[dofm]

I'm not that bothered about my coding skills, which are fine, and pretty up-to-date considering I'm now an old bloke. I am bothered about building an instinctive understanding that helps me deal with my anxieties and decide whether I want to carry on with this working life or quit.

I needed to do this, this way, in my own time, to put my brain back together. It has worked for me, which is why I recommend it.

YMMV.

[ricardobayes]

Unfortunately the local llm bunch is not the most emphatetic one in my experience: you are somehow "expected" to immediately know all this stuff and god forbid you ask the wrong question. I've never seen or felt this level of bullying and weird vibes over tools and LLM models. "My setup works for you or beat it".

[sanderjd]

Where has that been your experience? My experience interacting with people about this is almost entirely in HN threads like this one, and I haven't found what you're saying here to be the case.

But if this is the case, as you say, it seems like a good opportunity to build a more welcoming set of entry points into this!

[dofm]

There's also a lot of cargo-cult stuff, isn't there? Especially in the Reddit groups. Just do XYZ. And people ask why and they are never around to explain. Because, perhaps, they can't.

(Very reminiscent of 3D printing, where you get a lot of very trivial advice poorly applied, which is an analogy I've now made several times.)

Several of the youtubers are pretty helpful, though; I watched half a dozen things and absorbed the broad pattern and then went for it.

Also I got a lot out of reading HN comments, which is why I am here; tucked away in the corners of these discussions are people who can help. Over time I hope I am one.