#best-practices

• Sat, Mar 15, 2025. Here is a training program on open source corporate policy. #best-practices

• Sat, Mar 15, 2025. Here are time-tested and robust ways to leverage serendipity: ChatGPT #best-practices #prompt-engineering
  1. Place. Be in places with high, diverse, talent density. Bell Labs (1950s), MIT (1970s), Pixar (1990s).
  2. People. Meet diverse, talented people. Da Vinci's Renaissance circles, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works.
  3. Free time for unstructured work. 3M's 15% rule, Google's 20% time, Edison's Invention Factory.
  4. Curiosity. Learn unrelated fields. Darwin's earthworm research, Ben Franklin's ocean currents work.
  5. Serendipity. Systematically add randomness. Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, IDEO's Deep Dives.
  6. Reframe failure as opportunities. Penicillin, Velcro, Post-it Notes.
  7. Ceremonies. Hackathons, lightning talks, coffee trials.

• Tue, Feb 18, 2025. I subscribed to ChatGPT Pro mainly for DeepResearch. Here are the reports I've generated: #ai-coding-tools #best-practices #code-agents #llm-ops
  1. uv Package Manager Overview
  2. DuckDB Analytics Comparison
  3. Rust vs Python / JavaScript
  4. Modern Data Engineering Course
  5. LLM Code Migration Practices
  6. Cloud Cost Optimization Strategies
  7. LLM Coding Interview Tools Report (compare with Perplexity)
  8. Text To Speech Engines
  9. Customer Service in Indian Public Sector Banks
  10. LLMs in Software Development
      • Old version 1: Gen AI in Software Development
      • Old version 2: Gen AI in Software Development
  11. Leadership Training Content
  12. Open-Source HTTP Servers. Caddy wins.
  13. Deep Research Use Cases
  14. Nagpur No-Parking Violations
  15. Data Science in Food Services
  16. Deep Research Disruption to Research Firms
  17. LLMs in Design Thinking
  18. EU Taxonomy Report Clarification
  19. Shell Valuation Analysis Inquiry
  20. LLMs in DSLs Research
  21. Public API-Based Data Storage Options. Supabase wins.
  22. Front-End JS Frameworks Analysis
  23. Database Evaluation Guide
  24. CSS Frameworks Evaluation Guide
  25. CI/CD Tooling Ecosystem Report
  26. Color Names Count
  27. S Anand Biography. Meh, I know more about me, and it gets a few things wrong.
  28. Cosmere Secrets Encyclopedia. This is the best. Deep Research is great if it's stuff I actually want to read, rather than just learn about.
  29. DBT course
  30. Future of Coding AI
  31. Claude Artifacts Use Cases. This is the only one that managed to get artifacts links correct. I used this for an article for The Hindu.
  32. MCP Servers and Clients Research. Learnings:
      • Practically any "tool" can be an MCP server: file systems, APIs, codebases, browsers, collaboration platforms, memory, etc.
      • Most platforms have (or are) integrating MCP.
      • Clients: code editors, chat, and automation tools support MCP. GenAIScript is a good starting point.
      • Tester MCP Client is a browser-based test environment.
      • mcp-cli-client is a CLI-based client
      • mcp-chatbot is a chatbot client
  33. Data Moats by Industry
  34. Attorney Profile Research
  35. Social Media Data APIs
  36. Adobe Software Alternatives
  37. LLM Hallucination Visualization Techniques
  38. API vs Self-hosting Cost Analysis: Always use APIs, avoid self-hosting models.
  39. AGI Preparation
      • AGI will emerge step by step. Knowing which step is next will help
      • AI native organisations will emerge in each of these areas. AI design agencies and AI creative Agencies being one example
      • Networking, empathy, leadership have more value now. So will human AI bridging roles
      • What's the value of one human when another human can do practically everything they can but much better? Or a drama or a sport?
  40. Modern digital note taking
      • Voice note taking is the game changer
      • Automatically popping of notes based on context such as people places or conversations will be a thing
  41. Local LLM Search Tools
  42. Blog Post to research paper on copying - suggestions
  43. Linux Dev Migration Guide
  44. Raspberry Pi SIM options
  45. Linux Dev migration guide
  46. HTML to JATS conversion
  47. LLM context splitting strategies
  48. Strategy for AI services in Publishing
  49. Gemini multi model editing use cases by industry
  50. Pharma Conference Participation Guide
  51. Funding Open Source Initiatives
  52. SEBI IPO Acquisition Guidelines
  53. Approximate Similarity Matching Databases
  54. Low-Risk LLM Use Cases
  55. AI Coding Tools Report. Also via Gemini, Grok, Perplexity
  56. Impact of US Tariffs. Mixed impact on India. Imports & oil might become cheaper. Electronics, gems, textile, auto exports could drop - but textile & other demand might pick up from elsewhere. Demand could also grow where China is more impacted.

