When I first graduated I read a bunch of tech focused books: they’re all helpful but I think practice and learning from more senior engineers is the most effective road to mastery! You can probably get away with not reading any of these books if you have good coworkers :).
That being said, these have been my favorites:
- designing data intensive applications (a great way of understanding systems + the basics of SRE)
- the senior engineer (I love the prototyping process he lays out)
- the effective engineer (lots of good gems for approaching prioritization)
- debugging (by David agans)- a great resource for a formalized debugging process if you don’t have one
- on writing well (I’m halfway through this, but it has been indispensable for writing tickets + messages at work)
I think these groups are out there, but unfortunately they are informal (not listed on the web or through a company), and also are not for a beginner level.
For me, I’ve been learning how to surf and cook. I found at an absolute beginner level no one really wants to go out surfing with you, or do dinner parties. I did find once I showed enough commitment, and reached a beginner-intermediate level, more people were willing to join me in learning, and form informal learning groups.
Therapists are trained to help and give you custom things to do based on what you need. I found one that gave me a lot of structured “assignments” and questions to ask myself and I’ve never felt better than I do now.
It's funny how hyped up stable diffusion is on HN right now: reminds me of when style transfer first started making it's rounds in 2017. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13958366
I think as technologists we want to think that code can "solve" some of the problems in the art world... but I think we still have a really, really long way to go.
I tried to get style transfer adopted at work (worked at a creative technology firm in NY) but frankly I think deep learning methods for art generation tend to be really unpredictable, which make them pretty hard to use for professional applications. Imagine deploying production code that only worked 85% of the time... would be a nightmare. I felt, and feel similarly about deep learning approaches to art. They're just so finnicky and unpredictable, for example, add a single extra pixel to that example in this article and the output would look completely different.
Either way, cynicism aside, stable diffusion is awesome :).
> Imagine deploying production code that only worked 85% of the time... would be a nightmare. I felt, and feel similarly about deep learning approaches to art. They're just so finnicky and unpredictable, for example, add a single extra pixel to that example in this article and the output would look completely different.
Don't think the metaphor works. Code that only works 85% of the time is obviously broken but Art is subjective so an 85% solution to a creative problem could be more than enough for most consumers.
What kind of GPU are you running this on? My 3080 seems to take about 30 seconds per image with 50 passes. I'm wondering if I'm missing out on some optimizations. Could just be the quality of Linux NVidia drivers.
I'd recommend trying a different fork. Perhaps you're using the the official one. I believe that one still "ramps up the system" on every image generation. Other repos do the ramp up only once.
I'm using 512x768 as the default, but a quick test shows only a marginal difference in speed between the two. I'll have to give Windows a try to see if it's the driver holding me back. Do you have any tips or resources for up-scaling the image after?
As someone who took their first software engineering job as a junior during covid, I have to say I definitely struggled to learn and execute on tasks in a way which I know I wouldn't in an in person setting.
I found asking for help as a junior is definitely harder when you don't have people around (walking up to someone's desk vs slack message with ~20-60 minute delay then zoom call): and I often found myself blocked on tasks.
I found learning is generally harder remotely for me as well: the sheer amount of information + resources + help you get from serendipitous conversations with other engineers should not be understated. It's the same reason people got so angry over paying so much for remote university: it is objectively a worse learning experience.
I think this is just my personal stance: but I think in my perfect world I work in office for the first 5-10 years of my career to optimize for learning + relationship building, and then once I get more senior (or have kids) I transition into either hybrid or fully remote.
I'm sorry you had this experience, but I will put the blame on your company's onboarding.
This was your first job so you may lack data points, but if you ended up not getting helped/being supported as a new, out of school, engineer in a remote setting, I strongly doubt that it would have been any better in an office.
I've been a manager/director working with distributed teams for the past 6 or 7 years, I've onboarding dozens of folks for whom it was their first or second job and they all had a really good experience.
I’m a programmer, and my dads a doctor, and for ten years I’d always tell him that something like 20 questions could do his job.
After about 5 years he did this graduation speech and in it he referenced that: “yes, AI is getting great, your phone is a supercomputer, but the truth is that a computer will never be able to hold the hand of a dying patient and tell them it will be all be okay.”
I wrote this back when I was 18, in response to the question “what kind of life do you want to live?” but I always come back to it. Something about it still resonates with me.
“What kind of life do you want to live?”
“A life full of color. I couldnt bear to have a boring life: I want my days to be full of joy and pain and laughter and success and failure and broken hearts and love. To be honest I don’t care where I end up, I just want to look back and smile at a life I painted with all the colors I could find.”
My past idea of happiness assumed that happiness was a default emotion that would always be available, as long as your worked hard enough for it. As I got older, less and less things give me emotional response. Even love and heartbreak are patterns I recognize and don't give the rush they used to. For me it simply comes down to, 'help the next generation live in a better world' Take away the self, it's already experienced everything it needs to.
honestly, not too bad :).
I don't really use it as a "follow this as a guiding design pattern" piece of advice, but I think the philosophy is really useful when dealing with relationships with people, and taking risks in life. Over the past years, thinking "how will I aestheticize my life" has led me to some really interesting + fulfilling relationships and let me experience a lot of life.
Sure, I have gotten burnt quite a few times, but in hindsight I regret nothing. I think the pain and joy and people I've met from just putting myself out there have given me a lot of perspective on life.
That being said, I'm getting to the age where I think I'm ready to settle down a bit: this philosophy I think is most useful if you're young or lost and also don't have much responsibility.
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