184: Asynchronous Programming

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Progaming through down episode 184 a synchronous programming take it away Jason. Hey everybody, um, this is a gonna be a fun topic

spk_0 I think this is something that I don't think they teach this

spk_0 Well, you know, this is gets back to my like I took so many theoretical classes

spk_0 I didn't really take anything practical and college but but they didn't I don't remember learning about this at all in college

spk_0 It's extremely important and useful so I'm excited for us to get into it

spk_0 But before we do all that I wanted to talk about something that kind of blew my mind that happened recently to have someone in our neighborhood

spk_0 Okay, so imagine you get a call and it's your son's voice like it's actually actually I don't know if it literally was his voice or if it was just a voice of a child is age

spk_0 But basically it's it's this voice telling her it sound like her son saying hey, I am

spk_0 Actually, I'm not gonna say her son's name even if I could remember it

spk_0 But I'm so and so you're actual son right and yeah, I fell and I need some money to like you know help me get to the hospital or whatever right

spk_0 And it's a scam, but it's like in your family members voice like they've cloned their voice and it says it's from them because they probably

spk_0 Go on your Facebook and figure out if you've ever posted publicly like hey me and my son. It's just they dug

spk_0 So it's a call you and it's like hey, it's Doug you know, I fell and I need your wire me some money or something like that

spk_0 so you know the person knew it was a scam, but

spk_0 It really kind of blew my mind. I've been getting a lot of

spk_0 AI scams on my phone where they text me I

spk_0 Don't say I want to fall for it fall for it in the sense like I didn't lose anything

spk_0 But the first time it happened it was like hey, you know, I'm in Austin at the six street parking garage. Where are you?

spk_0 and

spk_0 I was like well

spk_0 Who is this it's like oh you didn't save my number?

spk_0 I'm like okay. No, I didn't save your number. Who is this? It's like oh?

spk_0 Jolene or so whatever the name was the name I didn't recognize and I was like okay. Yeah, this is clearly

spk_0 But when I feel like you know, I could have proved that that one's AI

spk_0 But I feel like people are using AI to scam people and the one over the phone was definitely some AI thing

spk_0 and

spk_0 Yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there and get your thoughts free mind blowing down be careful

spk_0 I I mean scams in general are

spk_0 kind of an intro well

spk_0 Bad but interesting topic. I don't know how you say that like it's actually really unfortunate and scammers suck

spk_0 I don't know I don't understand

spk_0 Anyway, whatever that's in a side, but I think that big money, right? That's that's yeah, but still like

spk_0 I a lot of the people that they scam right so part of it that's confusing to me is like

spk_0 Oh, this is an obvious scam and it's like well, that's part of it though. They want

spk_0 To kind of weed out people who are gonna be like they want someone who's not gonna catch on later and so you know

spk_0 They want someone who isn't gonna ask questions like you're insistent of who is this or

spk_0 Potentially looking for you to to fall into it sort of the you know when you're sometimes you're young you tell these jokes

spk_0 Where like you're hoping the person will give a certain reaction so that you can sort of like say something funny in response

spk_0 And so they're sort of you instead of saying who is this and they say oh you didn't save my number and go oh is it

spk_0 Sarah and then like yeah, it's Sarah and then you're like oh it's Sarah and then but it's not right like they were just letting hoping you would say a name first

spk_0 And like you said it can be really easy to fall on these and I do worry like you're pointing out

spk_0 AI on two fronts scaling these out so that they don't even need someone to be attentive to all of these different threads

spk_0 That you know they can just mass do them and have auto responders and people people busy until they like figure out something is scary

spk_0 And then the voice cloning eventually video cloning

spk_0 I the video cloning the video stuff is getting to the point where everyone goes

spk_0 Oh, it's so obvious. It's so obvious and they do like some frame by frame like look at the and it's like

spk_0 But who in the small little window when you're scrolling through social media can see like this frame by frame pixel

spk_0 Analysis where you know the pinky finger glitches out for for one frame or whatever. It's you know

spk_0 I remember you and I discussing on this the Will Smith eating spaghetti. Oh, yeah, that wasn't that long ago. Yeah, now now

spk_0 Like I saw some video from a

spk_0 Football game over the weekend where one of the coaches had an issue and somebody made an AI video of him like like

spk_0 Basically super vulgarity like dropping like saying how bad it was whatever and it just turns out it was like completely fake and

spk_0 They they said it underneath but you had to like click it and look for it a lot of people probably reshared it thinking was funny

spk_0 Like look the coach like basically going off on on reporters and stuff and so it's becoming more and more

spk_0 Revolent and it only takes you being off guard for for sort of a moment to get wrapped up on this

spk_0 Um, so yeah, definitely be careful, but I actually have a

spk_0 Observation about this. Okay, so you mentioned like you know

spk_0 We all kind of go. Oh, yeah voice cloning. It's dangerous. You and I have lots of you know audio out there

spk_0 It's you know whatever you but now like you see demos on YouTube or people showing hey from even just maybe 10 seconds have an arbitrary

spk_0 Sentence they can sort of you can use a different voice or clone the person's voice, you know do voice to voice sort of transition

spk_0 Yeah, I so I've seen these before so then I wanted to do this for for

spk_0 For basically like an audio enhancement thing. I was I had some audio I'd recorded somewhere and I was like oh

spk_0 I want to use voice cloning. I know it should be possible to like

spk_0 Feed it my own voice from a podcast recording or something high quality

spk_0 Feed it the like not good quality and have it basically reread that stuff in the high quality voice

spk_0 Which is a use case that supposedly possible and then you immediately bump into the fact that like

spk_0 It's actually really difficult like like as much as people say oh there's gonna be this get it's non trivial

