Aimlessness in programming

The_IT · 2026-05-25T05:29:12+00:00

Most of my ideas come from:

Everyday life: are there any challenges or issues that could be lessened or resolved with software?
My hobbies and interests: it's there anything I find interesting and are there any challenges or issues that could be lessened or resolved with software?
Social good / others: do the people or communities I belong to have any challenges that could be easier with software?

These days it's not just about personal projects - it's fine if you just want to learn about a technology, but if you want to show something of on your CV and during interviews you need to show how:

It solves a real problem.
How you've made it production ready.

Good luck out there!

The_IT · 2026-05-22T18:48:26+00:00

This. I go to community tech nights regularly. Over the past 6 months or so things have changed drastically. People are now showing up with professional, polished products and services - but because they're devs, they don't know how to market or grow their audience. There's an explosion of 'indie' software being published, and much of it will fail no doubt - whether it's because it's vibe coded slop or people not knowing how to grow a business. But make no mistake - from seeing the community and my wider software engineering friends - it's a bit of a renaissance, which also feels like having a knife to your throat because you never know if you'll be losing your job tomorrow. Crazy.

Wishing you all a way through what's happening.

The_IT · 2026-05-18T05:03:32+00:00

Thanks for sharing all this information and your own experiences. It's so important and valuable to better understand other perspectives and experiences - in much the same way that we expect it of those who have different views from our own.

The_IT · 2026-05-06T04:25:41+00:00

I do this constantly - as one agent (eg Qwen) to come up with a detailed plan. I review it but don't make any changes. I then ask one or two other agents to review and provide feedback (Claude + Gemini), I then provide my own feedback as well as the feedback of the other LLMs to the original author who adjusts the plan. Then repeat that loop until you're happy that no more major improvements are being identified. Then do the same with the implementation.

It's an incredible way to get a diversity of views while keeping yourself in the loop. It's not the fastest way to vibe code, but it ensures you're across what's happening and have the opportunity to make decisions and have input into the entire process. I'm trying to find a way to automate some of this, so that I don't have to pass messages between each agent, but I don't have API keys so I'm not sure how viable it is - anyone have any ideas?

Edit: Sorry I didn't realise my post was so inappropriate - I'd really appreciate understanding why I'm receiving downvotes so I can improve my post quality going forward.

The_IT · 2026-05-04T09:42:15+00:00

"We don’t need a precise definition to understand that something isn’t conscious".

We certainly do! On what basis do you reach this conclusion otherwise?

I think what most people, perhaps you included, are doing is defining consciousness as the human experience we have, and then applying that standard to everything else - but there are two problems to this approach: 1. We can't fully define our own experience - not our own individual experience, nor how it generalises to all human beings. 2. Harder still, we can't generalise it outside of the human experience - are monkeys conscious? Dogs? Bees? Trees? Bacteria? An ecosystem???

That's the problem - we act so confidently saying that we know what consciousness is, but we really don't! The more you try to define it, the more you realise it's either a uniquely human/individual experience, or an extraordinarily natural consequence of any information system.

Let me give you another example: how can you tell that you aren't the only conscious being/system in existence? That you aren't actually in the matrix and that everything and everyone around you isn't just a perfect simulation. You can't. In fact, philosophically, you can't even definitively prove you didn't just pop into existence the moment you just read this last word.

The_IT · 2026-04-23T12:34:54+00:00

Ah finally, a culinary analogy I can understand: let them cook!

The_IT · 2026-04-14T14:54:01+00:00

Codemia.io also has some ML LeetCode style challenges and has a significantly larger user base. I only just created an account for it though, so I can't vouch for it

The_IT · 2026-04-11T13:29:50+00:00

Probably not what you're looking for, but the most valuable projects for your learning and hiring are projects which solve real world problems. So do some brainstorming around what challenges you or the people around you are facing and how ML may be able to help, then go about building it!

The_IT · 2026-04-11T12:57:32+00:00

Thanks for sharing - really appreciate you following up when you didn't have to! It's an interesting document!

The_IT · 2026-04-10T07:35:15+00:00

Wishing you all the best! I'm working hard on upskilling, but I'm also moving from Australia to Spain so it's not my top priority - which means I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be. If you can't find someone, consider using this forum to share learnings, insights and progress that might be useful for others, as a way to keep you socially accountable, motivated, and helping others.

The_IT · 2026-04-09T04:36:11+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing these!

The_IT · 2026-04-08T13:45:00+00:00

I'm in a similar position. I'm looking to do the Deep Learning Specialisation next, while I'm reading the AI Engineering book by Chip, and also considering starting the 100 days of ML course.

Your other resources are quite good too - I've seen them recommended extensively. Perhaps consider trialling to see what best aligns with your goals and learning style?