• Fri, Feb 14, 2025. Notes from a fireside chat with Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO, StackOverflow, and the StackOverflow team #best-practices
  • There's a signal that software demand is growing in 2024. Many more students took the StackOverflow survey in 2024. So more students (or other professionals) are shifting into / starting to learn software development.
  • The AI Index is a good resource for AI trends.
  • Experts are better able to use AI for writing code. Less experienced developers are more likely to use AI for code reviews, project planning, etc.
  • There's a 5% decline in favorability for AI tools compared to 2023, maybe due to disappointing results.
  • Pilot groups working on AI are 25-30% more productive. They're the most enthusiastic. For the rest of the company, it drops off to 5-10%
    • #LEARNING Benefit comes from NEW people becoming programmers, not existing ones getting more effective?
  • StackOverflow wants to be where the developer is.
    • The programmer workflow was: Google -> StackOverflow -> GitHub.
    • Now it's changing to ChatGPT / Cursor -> GitHub.
    • StackOverflow has a partnership with OpenAI and working on a plugin. Same with Google's Duet AI, GitHub Copilot, many others. They'll link to StackOverflow.
  • StackOverflow is driving integration actively through an enterprise Overflow API
  • Q: What tech have you seen blaze through the ranks?
    • Prashanth: Abstraction wins. Stuff that abstracts away things well and more wins. This includes Gen AI.
    • Erin Yepis: Rust (from 3% to 12%). AWS has steady growth.
    • Erin Yapis: I have a time series spreadsheet that I'll publish.
  • Q: What technologies are unusually tightly coupled?
    • Prashanth: AWS & Google Cloud are tightly coupled.
  • Q: We have an engagement problem. Might be India-specific. What are low-effort high-return mechanisms to increase engagement.
    • Eric Woodring: Rather than a static web page, integrate it using the API. #TODO
    • Ben Marconi: Use LLMs to write post mortems and push to StackOverflow. #TODO
    • Eric Woodring: "Hydrating" the community helps.
      • We take repeat questions on Teams / Slack and seed them using LLMs.
      • We integrate with the API to auto-add Q&A.
      • Transform documentation into Q&A. Potentially UPDATE existing Q&A if it's wrong.
  • Q: What unexpected lessons about developer behavior have you learned while running StackOverflow?
    • Prashanth: We didn't expect developers moving away from Google. Now it moved to the IDE.
  • Q: What are you learning about developer learning behavior?
    • Ben Marconi: Generating LLM-based onboarding documents.
    • Using StackOverflow for Teams to identify who the experts are to contact for specific topics.
  • Q: Are you thinking about leveraging Stack Overflow's knowledge base for personalized or interactive learning experiences? How?
    • Prashanth: Traditionally, people use StackOveflow for productivity, learning, and flexibility (i.e. to ask/answer questions asynchronously without breaking their flow). So yeah, learning is important for us. (Duh!)
  • Q: Could Stack Overflow’s interactions help evaluate the accuracy and relevance of LLM-generated code? Or provide potential metrics on quality?
    • Prashanth: LLM accuracy improves by ~30%. Upvotes / downvotes are reinforcement learning (RL) in steroids, so that helps.
  • Q: What are your thoughts on reliance on LLMs potentially deskill-ing developers?
    • Prashanth: A real issue for junior developers, not for senior ones.
    • They'll come across as knowledgeable.
    • Make internal evaluations and interviews more rigorous.
  • Anand's requests for action:
    • Could I get a copy of Erin's spreadsheet? Vivek Narayanan will follow-up.
    • Could you help me learn more about hydration? Nick Madison will set up a meeting with customer success group.

