Post ASPsLYV8MSGC9rGwYi by pamelafox@fosstodon.org
(DIR) More posts by pamelafox@fosstodon.org
(DIR) Post #ASPa1HDv5hvZbcOwSG by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-06T18:50:55Z
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A habit I've been trying to develop is that any time I get an error message and figure out a resolution I add that to my public notes somewhere with the error message in full, such that future searchers might land on the page and see how I fixed itJust added a note to my TIL about the "heroku pg:pull" command showing how I resolved a "createdb: command not found" error on my new laptop: https://github.com/simonw/til/commit/89285a5e0dcb89eb1677159b2a38b8f45ceb686d
(DIR) Post #ASPaP9Z1DmC8ndegoi by svetlyak40wt@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T18:52:58Z
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@simon That is a really good habit!
(DIR) Post #ASPacQ2tFmVVgJx9V2 by swyx@sigmoid.social
2023-02-06T18:56:07Z
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@simon ive often wondered what a “stackoverflow based on error messages” would look like. youd paste in the message and then it would play 20 questions with you to narrow down the problem/run you through a checklist. havent figured out how to incorporate user input like yours yet.
(DIR) Post #ASPaonCJ08mCxdG0A4 by sayrer@mastodon.social
2023-02-06T18:56:50Z
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@simon have you searched a message and found your own response yet? That's happened to me.
(DIR) Post #ASPb2aCC8diKgsmUC0 by AlSweigart@mastodon.social
2023-02-06T18:58:55Z
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@simon Yup. I file a StackOverflow question and then immediately answer my own question.
(DIR) Post #ASPbDQ16K88AJ4l7CK by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-06T18:59:00Z
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@sayrer Totally! Occasionally it will be something I have zero recollection of ever having written, or even having worked with
(DIR) Post #ASPbPRRQqurKCToAAi by catsalad@sigmoid.social
2023-02-06T18:59:18Z
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@simon You are the hero we need more of
(DIR) Post #ASPbcLbhr6QJs0lfFo by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-06T18:59:57Z
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@swyx I've actually had surprisingly good results from ChatGPT with that, especially when I was trying to learn Rust: I'd paste in a stack trace and an error message and start asking it questions and it would often get me to a solution far faster than if I tried to puzzle it out alone
(DIR) Post #ASPbs7O2UibMOptYjQ by sayrer@mastodon.social
2023-02-06T19:06:51Z
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@simon Don't worry, it gets worse. It's possible to search the error message, find your response, and then realize your response was incorrect. I think that's only happened once to me though. (I make many errors, but it's rare to correct myself in a casual search)
(DIR) Post #ASPcEjquA2je4MBPN2 by pamelafox@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T19:08:59Z
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@simon I love your TILs since sometimes I figure out some small thing that doesnt feel worthy of a blog post (dont want to spam people's google reader feeds, of course) but I don't feel comfortable not sharing it.
(DIR) Post #ASPfioKWNS5uVT4DMe by mesirii@chaos.social
2023-02-06T19:54:37Z
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@simon very much along the lines of @markhneedham article: https://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2022/11/22/blogging-for-google-error-messages/
(DIR) Post #ASPgafMlv6s0LMnewS by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-06T20:01:08Z
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@pamelafox That's the thing I love most about the TIL format: the barrier to posting is "did I just learn a new thing", so it takes all of the pressure off publishing even the tiniest things
(DIR) Post #ASPsLYV8MSGC9rGwYi by pamelafox@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T22:16:33Z
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@simon how do you decide what's a TIL and what's a whole blog post? thats where I see myself getting decision paralysis.
(DIR) Post #ASPsj5DsruNGIrQGjQ by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-06T22:20:41Z
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@pamelafox honestly that's quite tricky - generally if in doubt I lean TILA lot of it comes down to time: most of my TILs take 10-15 minutes to write up, because I'm generally copying and pasting in from notes I've already made while figuring something outI rarely spend less than an hour on a full blog entry (usually more)
(DIR) Post #ASQGAoj85kdACCEOFk by hmarr@mastodon.social
2023-02-07T02:42:58Z
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@simon “future searchers” presumably includes crawlers for LLM training data! Those thirsty LLMs must be dying for more training data that maps error messages to resolution so they can debug they code they write too
(DIR) Post #ASZ7cdjHYTLB9w1bua by bitbear@icosahedron.website
2023-02-11T09:20:16Z
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@simon @sayrer Oh yes, that happens quite regularly. My brain’s garbage collector is a tad bit too efficient, I think. 😅