gilch

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

A couple weeks ago Zvi made an apprentice thread. I have always wanted to be someone's apprentice, but it didn't occur to me that I could just ...ask to do that. Mainly I was concerned about this being too big of an ask. I saw gilch's comment offering to mentor Python programming. I want to level up my Python skills, so I took gilch up on the offer. In a separate comment, gilch posed some questions about what mentors and/or the community get in return. I proposed that I, as the mentee, document what I have learned and share it publicly. Yesterday we had our first session. Background I had identified that I wanted to fill gaps in my Python knowledge, two of which being package management and decorators. Map and Territory Gilch started by saying that "even senior developers typically have noticeable gaps," but building an accurate map of the territory of programming would enable one to ask the right questions. They then listed three things to help with that: Documentation on the Python standard library. "You should at least know what's in there, even if you don't know how to use all of it. Skimming the documentation is probably the fastest way to learn that. You should know what all the operators and builtin functions do." Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for computer science foundation. There are some variants of the book in Python, if one does not want to use Scheme. CODE as "more of a pop book" on the backgrounds. In my case, I minored in CS, but did not take operating systems or compilers. I currently work as a junior Python developer, so reading the Python standard library seems to be the lowest hanging fruit here, with SICP on the side, CODE on the back burner. Decorators The rest of the conversation consisted of gilch teaching me about decorators. Gilch: Decorators are syntactic sugar. @foo def bar(): ... means the same thing as def bar(): ... bar = foo(bar) Decorators also work on classes. @foo class Bar: ... is t

67Jul 4, 2021

gilch

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As of December 2025, I have signed no contracts or agreements whose existence I cannot mention.

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Effective Altruists and Rationalists Views & The case for using marketing to highlight AI risks.

The link is to a particular timestamp in a much longer podcast episode. This segment plays immediately after the (Nonlinear co-founder) Kat Woods interview. (Skipping over the part about requesting donations.) In it, the podcast host John Sherman specifically calls out the apparent lack of instrumental rationality on the part...

Apr 19, 20246

Linkpost for Accursed Farms Discussion / debate with AI expert Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer has been on a podcast tour of late. This appears to be the latest one on YouTube. I feel like this one didn't go so well. It's also over two hours, so maybe don't watch this one if you have better things to do, but for those that did,...

May 5, 202314

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 4

[Note to readers: The Jupyter notebook version of this post is here] Previously: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fKTqwbGAwPNm6fyEH/an-apprentice-experiment-in-python-programming-part-3 Python Objects in Memory (from comments) In the previous post, purge commented: > Due to Python's style of reference passing, most of these print statements will show matching id values even if you use any kind...

Aug 31, 202114

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 3

[NOTE TO READERS: WE'VE CONVERTED THIS POST INTO A JUPYTER NOTEBOOK SO YOU CAN CODE ALONG! (THE NOTEBOOK WORKS ON FIREFOX AND CHROME, BUT MAY NOT WORK ON ALL BROWSERS.)] LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! [Epistemic Status: this post is reconstructed from primarily chat logs, so I am more...

Aug 16, 202114

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 2

[Epistemic status: me trying to recall what happened in a 4.5-hour pair-programming session, during which I was focused on solving problems. This post was reconstructed from scratch code files, written messages (the session was over voice call) and my python shell history.] Previously: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kv3RG7Ax8sgn2eog7/an-apprentice-experiment-in-python-programming Three days ago gilch and I...

Jul 29, 202130

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

Jul 4, 202167

Should I take glucosamine?

This paper came up on my news feed today: https://www.jabfm.org/content/jabfp/33/6/842.full.pdf According to the research, daily intake of glucosamine/chondroitin supplements for at least a year is associated with a 39% reduction in all-cause mortality. This is a cohort study, not a randomized trial, so the evidence is not conclusive. Individuals taking...

Dec 2, 202026

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An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

You Need More Money

Charting Is Mostly Superstition

How to Lose a Fair Game

gilch

Effective Altruists and Rationalists Views & The case for using marketing to highlight AI risks.

Linkpost for Accursed Farms Discussion / debate with AI expert Eliezer Yudkowsky

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 4

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 3

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 2

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

Should I take glucosamine?

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

You Need More Money

Charting Is Mostly Superstition

How to Lose a Fair Game

Effective Altruists and Rationalists Views & The case for using marketing to highlight AI risks.

Linkpost for Accursed Farms Discussion / debate with AI expert Eliezer Yudkowsky

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 4

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 3

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming, Part 2

An Apprentice Experiment in Python Programming

Should I take glucosamine?