• Wed, Feb 5, 2025. Lessons from discussions at IIT Madras: #best-practices
  • Even in recorded video tutorials, asking students a question and pausing to give them time to think can be effective.
  • When you put students in front of real clients, engagement increases dramatically.
  • Most teaching assistants would like to help diligent students among the bottom half (more than the top decile of students).
  • However, there is a fraction of poor performers who do not care, and are best ignored. Their engagement and effort is a good measure of their interest.
  • Defining a minimal set of principles that we want to teach helps us measure if we've helped the bottom half at least meet those objectives.
  • Teaching is hard. Even after explanations, students, even ENGAGED students, tend to make basic mistakes

• Fri, Jan 17, 2025. Doctors can only do so much. Air quality, where you live, etc can do more for the patient than medicines or the doctor. If doctors keep this in mind, they can be more effective. #best-practices #future #optimization
  • Extending that thought, ANYONE who leverages assets through holistic thinking, becomes FAR more effective.

• Sat, Jan 11, 2025. Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4 is a framework for measuring developer productivity. It encapsulates other frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx. #ai-coding-tools #best-practices #dev #markdown

• Sat, Jan 4, 2025. Some management philosophies used to be successful but are no longer as effective. ChatGPT #best-practices
  • Command-and-control hierarchy
  • Taylorism: deep specialization
  • Seniority-based advancement
  • Annual performance reviews (without continuous feedback)
  • Up-or-Out promotion models
  • Confidential strategic information
  • Narrow job descriptions
  • Relying on formal authority

• Sat, Jan 4, 2025. Some management philosophies have been around for millenia. ChatGPT #best-practices #future
  • Lead by example
  • Fairness and empathy
  • Clear, consistent communication
  • Delegation and empowerment
  • Strategic planning and foresight
  • Consistent rule enforcement
  • Rewarding merit
  • Leadership by virtue and character

• Thu, Dec 12, 2024. I asked the Straive Digitalized Operations team what management techniques they would apply to manage LLMs. Here are the responses: #automation #best-practices #llm-ops #optimization #prompt-engineering
  • Ask better questions. (Prompt engineering.)
  • Create templates or step-by-step instructions. (Chain of Thought.)
  • Ask for multiple options and pick from the best options. (Agentic approach?)
  • Training. (Fine tuning.)
  • Price weaker responses lower. (Stratified model pricing?)

• Wed, Nov 27, 2024. With LLMs, fostering innovation is a new path to profitability. Companies are increasing innovation team sizes. Productionizing that is the next. Some initiatives are: #best-practices #future #llm-ops
  • Convert popular demos into starter kits
  • Create and evangelize trainings on solutions and solution techniques
  • Create larger pools of capacity to build innovation and productionize it

• Mon, Nov 4, 2024. Creating a LLM-as-a-Judge That Drives Business Results by Hamel Husain. #best-practices #dev #llm-ops #prompt-engineering
  • Get THE domain expert (or approver) as the tester.
  • Create a dataset that is DIVERSE.
  • Covers EACH combination of:
    • Features
    • Scenarios: e.g. multiple matches, no match, ambiguous request, invalid/incomplete input, unsupported feature, system error
    • Persona: e.g. new user, expert user, non-native speaker, busy professional, technophobe, elderly user
  • Generate data using existing data + synthetic data for each SPECIFIC combination of the above
  • Evaluate based only on PASS/FAIL with a CRITIQUE detailed enough for a new employee. Include:
    • Nuances: Something a failed response did well or a passed response didn't quite do well
    • Improvements: Suggest how model can improve
  • Build an SPA to make it easy for the domain expert to review

• Sun, Oct 6, 2024. Parables on the Power of Planning in AI: Giving models about 30 seconds of thinking time consistently improves results - as much as increasing parameter size by a factor of 1,000 to 100,000! #best-practices #optimization #prompt-engineering
  • This works particularly well for verifiable results (code, math, etc.)
  • Technique: Ask an LLM hundreds of times at low temperature and pick the most common one. (Google's Minerva used this on the MATH dataset.)
  • Better Technique: Ask an LLM hundreds of times. Pick the best solution based on an evaluation metric (reward model)
  • Better Technique: Apply a reward model at EACH step of the process. OpenAI's "Let's Verify Step by Step"

• Sat, Sep 28, 2024. API coding best practices Source via Simon Willison: #ai-coding-tools #best-practices #github #prompt-engineering
  • Always add screenshots to the Readme. They never break.
  • Always add every example. Human think in examples.
  • Avoid defaults and be explicit unless 99% of the usage is with the default.
  • Make the feedback loops incredibly fast.
  • Make deprecations easy for users to deal with.
  • Keep objects immutable.

