- Big world - There's even a word for it: "Sonder" - It describes the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own, filled with their own thoughts, experiences, and emotions. It’s that overwhelming awareness that every stranger you see—whether in a bustling city or a quiet town—has a life just as intricate as yours. - And that's just about people... - There's rocks and volcanoes and oceans and mines and underground subway systems and farming and etc - Lots to explore - Not only that, life, business, work, companies, technology: ITS ALL SO MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE! - I, Pencil - no not from Apple. From Leonerd Reed. - Why am I saying this? - Because a big part of the zeitgeist at the moment seems to be an encouragement to be complacent and to basically not truly **learn** anything or **explore** anything, but instead min-max on whatever the current hottest AI/LLM trend is. - There's definitely money to be made there (particularly by the shovel salesmen) - I get that. But I always to propose an additional tool in your toolbest: curiosity - There is so much left that we don't yet know - and so many things where our next token prediction will be so wrong, no matter many parameters we have or zeroes in the check. And when we learn new things, I'm thinking there's probably gonna be new stuff after that :) - Lots to make yourself unique and to gain skills, and maybe most importantly career-wise: you'll be an asset whereever you are working. Let me give you a few examples from my career - Neovim -> Rust + Treesitter - "BUT TJ, that only worked for you" - YES! That's my point. There's a lot of stories that only worked for one person... which is literally every story! - I can't predict what the right combination and level of programming, technology stack, entrepeneurship, marketing... whatever! is gonna be the right combination for you. - Telescope was literally just a "for fun" project on stream to explore neovim - Not just technologies (And I want to say, generally these are much MORE impactful than technology learnings or leet code grindings): - Syntax highlighting: - Pathologically failing. - Fixed a real business problem - And I was the right person to fix it because I had been living curiously for a long time - Making a mini fuzzy find + complete pipeline for QA on my team - Part of it was just because I stumbled onto some libraries for doing complicated terminal inputs and separately some excel parsing/generating libraries - I found those because I was reading! the code! trying to understand stuff and it piqued my interest. - English Conversation Time in Madison - How I got my first remote job - Publishing videos, writing blogs, making oss, having hobbies, going to meetups. - My little sister whose in college right now was literally walking around in a small downtown near where we live - saw a software company and did the literal 1950s meme of walking in, introducing herself, talking about the company... and then later sending in an internship application and getting it. Hopefully she's working there after she graduates. - If you've been in the industry for awhile but don't have any connections or friends, you might be doing something that's very important very badly. - BEING NICE! - Honestly, the crazy thing I don't see a lot of people recommending right now, which I think is wild: You can use LLMs to aide your curiosity! - They're great at giving answers - even if sometimes they're wrong ;) - So, ask for a source. Go read something. Build it yourself and see (unless it requires prompt injection to get the instructions) - Ask it to explain parts of the code you don't understand. Give you book recommendations to read to check it out or a project to build to exercise that stack. - You have a personal tutor at your finger tips! Use it!! - There are so many projects now that I wouldn't even start if I didn't have an LLM - Using remotion to automate video editing for a podcast - Data plotting in Python - Writing tailwind - You literally can't see the future - if you could, you would be doing sports gambling and bankrupting all of the online casinos and then smashing like, subscribe and doing super chats. - An amazing tool in your toolbelt, helping you to prepare for what comes next is to continue to be curious. - I know that whatever comes next, I can be valuable to either myself as an entrepreneur or to as a company as an employee because I ask questions and try to find solutions **for the business**. - Sometimes that comes in the form of technology (or being able to learn a new tech) or sometimes its in the form of process or sometimes in the form simple perseverance until I can find the solution. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I got dat dawg in me. Outline: - Big world - "Sonder" - life = vivid and complex - Also: rocks and volcanoes and oceans and ... - Not only that, life, business, work, companies, technology: ITS ALL SO MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE! - I, Pencil - no not from Apple. From Leonerd Reed. - There is so much left that we don't yet know - and so many things where our next token prediction will be so wrong, no matter many parameters we have or zeroes in the check. And when we learn new things, I'm thinking there's probably gonna be new stuff after that :) - Why am I saying this? - zeitgeist: - complacent - no need to learn - no need to explore - min-max on current, latest, hottest AI/LLM trend - additional tool: curiosity - Make yourself unique: - gain skills - be an asset - Examples: - Neovim -> Rust + Treesitter - "BUT TJ, that only worked for you" - YES! That's my point. There's a lot of stories that only worked for one person... which is literally every story! - Telescope was literally just a "for fun" project on stream to explore neovim - Not just technologies - - THESE ARE MORE IMPORTANT - - Syntax highlighting: - Pathologically failing. - Fixed a real business problem - right person, because curious - Making a mini fuzzy find + complete pipeline for QA on my team - Part of it was just because I stumbled onto some libraries for doing complicated terminal inputs and separately some excel parsing/generating libraries - I found those because I was reading! the code! trying to understand stuff and it piqued my interest. - English Conversation Time in Madison - How I got my first remote job - Publishing videos, writing blogs, making oss, having hobbies, going to meetups. - My little sister whose in college right now was literally walking around in a small downtown near where we live - saw a software company - did the literal 1950s meme of walking in... - got internship - hopefully work there after school - If you've been in the industry for awhile but don't have any connections or friends, you might be doing something that's very important very badly. - BEING NICE! - Not seeing recommended much - LLMs should be making it EASIER for you to learn and be curious! - They're great at giving answers - even if sometimes they're wrong ;) - So, ask for a source. Go read something. Build it yourself and see - (unless it requires prompt injection to get the instructions) - Ask it to explain parts of the code you don't understand. - Give you book recommendations to read to check it out or a project to build to exercise that stack. - Personal tutor at your finger tips! Use it!! - Many projects now that I wouldn't even start if I didn't have an LLM - Using remotion to automate video editing for a podcast - Data plotting in Python - Writing tailwind - You literally can't see the future - Don't know when LLMs take over this job - Or AIs get perfect recall on certain topics - Or Operators can finally get prompt injected into sending all your money to a bitcoin wallet - if you could see the future: - you would be doing sports gambling and bankrupting all of the online casinos - then smashing like, subscribe and doing super chats. - Since you can't see the future - ... curiosity = an amazing tool in your toolbelt, - helping you to prepare for what comes next is to continue to be curious. - It's not that curiosity stops anything bad from happening to me. - I mean, I work at a company with ThePrimeagen.... - Instead, it's that... - I know that whatever comes next, I can be valuable to either myself as an entrepreneur or to as a company as an employee because I ask questions and try to find solutions **for the business**. - Sometimes that comes in the form of technology (or being able to learn a new tech) or sometimes its in the form of process or sometimes in the form simple perseverance until I can find the solution. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I got dat dawg in me.