Self Studying Tips + AI Tech Stack ⭐

🍥 Life

Hi friend! How’s it going??

I’m in Vancouver this week! My favourite thing about Vancouver is definitely the seafood. You can get 5 freshly caught sea urchin for $10 CAD which is crazy compared compared to restaurants. 😋

hellotinah

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Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to London. Trying out the digital nomad life (solopreneur/freelancer). Please lmk if you have any recommendations for the UK!

This is what ChatGPT recommended:

Day 1-2: London

• As previously outlined, spend your initial two days exploring London's iconic landmarks and enjoying its vibrant culture.

Day 3: Oxford (Day Trip)

• Spend your day in Oxford, exploring the University, museums, and historic architecture.

Day 4: Cardiff

• Travel to Cardiff, visit the Castle, Bute Park, and enjoy an evening at Cardiff Bay.

Day 4: Cardiff

• Travel to Cardiff, visit the Castle, Bute Park, and enjoy an evening at Cardiff Bay.

Day 5: Bath (Day Trip from Cardiff)

• Explore Bath's Roman history and Georgian architecture.

Day 6: Edinburgh, Scotland

• Take an early train or flight to Edinburgh.

• Spend the afternoon exploring the Royal Mile, Edinburgh Castle, and enjoying the city's historic ambiance.

• Evening: Taste traditional Scottish dishes like haggis at a local restaurant.

Day 7: Edinburgh and Highlands

• Morning: Climb Arthur's Seat for panoramic views of the city.

• Afternoon: Consider a short tour to the nearby Highlands or explore more of Edinburgh's cultural sites.

Day 8: Dublin, Ireland

• Take a morning flight to Dublin.

• Explore Trinity College, view the Book of Kells, wander around Temple Bar, and visit the Dublin Castle.

• Evening: Experience a traditional Irish pub, possibly with live music.

Day 9: Dublin and Nearby

• Morning: Visit the Guinness Storehouse for a pint with a view.

• Afternoon: Consider a trip to the nearby coastal towns of Howth or Dún Laoghaire. If you're more into history, the ancient Newgrange monument is a must-visit but it's a bit further out.

Day 10: Return to London

• Take a morning flight back to London.

• Last-minute shopping or sightseeing based on what you might've missed the first time.

• Enjoy a farewell dinner in the city.

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🌻 Things I learned

You know something that I’ve always found misleading is study gurus that teach things like memorization and detailed note taking techniques. Absolutely nothing wrong with these techniques and are super useful for subjects like biology and psychology. 🧠🧪

BUT it really doesn’t work for technical subjects because approaching learning these subjects with the mindset of wanting to memorize everything and taking detailed notes is already flawed. Subjects like programming, math, software engineering, and data science are about problem solving. The only way to learn these skills is by doing.

These are my favourite tips to learn technical things:

✍️ Do, then Learn

So many people fall into the trap of taking 10 coding courses and still feeling like they don’t know how to code. The reason is because passively consuming content and implementation are two very separate things.

You might think you understand things after taking the courses, but when facing a blank .py file you’re like 😱😱. So learn the minimum, then start working on the project. When you run into an issue, then specifically learn the thing you don’t know.

⬇️ Lower Expectations

If my code runs the first time around without any errors, I become very suspicious. People who come from other disciplines often feel discouraged when they learn technical things and can’t figure it out immediately and just assume they must be too stupid, too old to learn etc. etc. NO, it’s literally just like this.

🌳 Focused vs. Diffuse Learning

Technical things is about problem solving. So it’s important to cultivate an environment for training your problem solving skills.

Focused learning is what we usually think of when we think about studying. It’s a concentrated and conscious effort to learn eg. studying a textbook, watching a lecture, writing code for a project.

Diffuse learning, on the other hand, is when you relax and don’t actively think about whatever you’re learning. Your brain is subconsciously still processing the information and you may find that after chilling out for a bit, you suddenly figure out the thing you were stuck on for hours before. 😉

🛠️ Use All Tools

A question I get a lot during Lonely Octopus: is using ChatGPT and Code Interpreter cheating? It does kinda feel like cheating doesn’t it? 😅 But no, absolutely not. The smartest people use all the tools they have in their toolkit so they can learn more quickly and accomplish more. The caveat, of course, is you need to actually understand the logic! Otherwise, you don’t learn anything.

Btw if you’re interested in ChatGPT prompts specifically for learning technical things, I have a full video here!

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👨‍💻 What I’m Working On

I realize that now more and more, many small to medium size companies are opting for a simple tech stack with:

📞 API calls to GPT3 or some other LLM

📦 A database - usually relational

🌐 A low-code/no-code UI (eg, streamlit, bubble.io)

Optional: Langchain or some other framework for connecting language models with external sources of data

It’s is a simple yet powerful stack that makes building AI features and products sooo fast (and much cheaper). Prompt engineering, or more generally problem formulation - the ability to identify and communicate problems, is proving to be essential.

Let’s be honest stackoverflow used to write my code.

Btw if you’re interested in AI, data, and career related things, I’ll be hosting biweekly live lunch & learns, workshops, and related content. I think it’s so important to at least have an understanding of how technology and the career landscape is developing, so we’re making everything free! 😊 Please sign up here to receive invites!

ALSO if you’re interested in signing up for Lonely Octopus - a platform we made to learn AI & data skills to work on real freelance projects - could you let us know what kind of freelance projects you’re interested in? We’ll be opening applications soon (sign up for the waitlist to get notified first)!!

We want to offer freelance projects from companies that you guys are interested in! 🤗🤗

P.S. All constructive feedback is greatly appreciated :)

-Tina