Going from software user to software developer Before learning to code, I was one of those guys who tried to do everything on a computer for free. I thought to myself, “It’s just code. It cost them nothing to make it, and nothing to run it. If they can find suckers to pay for it, great, but I bet there’s a way to do it for free.” And there often is....
The main reason I’m coming around to the idea of seed funding There are a lot of benefits to solo bootstrapping. You don’t have investors or co-founders or employees breathing down your neck. No timelines. No deadlines. Low stakes. A lot of that, though, is as counterproductive as it is cushy. The lack of stress and accountability means there’s no urgency. This is part of the 90 day exercise I’m in the middle of - trying to manufacture some artificial urgency (although, when it’s your wife who’s given you the deadline, it may not be so artificial…)....
I’m coming up on day 30 of 90 I had an original burst of productivity, and then fell into old ways. I can totally see why ‘sprints’ are a thing. It’s so easy to get lost down rabbit holes and lose the forest for the trees that very short-term, focused bursts have been the only ways I can be reliably productive. This blog post about pushing through while making games was a really good read, and seems equally applicable to tons of things beyond making games....
I’m no machine learning engineer Duh. I’ve spent long enough reading about and experimenting with machine learning now that I guess I understand the basics more than most, but obviously I have no formal training or professional experience, so obviously take everything I have to say here with massive, Milton-sized grains of salt. Since getting access to ChatGPT, I find I can learn about ML way, way faster though, and I’m really enjoying it....
Sam Altman is right I was watching this interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and one thing he said has really stuck with me: the real point of generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT is the democratization of knowledge. The way he explained it was, when asked something to the effect of what excited him most/what he thought was most important about an innovation like ChatGPT, he answered that he thinks it would be amazing to have the world’s greatest and most knowledgeable tutor in everyone’s pocket....