writing about places and cultures // dev /ponder

where to even begin?! 😪 

This is my first AI project and first hands on dev project in a looooong time. I grew up with deterministic algorithms which produce the same output given the same input. AI being non-deterministic requires a mindset shift.

With AI copilots & APIs & open source libraries, it's super easy to build an MVP (5 days). Then getting from viable to something good takes more effort (4 months lol).  And to go from good to great is even harder (i'm still working on that). 

There were so many rabbit holes I could have gone down, and I'm not sure I would have shipped anything if I followed them all.  I had to be really disciplined about defining "minimum" in MVP, and being satisfied with shipping when the bot was "good enough" b/c it's easier to iterate and improve then get it all perfect.  Keep code modular so you can go back and improve various components later. 

Accept help from others. And know which advice to ignore. No one has all the answers b/c it's all so new.

This should be required reading for anyone building anything. AI or not. The struggles and triumphs and continuation of work is similar