If you’ve been reading my other posts, you’ll notice that I have no real issues with using LLMs to generate code for my own services. Some software engineers have issues with this, and I get it, and to a large degree, I agree with the notion that LLMs are good at getting you results but not necessarily good at writing maintainable code. But that’s somewhat of a price I’m willing to pay since I know, after 10+ years of fiddling with computers professionally and amateurly, what the LLM is doing.
More often than not, I ask Claude to write me services I’m lazy to write myself in a way that gives me satisfaction earlier. However, that leaves all of the fun that I used to have toiling and struggling and figuring it out by myself on the table. Which, as I delve deeper into academia in my PhD, is a feeling I really miss.
It’s a feeling that I’m naming ‘learning is the struggle’
This summer I got a chance to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc over the span of 7 days with my family. We started in Chamonix, hiked between towns, saw beautiful landscapes, and ate the most cheese I think I’ve ever had in the span of a week.
I got a chance to take my friend Carmen’s film camera with me as well as my very own Fujifilm X100VI. I took so many photos. Tag along to see how I fared with minimal training!
It’s been a few years since I’ve been back to India. I was here last in 2021, and before that, in 2020 (yes, traveling during COVID was really rough).
India hasn’t changed fundamentally in the last 4ish years. Where it has changed, though, is incredibly palpable. I’m not sure how much of this is me noticing more and how much of it is genuine change. I’m sure there’s a good mix of both.
I think everyone makes the realization at some point that they aren’t the main character. That often what we want isn’t what is possible because it requires others to believe the same thing. We’re often waiting for others, and that’s hard.
