Have you learned to write code prompts yet?
That’s what I will be spending my free time on this weekend.
I’m following this blog by Lilian Weng and the references mentioned in it. After finishing this “prompt engineering course,” I will probably write what I think of all this.
I can relate to this article by Venkatesh Rao on nerd energy vs. working hard to get good grades.
Growing up, I didn’t spend much time and effort working on school-related stuff. But somehow, I managed to get good grades throughout.
Teachers never really took a lot of interest in me, even with the good grades, which (looking back) has prevented me from having a false sense of achievement.
Most of my hard work was in the background, fuelled by nerd energy. My peers did not relate to my nerd interests, and I thought it was weird to be interested in all these instead of Tamil action movies.
But in the end, everything was for the best. I scored good marks in school and cleared the entrance to get into a good college (not close to the top colleges, but still good considering I did not work hard for it).
I found a lot of people with similar nerd energy in college. A lot of them shared similar stories.
The thing with nerd energy is that you don’t realize you are working hard. You are driven by your obsession with doing nerd things that you don’t find hard, to begin with.
Others may not understand your obsession with doing this hard thing, but you do and that’s all that matters.
The other side is that you didn’t really work to get good grades. This could work in school, but as you move to college to study something like electrical engineering, coasting through courses and getting good grades would need more than just nerd energy.
I had okay grades with little hard work during my undergrad, but I spent a lot of time and effort to get good grades and graduate during my postgrad.
I still rely on the nerd energy to work. I am obsessed with my work and the projects I work on. And this means that I am always motivated to work on the project. I am a model employee.
Note that these logs are unedited ramblings.
Also, compilers.
Ciao!