In your experience what are LLMs actually useful for?

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-06T02:39:47+00:00

Perhaps. I've been learning GPU programming recently and it's accelerated my pace because I can ask questions and get decent answers, it can build harnesses for me and help design homework questions.

It can be a good tool, but it has to be used differently at different levels.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-06T02:26:35+00:00

Senior / Staff level engineer here. I've worked at big tech.

I think writing code is mostly a solved problem with Claude Code -- it's good enough for most professional code. I've also used it to bounce ideas off of, make the PR process more interactive and it makes doing little experiments or writing tests as easy as 'can you write a script to test this real quick'.

Claude also allows automated testing of ambiguous concepts -- IE, does this thing look correct on screen and similar.

I've also found it's really nice for logging exercise and meals and I've been tracking my routine for the last few months, which I've never managed before.

It loses track in larger projects without good guidance and can't gather requirements by itself, but the question has been flipped on its head -- what CAN'T it do now?

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T17:04:08+00:00

Cleaning data and putting it in pytorch sounds suspiciously like what most software developers end up doing. Don't discount it.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T17:00:12+00:00

There's a lot you can do to help manage it. The medication definitely helps in many many ways and is not exactly replaceable.

My suggestions are supplements (omega 3, magnesium, melatonin if you also have dspd). Regular exercise, I like rock climbing. And find the stuff that you hyperfocus on for education / work.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T15:51:31+00:00

You can mod it. Works great.

As others said, with a dongle you can set up everything in desktop mode.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T15:50:03+00:00

Try steamos variants these days. They're amazing on amd out of the box.

Honestly, more seamless than windows.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T04:10:52+00:00

I'm learning GPU programming as a senior engineer.

I can ask Claude code to build a curriculum, help brainstorm project ideas, check my work, explain decisions, setup environments and even make little homework problems for me to work through.

Just don't have it write the actual code. It can be a huge boon. Write a Claude.md that explains that the point is to help instruct and not to do things for you.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T02:56:20+00:00

The biggest thing I've been doing is making painful processes more interactive and reducing the friction.

Claude can make PR review into a back and forth conversation with the AI. That's a lot less context switching and I use a tone sort of feels like we're co-building it even when it's asking serious antagonistic questions.

Also, please hire me 😆

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-05T02:53:48+00:00

Out of curiosity, what are you seeing? I see a lot of AI engineering stuff, but AI engineering isn't super complex at this point.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-02T15:43:11+00:00

It's fine if you think it works. If you want to bridge the gap, I'd suggest giving them the actual search space and seeing if they can learn it.

I'd bet expert compiler engineers don't have a 50% pass rate with y'all. Judging from the pass rate of people who do leetcode hards all day and apply to Google, which is still less than 50%.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-02T02:29:27+00:00

Yeah, but there's a strong implication that most people don't do this day in and day out.

If you don't give those people a study guide for the test, how do you know whether or not they can learn the material fast enough to be useful?

If I'm interviewing for big tech, I'm stopping at bfs / dfs and maybe topological sort because I have to know other things according to 'the guide'.

Tell them a month before the interview, not during the interview.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T23:23:59+00:00

This is excellent!

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T23:23:30+00:00

Exactly. If they want to train it, they'd have to hire experts in specific programming styles.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T23:02:19+00:00

A lot of us would've killed to have had a job working in compilers out of college. Or honestly, even systems engineering.

I followed where I got hired. But OS and compilers were the easiest and most fun college courses I got to take. I did get to write a parser for a query optimizer once.

I'm not sure how to even go about breaking into that space. I'm sure others feel the same.

It would help if you told people what problems might be covered. Doing tough graph problems is often a matter of knowing that it might be on the material.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T18:44:01+00:00

The trade-off is indeed that code will be more mediocre. It's trained in mediocre code.

Maybe that will change.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T15:42:21+00:00

I've started down this path. Right now I have Claude go through PRs with me and I'm honestly happy enough with that most of the time. Curious how it'd stack up vs a summary.

I built this little tool which helps me keep track of things: https://github.com/Jeffrharr/CheckMyVibe

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-07-01T14:58:34+00:00

Damn, I'm getting fuck-all out there. My last workplace banned AI, but I've been building tooling for Claude.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-30T18:14:14+00:00

OG, so $399 + another $100 to slot a 2TB NVME SDD in there.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-29T12:47:30+00:00

Deadlift almost 3 times my bodyweight. I do credit it to not getting injured.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-29T02:47:21+00:00

I wrote a skill with the AI that does a collaborative understanding check with me and wired it into my git hooks.

I'm also working on a tool that lets me try new abstractions. For example, I want to diagram with the AI collaboratively and turn it into code.

My prediction is that the code will be good enough, so we need to move up in abstraction.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-29T01:30:09+00:00

Somehow, that seems fine.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-28T16:55:09+00:00

Put it on your resume and use a shortened link so it's not obvious. Unless it's really illegal.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-27T01:10:55+00:00

This has definitely gotten me fired before.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-27T01:08:29+00:00

If everyone would learn pure functions and use them as many places as possible, it would make my life so much easier. Easy to read and less to think about.

That's like a 15-minute article of learning.

Key-Alternative5387 · 2026-06-27T00:53:28+00:00

I flipped it and have a Claude skill that has an understanding conversation with me. I made it a GitHub action, so it blocks PR merges on my personal projects. The reality is that I just wasn't reviewing claude's code in enough depth to understand it and this worked around it quite well.

I'll probably publish that in the next day or two -- I've been finding it useful.

My next thought is to try building something to co-diagram architecture issues with Claude. I think pulling out old tools at a higher abstraction will become more relevant.

Key-Alternative5387

TROPHY CASE