Comment by mgraczyk
8 hours ago
I learn a lot faster now with LLMs.
You could learn the windows APIs much faster if you wanted to learn them
8 hours ago
I learn a lot faster now with LLMs.
You could learn the windows APIs much faster if you wanted to learn them
Is this maybe more about the quality of the documentation? I say this 'cause my thinking is that reading is reading, it takes the same time to read the information.
How is this faster than just reading the documentation? Given that LLMs hallucinate, you have to double check everything it says against the docs anyway
I learn fastest from the examples, from application of the skill/knowledge - with explanations.
AIs allowed me to get on with Python MUCH faster than I was doing myself, and understand more of the arcane secrets of jq in 6 months than I was able in few years before.
And AIs mistakes are brilliant opportunity to debug, to analyse, and to go back to it saying "I beg you pardon, wth is this" :) pointing at the elementary mistakes you now see because you understand the flow better.
Recently I had a fantastic back and forth with Claude and one of my precious tools written in python - I was trying to understand the specifics of the particular function's behaviour, discussing typing, arguing about trade-offs and portability. The thing I really like in it that I always get a pushback or things to consider if I come up with something stupid.
It's a tailored team exercise and I'm enjoying it.
Human teachers make mistakes too. If you aren't consuming information with a skeptical eye you're not learning as effectively as you could be no matter what the source is.
The trick to learning with LLMs is to treat them as one of multiple sources of information, and work with those sources to build your own robust mental of how things work.
If you exclusively rely on official documentation you'll miss out on things that the documentation doesn't cover.
If I have to treat LLMs as a fallible source of information, why wouldn't I just go right to the source though? Having an extra step in between me and the actual truth seems pointless
WinAPI docs are pretty accurate and up to date
13 replies →
Yes you have to be careful, but the LLM will read and process core and documentation literally millions of times faster than you, so it's worth it
I mean, is it really that hard to find information in the docs?
Like, if I want to find out what, I don't know, "GetQueuedCompletionStatus" does. I google
GetQueuedCompletionStatus
Find this page:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/ioapiset...
Bam, that's the single source of truth right there. Microsoft's docs are pretty great
If I use an LLM, I have to ask it for the documentation about "GetQueuedCompletionStatus". Then I have to double check its output, because LLMs hallaucinate
Doubly checking its output involves googling "GetQueuedCompletionStatus", finding this page:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/ioapiset...
And then reading the docs to validate whether or not what its told me is correct. How does this save me any time?
4 replies →
Why does it matter? We have table of contents, index and references for books and other contents. That’s a lot of navigational aid. Also they help in providing you a general overview of the domain.