• Tue, Jun 25, 2024. LLM Patterns include Evals, RAG, Fine-tuning, Caching, Guardrails, Defensive UX, Collect feedback. Notably: #ai-coding-tools #automation #best-practices #future #llm-ops #optimization #prompt-engineering
  • Defensive UX: Microsoft, Google, and Apple have guidelines for Human-AI interactions
  • Collect feedback: Explicit and implicit

• Wed, Apr 17, 2024. Tests and homework have a purpose. It helps people figure out whether they've learnt. So: #ai-coding-tools #best-practices #dev #future #github
  • Write tests that make people think! Like DuckDB workshop
  • Share a list of exercises that people can explore

• Fri, Apr 12, 2024. Prashant Pandey: we need to prepare before every meeting. Something to teach #best-practices #future

• Sun, Mar 31, 2024. How I write podcast. Paul Graham essays #best-practices
  • Write simply. It helps communicate. (Don't concise if communication worsens.). It forces you to make the idea better
  • Do lame stuff. Else you won't start. Low standards drive creativity
  • The more to delete, the better your writing. Read your piece. Highlight what feels poor. Fix it. Ask friends to highlight what's BORING? UNCONVINCING? Delete the first, brainstorm the second. Or ask, what's the 10% to cut and 10% to keep.
  • Write about stuff you don't know above the. Writing GENERATES ideas
  • Write about what's BUS. GENERAL and SURPRISING. (Laughter is a sign of comprehension.) Do HARD things to cultivate taste.
  • Spend more time with people who generate ideas in you. Ravi chithappa. Ram. Ankor. Ganes. Books!
  • Build taste. I have a taste for picking technologies. Data visualization. Retrospect. Write down what you like and dislike. Copy what you REALLY like. Guilty pleasures.
  • A benefit of lower standards is that it let's you pick the path less travelled.
  • ITERATE. Discuss ideas. Iterate. Acknowledge. ITERATE.

• Tue, Mar 19, 2024. Ways to use inversion #best-practices #dev #future #prompt-engineering
  • "Pre-mortem" is an analysis at the beginning of how a project failed. Then avoid that
  • "Red team" or "Black hat" are designated to contradict.

• Wed, Jan 31, 2024. Paul Sloan. Lateral thinking podcasts from multiple sources #best-practices
  • Deliberately engage with topics randomly.
  • Deliberately engage with random people
  • Read a random book from the library
  • Watch a random film in a different language
  • Consciously where the six thinking hats or look hard for the silent voices in your head and express them
  • Ask children. They tend to think of more creative and childlike solutions
  • He converted a hiring process into a contest
  • Constantly ask yourself. What if every assumption I'm making about this is wrong?
  • Scenario planning is really about this. List a few scenarios. They'd have high impact or high probability. What happens in this scenario? Ideate

• Mon, Jan 15, 2024. How I write podcast. Tim Ferriss #best-practices
  • High bars are constraints. I set the strongest constraints against the scarcest resources. Like reputation
  • Being a category of one is more defensible than a competitive advantage
  • Content always beats presentation. When in doubt, push for more interesting content
  • Regular publishing improves thinking
  • To build a habit, do less than you think you can do. That makes it easier to build momentum on the habit and sustain during crunch times
  • There is a lot of mediocrity in the world. If you're doing something (in a winner take all ecosystem), be the best.
  • Top lawyers are exceptional proofreaders. They are able to see what is unclair, and what is redundant, and what has loop holes very quickly.
  • Forcing yourself to cut down from a thousand words to 200 to a paragraph to a sentence takes you through a phase transition where you discover something unexpected
  • The more outrageous the question, the more likely it is to be useful in generating a new perspective

• Mon, Dec 25, 2023. Ways of working with them #best-practices #future
  • Collaborative problem solving
  • Creative collaboration
  • Decision support
  • Personalized education
  • Establishing ethical and safety protocols
  • Recreational and leisure activities

• Sun, Dec 24, 2023. Book to read (again) about how to take a team beyond their abilities even if you're not the expert #best-practices
  • "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr
  • "High Output Management" by Andy Grove
  • "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande
  • "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries
  • "Creativity, Inc" by Ed Catmull
  • "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz
  • "The Four Disciplines of Execution" by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling