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Search - "but i was just kidding though"
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My worst experience was at my job where they told me I have to move to a permanent position from 3 years of contracting without a specific offer.
Why is that bad? In my country it means approximatly 40% lower wage.
I came into the job with PHP knowledge when they were looking for Perl on a project one year behind schedule. I learned the language and finished working demo in 6 weeks.
After that, every project that was ever assigned to me was done within 5-15% of the allocated time. I'm not kidding here. My manager loved be, because I was reliable, fast and I even 'accidentaly' solved other problems, like for instance I developed simple syslog search tool and benchmarked zip algos for reading speed, and the fastest had 70% better compression than the algo used before (gzip into plzip on 1-2gb files). That solved anothet problem - syslog servers did not have enough disk space and they didn't have money to upgrade the server.
The number of projects I touched or developed was over 20.
I also lead and developed our team's most successful tool, that every customer was throwing money to buy, while cutting down costs everywhere.
And after three years of that, my manager says that there are no more money for contractors. And the only possibility is going for employment. Without any specific offer! Just 'we cant do this anymore'.
Which I understand, that can happen in corporation, but ffs after all I've done, I expected warmer attitude. Not like 'you may have to leave, since we do not really care'.
I liked the people there, even though the corporation environment was lacking in many respects, but I wanted to help our local branch with everything I could and they gave up on me like that.
So I started looking elsewhere and I found a startup which offered 6 times the money I had in my previous job and promises to relocate me to USA. Which is the best thing that has happened to me that year and second best in my whole life!3 -
> One of my guys from work.
> Walks up to my office
> Says "say something cursed about software development or programming that would make people cry"
> Me: "If I could I would program games and neural networks with PHP"
> Him: .......you fucking monster.
> Walks away
For reference: We both like php, but know and understand why that is a baaaaad idea.8 -
Today was a rather funny day in school. School starts for me at 13:40 because our timetable planners are so qualified for this job.
First 2hrs: Physics, fine its good
Second 2hrs: Discrete Maths (however you want to call it)
Goal is to write a text (30 pages, 10, etc all those standard settings). Teacher prefers Latex over word, but we can do it in word if we want. We could choose a topic, I took primes because it looked the best. I decided to use latex because I'm a fetishist and it simply looks better in the end. A classmate was arguing with our teacher about ides: texmaker vs kile. And I'm like "I use vim". So my teacher is like kk
Later that class, when we actually started doing stuff I started the ssh session to my server because I don't know any good c++ compilers for win and I'm too lazy to get a portable version of cygwin (or whatever its called). So in my server I open vim and start coding my tool for Fermat Primes (Fermatsche Primzahlen, too lazy to actually translate). And this teacher seriously is the best teacher I ever met in my life. Usually teachers are like " dude r u hakin' the school server?" and I'm like bruh its just vim and I'm doing it this way because I cannot code on your PC coz I can't install a compiler. And this teacher is like "oh hey you actually use vi, all cool kids used it in 2000. I first though u were kidding and stuff..." And we continued talking about more of stuff like that and I have to say that this is the first teacher that actually understands me. Phew
Now I'm going to continue writing my 30 pages piece of trash latex doc and hope it'll end good1 -
There was this question I came up with that was very good at inducing hallucinations on what at the time I thought was a *lobotomized* LLM.
I can't recall the exact wording right now, but in essence you asked it to perform OpenGL batched draw calls in straight x86_64 assembly. It would begin writing seemingly correct code, quickly run out of registers, and then immediately start making up register names instead of moving data to memory.
You may say: big deal, it has nowhere to pull from to answer such an arcane fucking riddle, so of course it's going to bullshit you. That's not the point. The point is it cannot realize that it's running out of registers, and more importantly, that it makes up a multitude of register names which _will_ degrade the context due to the introduction of absolute fabrications, leading to the error propagating further even if you clearly point out the obvious mistake.
Basically, my thought process went as follows: if it breaks at something fundamental, then it __will__ most certainly break in every other situation, in either subtle or overt ways.
Which begged the question: is it a trait of _this_ model in particular, or is it applicable to LLMs in general?
I felt I was on to something, but I couldn't be sure because, again, I was under the impression that the model on which I tested this was too old and stupid so as to consider these results significant proof of anything; AI is certainly not my field, so I had to entertain the idea that I could be wrong, albeit I did so begrudgingly -- for obvious reasons, I want at least "plausible based on my observations" rather than just "I can feel it in my balls".
So, as time went on, I made similar tests on other models whenever I got a chance to do so, and full disclosure, I spent no money on this so you may utilize that fact in your doomed attempt to disprove me lmao. Anyway, it's been a long enough while, I think, and I have a feeling you folks can guess the final answer already:
(**SLIGHTLY OMINOUS DRUM ROLL**)
The "lobotomy" in question was merely a low cap on context tokens (~4000), which I never went over in the first place; newer/"more advanced" models don't fare any better, and I have been _very_ lenient in what I consider a passable answer.
So that's that, is what I'm starting to think: I was right all along, and went through the burdensome hurdle of sincerely questioning the immaculate intuition of my balls entirely for naught -- learn from this mistake and never question your own mystical seniority. Just kidding, but not really.
The problem with the force of belief is it can work both ways, by which I mean, belief that I could be wrong is the reason I bothered looking further into it, whereas belief to the contrary very much compels me to dismiss doubt entirely. I don't need that, I need certainty, dammit. And though I cannot in good faith say that I am _certain_, "sufficiently convinced" will have to do for the time being.
TL;DR I don't know but the more I see it just seems shittier.11 -
One day I decided I wanted to build robots.
And not kidding the reason I wanted to build them was because I wanted someone interesting to talk to and stil not kidding I even fantasized about a robot girlfriend... Lame I know I think I was a lonely little guy back then, though even after 7 years or so it doesn't feel as though it's that long ago. Maybe because things didn't change that much. Which is worrying but it's not the topic so I will pass on that future-past worries bullcrapper. After learning how robots worked and what made them function so things gradually led up to me being more interested in machine learning applications and software. I learned Arduino at first, I think I still have some messy circuits and old arduinos around. I only finished one robot though and it couldn't even support it's own weight. The servo motors were taking too many amps that heated up the little arduino even with a fan attached. Provably I should have made use of mechanics for robots books and calculated things first. But even though it couldn't walk properly I still felt success and I loved it like my own kid (me taking it apart was questionable but believe me). After that I focused more on writing code than using my hands to make things which was a pain in the ass if I might add.
After learning arduino and making that failed project of mine. I then picked up C++ wrote hello world program usual things a starter would do. It was the language I wrote my first game which I finished and this time it worked. But I never released it which was partly because I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on a license for the engine and I also knew that it was a shit game. If I were to describe; lines in different colors come from the top you need to hit the lines with the same colored columns to break them. The columns changed their height and location on random. The lines sped up and gap between them decreased. Now that I think about it it wasn't half bad. But the code was written in game maker studio's version of C so I have no way to salvage it.
But I learned a lot of things from that project and that was the goal, so I would call it a win. I don't remember but after sometime I switched to python. And I'm glad I did, it's fun to code in which was the main reason I coded in the first place. Fun.
Life happens and time passes,
Now I'm waiting to enter college exams in a few months after hopefully passing them. My goal is to get into computer engineering which will be extremely challenging because it's the highest point department in the university I'm aiming at. But hey if the challenge is great the reward is greater right ? To be honest I'm still not sure about my career path. Too many choices. So I will just let my own road called <millions of similarly random events that are actually caused by deterministic reactions, to affect you and your surroundings leading up to a future which only the Laplace's demon can forsee> guide me. Wish me luck.1