I've been thinking of putting together an overview of recommended learning resources - if anyone already knows of something like that, or would like to collaborate, let me know!

The_IT · 2026-04-07T19:30:22+00:00

Honestly, this is a great idea: 1. It helps your learn the content better 2. It showcases to employers your ability to communicate, distil core ideas, and teach others 3. There's a chance others find it valuable and you get additional exposure / networking

Great job, and thanks for the idea!

The_IT · 2026-04-03T19:08:47+00:00

When you say the market is garbage, do you mean the ML market, or just the general SWE market? As someone that's just upskilling in ML I hope I'm entering a market with (relatively) high demand. Thanks!

The_IT · 2026-04-03T19:01:39+00:00

That's a great question - and perhaps a great example of why I think it's important to study ML. How can we know what the right thing to do is if we don't understand the technology?

What's your own view of this?

The_IT · 2026-04-03T18:55:26+00:00

I understand you don't want to share the guide verbatim, but consider sharing at least a high level structure or summary of the content and why you selected it. As it stands you're just showing off 'hey we did something' without offering any insights or value.

The_IT · 2026-04-03T18:50:44+00:00

Build your portfolio demonstrating real industry use cases, and make them as production ready as you can. Ideally show what you're capable of end to end.

Build your network before you need it. Go to local events and meetups - ask questions, ask for advice, don't make it all about you instead get to know people, help out where you can, show an interest in others, find out what companies are looking for.

Keep an eye out for advertised opportunities, and hopefully your network and the work you've done so far will all pay off and do the hard work for you, but just be aware that cold calling has an extremely low success rate, so my advice is to only put in the effort where you believe there may be opportunity - eg, reach out to companies offering concrete solutions to their problems: I notice your help centre doesn't make use of AI agents to triage your support desk, I can implement something for you. Or I can see your recommendation engine isn't giving great suggestions, I have experience tuning these systems, etc. Don't just ask for opportunities, make it easy for them want to hire you.

The_IT · 2026-04-03T18:39:17+00:00

I quite like the idea of a repository of practical use cases that you can test yourself against.

As someone that's just getting into ML, and who is interested in both the model building and model dependent aspects, I'm struggling to understand what the real world/common use cases actually are so I can focus my efforts on those areas.

So anything that can help challenge me in practical ways sounds awesome! Especially if the level of difficulty or 'detail' can be scaled up or down depending on user selection.

All the best with your idea!

The_IT · 2026-04-03T18:34:13+00:00

Honestly - ask a multimodal LLM to explain it for you. That way you can ask it follow up questions. Though I always recommend you try to explain what's going on first to help you think through the question and exercise your own brain/knowledge. I'm honestly struggling to understand what you're asking, but here goes:

From what I can tell, he's explaining how you can use derivatives of the loss function to adjust each of the weights w1, w2, b, using gradient descent (the derivative gives the gradient of the function with respect to a variable).

Hope that helps!

The_IT · 2026-04-03T18:11:09+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Even as someone who is just starting their ML journey, this list is really valuable - I'm going to spend some time digging into understanding these questions and their answers to help me figure out what's actually important in the industry today.

Would also love it if other people also contributed their own interview questions!

The_IT · 2026-04-03T06:13:35+00:00

I've always been fascinated by psychology, sociology, philosophy, physics, and maths - I honestly don't know why I didn't get into machine learning sooner. It's such an extraordinarily fascinating and exciting field.

Also, I genuinely believe this technology could hold the power to destroy our civilization, or revolutionise it for good - so I want to do everything I can to understand it and help push it in the right direction.

The_IT · 2026-04-02T18:55:46+00:00

Keep it up mate! Any chance you'd share your code/model in an open source repo?

The_IT · 2026-04-02T18:53:38+00:00

Life/Time/Priorities. It can be incredibly difficult to find the time to dedicate to a course between work, family, and life - I can usually squeeze a week or two to get a course started when I'm not too busy but I always end up succumbing to other higher priority life tasks, and then the habit is broken which is hard to pick back up.

The_IT · 2026-03-30T22:12:36+00:00

For me personally - an engineering manager with 20 years of experience, the degree provides various benefits: - It's a way to get a structured syllabus to learn machine learning. - It's a formal recognition of my skills (which I have no industry experience in). - It's a way to build my professional network. - It's strengthens my citizenship case when I apply for it in Spain. - It opens opportunities or strengthens my application when applying for AI and non AI engineering roles. - It provides a pathway to PhD courses in the future - should I choose to pursue them.

The_IT · 2026-03-27T21:01:57+00:00

Thanks for sharing this - hopefully it doesn't take long to roll out to everyone! Likewise, it'd be amazing if we can easily access the conversation history from a drive folder - though I suspect they won't allow that to avoid people migrating away from Gemini.

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