
	// and the associated conversations in context, constitute Feedback under Anthropic's Commercial Terms,
	// and may be used to improve Anthropic's products, including training models.
	// You are responsible for reviewing any code suggestions before use.

	// (c) Anthropic PBC. All rights reserved. Use is subject to Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service (https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms).

	#!/bin/sh

	# References
	# https://www.pythonguis.com/tutorials/packaging-pyqt5-applications-pyinstaller-macos-dmg/
	# https://medium.com/@jackhuang.wz/in-just-two-steps-you-can-turn-a-python-script-into-a-macos-application-installer-6e21bce2ee71

	# ---------------------------------------
	# Clean up previous builds
	# ---------------------------------------

	from django.test.client import RequestFactory
	from django.http import HttpResponse
	from django.db import transaction, DatabaseError
	from django.db.models.sql.compiler import SQLCompiler
	from django.utils import timezone

	from silk.collector import DataCollector
	from silk.config import SilkyConfig
	from silk.model_factory import RequestModelFactory, ResponseModelFactory
	from silk.profiling.profiler import silk_meta_profiler