Not strictly today.
But I discovered that there exists a special class of algorithms that are designed with the use case of streaming data to your program. I just used one to get a uniformly distributed sample from a 10Gb log file.
I knew this was something coding interviews delved into: "if it doesn't fit in memory", but until like yesterday I never went down the rabbit hole. I have to say it was a nifty trick.
Solidworks and a lot of CAD software is just a GIANT amalgamation of the original software and the work of all of the tiny companies they keep acquiring (basically whosoever built a plugin/competitor for their stuff).
It's most likely so poorly set up that I finch considering working in that domain now.
Source: I've had friends who've worked there.
Background: we studied computational engineering, but I got a non-domain software job. Sometimes I feel I learnt more being away from that sort of work.
I am probably in the camp where I've found myself ovewhelmed with the amount of information about networks and I'm an alleged software engineer (without formal training in CS albeit).
The 10 loc is not a valid measure.
`sudo rm -rf /` is a 1 line of code. It's not the lines that are hard to wrap your brain around, it's the implication of the lines that really what we are talking about.
The rm -rf comparison is a bit dramatic. WireGuard's config is conceptually simple: your key, peer's key, endpoint, what IPs route through the tunnel. The "implications" are minimal. It is a point-to-point encrypted tunnel.
Being overwhelmed by networking basics is worth addressing regardless. It comes up constantly: debugging connectivity, deployments, understanding why your app cannot reach a database. 30 minutes with the WireGuard docs would demystify it. The concepts are genuinely simple and worth 30 minutes to understand as it applies far beyond VPNs.
I have become pragmatic too. I do not tinker for the sake of it anymore. But there is a difference between choosing convenience and lacking foundational knowledge. One is a time tradeoff, the other is a gap that will bite you eventually.
And with LLMs, learning the basics is easier than ever. You can ask questions, get explanations, work through examples interactively. There is less excuse now to outsource or postpone foundational knowledge, not more[1].
At some point it is just wanting the benefits without the investment. That is not pragmatism, it is hoping the gaps never matter. They usually do.
[1] You can ask an LLM to do all of that for you and make it help you understand under less than 10 minutes!
I do agree on that using LLMs to demistify, learn and explore is better alternative than handing it off to go rouge on, is a better advice. That's how I used it last weekend and I think that's what I would advocate the usage instead of just letting YourFavouriteAI be the sys admin.
My problem is not just networking knowledge. I genuinely faced issues with open source tools. Troubleshooting in the days of terrible search is also a major annoyance. Sometimes, it's just the case that some of the tools have evolved and the same commands don't work as did for someone in 2020 in some obscure forum. I remember those days of tinkering with linux and open source where you'd rely on a Samaritan (bless their soul) who said they'd go home and check up and update you.
Claude suggested me Tailscale too, but I'm glad we're having this conversation (thanks for the tips btw), so that we don't follow hallucinations or bad advice by similarly trained agents. I'm cautiously positive, but I think there's still a case to go self hosted with AI assistance. I found myself looking at possibilities rather than fearing dead ends and time black holes.
I am glad that it is useful to you! The "terrible search + outdated forum posts" problem is real for sure. LLMs genuinely help there by synthesizing across versions and explaining what changed.
I would say that self-hosting with AI assistance is the right approach. Use it to understand, not to blindly execute. Trust me, it is not much of a deal and you will be happy to have gone with this route afterwards!
Good luck with the setup. If you have any questions, let me know, I am always happy to help.
I was just thinking I should write something about this, because the words needs spreading.
I cannot say how happy I am configuring my own immich server on a decade old machine. I just feel empowered. Because despite my 9 years of software development, I haven't gotten into the nitty gritties of networking, VPN and I always see something non-standard while installing an open source package and without all of this custom guidance, I always would give up after a couple of hours of pulling my hair apart.
I really want to go deeper and it finally feels this could be a hobby.
PS: The rush was so great I was excitedly talking to my wife how I could port our emails away from google, considering all of the automatic opt in for AI processing and what not. The foolhardy me thought of even sabbatical breaks to work on long pending to-do's in my head.
> PS: The rush was so great I was excitedly talking to my wife how I could port our emails away from google, considering all of the automatic opt in for AI processing and what not. The foolhardy me thought of even sabbatical breaks to work on long pending to-do's in my head.
I've been email self-hosting for a decade, and unfortunately, self-hosting your email will not help with this point nearly as much as it seems on first glance.
The reason is that as soon as you exchange emails with anyone using one of the major email services like gmail or o365, you're once again participating in the data collection/AI training machine. They'll get you coming or they'll get you going, but you will be got.
I concur. I did mention there was a rush and foolhardiness. That's my mid 30s excitement. Let me revel a bit :P
I do want to be able to take control; with photos and Google not giving me a folder view to manage them was the last straw that pushed me deep into the self hosted world. I just want to de-google as much as reasonable.
Given how my past couple of days have gone at work, I don't like the sound of a 30 year old product manager obsessed with metrics of viral usage. Ageism aside, I think it takes a lot of experience, than pure intellect and professional success to drive a very emergent technology with unknown potential. You can break a lot by moving fast.
Irony is, I'm still don't have enough insight on how to make good use of these capabilities in such an extensive manner.
I would love to fix/ customize open source projects for my personal use. For now, I'm still finding it hard for Claude to stop saying "You're absolutely right!".
I genuinely don't find it fun to solve puzzles unless they have an application/ end goal in mind. Tell me to find cycles in a graph as a puzzle and I'll roll my eyes. It's worse if you ask me to do a topological sort for detecting cycles using some named algorithm.
Ask me maybe to verify that a CI verification sequence is valid, I'll probably be interested.
I understand that leetcode problems can be abstractions of everyday problems you might deal with at work. But I find them too academic, robbing people of rich context of actual problems. They don't teach you about how to draw equivalences between actual problems and their models.
That's exactly why they don't make much sense as an interview process. You don't need to be thrilled by puzzles to be an effective developer. Also if you reach the goal of solving problems by memorization, I'd be more concerned about how you communicate about your ideas to others and write code that's understandable and maintainable.
I knew this was something coding interviews delved into: "if it doesn't fit in memory", but until like yesterday I never went down the rabbit hole. I have to say it was a nifty trick.
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