spk_0 Like I guess there's a lot of pay solutions

spk_0 But it's often unclear if the paid solutions are any good or if they're just like the open source stuff that someone's charging for

spk_0 But like cobbling together all of the like you go download this model

spk_0 You run it on comfy UI you do that like it's still in the realm of like this is difficult reasonably difficult to access

spk_0 So for all of these AI things everyone's like oh, it's so easy to do this and then you're generating an AI video

spk_0 Like we all know we've all seen some crazy AI video that was hilarious or partly convincing

spk_0 And then you go try to do it and I know maybe I'm just not smart enough for paying enough attention

spk_0 But they seem a little cherry-picked like people may have gone through a lot of work to cherry-picked the one convincing video

spk_0 And if you go do it you think it's gonna be magical and it's actually a little disappointing

spk_0 That's been my observation. Yeah, I think there's there's two things there one is um

spk_0 You know definitely

spk_0 It's uh the open source stuff is not trivial to get up and running

spk_0 I do think that the paid solutions are like you know pretty accessible

spk_0 But but you're also right that

spk_0 That um you often have to iterate a lot and you have to get it's almost a skill in and of itself getting it

spk_0 To sort of behave and feeding in the right sort of negative props so that it doesn't go off the rails and all of that

spk_0 So yeah, that's a whole skill in and of itself

spk_0 Yeah, I someday it is getting better fast so I think we are getting close but uh

spk_0 It's one of those things where I was thinking about this the other day. It's like if you could describe where we are right now with AI

spk_0 People be like oh, that's gonna be so magical. It's gonna change everything the world like

spk_0 And then we got hearing is like oh, huh, you know like I don't know like and AI could clearly probably pass the traditional sort of

spk_0 Turing test. I mean maybe that's controversial and then now it turns out like oh yeah, but it

spk_0 It didn't just solve all of life's problems like you know

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, I think that I to double down on that. I think AI is just not going to create the kind of monetary value that people thought it would

spk_0 You know like the thing about it is

spk_0 The reason why Fang got so incredibly rich is that

spk_0 Now people can like be super productive

spk_0 anywhere

spk_0 You know and so like you could be waiting in line for

spk_0 Uh ride at Disney and like working, you know like you could be answering emails talk to the people on slide like

spk_0 That was something that in you know

spk_0 1999 you couldn't do if you were waiting in line for an hour at Disney you couldn't do your job right and so you know

spk_0 combination of of apple

spk_0 Google for search. She's other things like allowed people to be like super productive

spk_0 um you know and they're even when they're idle and

spk_0 Uh and for AI it might it might do that

spk_0 Um, but it hasn't done that yet. It might take a lot longer to get there

spk_0 Okay, we're way off the AI scam thing

spk_0 But I have heard some recent interviews alonglines and they said actually like the the thing the like what will be the inflection point or the

spk_0 The turning point is when all of these advances sort of make it into robotics

spk_0 I could see that. Did you think that's like a different economic equation like when

spk_0 Not just oh you can be

spk_0 taking the AI and

spk_0 Making programmers more effective or making people's email responses better or like sure all of those things maybe

spk_0 Economic value is a little like but like if you had

spk_0 The level of improvement we've seen there in sort of like robotics. Is that gonna be a major unlock if you totally

spk_0 Totally. Yeah, so here's a very simple example like

spk_0 Think how many parents

spk_0 Have to like either change their work schedule or do something kind of wonky

spk_0 Um to just like

spk_0 Shuttle their kids around. Oh, yes, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just driving. It's like oh, I pick

spk_0 Uh one of my kids up from school. I drive them to the soccer field and especially when they get older

spk_0 They don't even want you know, they don't want parents to be sitting there like watching the practice

spk_0 Yeah, exactly. It's kind of hard to see you

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, so they either go home then or whatever like that just what example

spk_0 Like you could have a robot that goes up and down the street taking everyone's trash or the curb

spk_0 I mean, there's just so much you get unlocked with robotics, but I think it'll take a while

spk_0 All right, yeah, well, let's keep let's keep moving through the agenda back

spk_0 So yeah, don't get scammed don't get scammed by AI

spk_0 I'm careful folks be careful and and warn your parents and grandparents or you know family that like as well

spk_0 Who may not be as aware that that's a thing?

spk_0 Yeah, um, yeah very true very true. All right

spk_0 What's the first news of the show? All right, so I have I have no news this time

spk_0 But I do have two good video links that I wanted to shout out

spk_0 And so the first one was a recent video by

spk_0 Sebastian actually didn't look up how to say his last name. I know I'm not gonna try so log log

spk_0 Okay

spk_0 Okay, anyways, and it's coding adventure

spk_0 Ray tracing glass and caustics. This is a series of videos that Sebastian's been doing. They're sort of like the

spk_0 In a similar vein as I guess like um

spk_0 Three blue one brown like you know, it's like sort of a nice quiet pace

spk_0 But like deep content and just sort of like working through something so they're not like five minute YouTube shorts

spk_0 They're they're sort of longer form videos

spk_0 And he's walking through the process of coding he's been working on a ray chaser recently

spk_0 But going a little step further than the normal and so in this one he's sort of talking he gets to try a little bit about like

spk_0 Physics physical based rendering and sort of like how

spk_0 Glass has certain attributes and indexes of refraction and sort of if you build up from like really simple

spk_0 Sort of rules you get very complex interactions almost

spk_0 Becomes a physics simulation, right? Like the caustics is the like very bright shiny thing that if you have like a

spk_0 Glass object you get you know sort of like rainbow diffusions in some areas and some areas you get you know like very bright

spk_0 shiny spots or whatever

spk_0 And if you play video games often you won't see those kinds of things because they're not really meant to be simulating physics

spk_0 They're meant to look nice uh and right past

spk_0 Yeah, but in ray tracing you can be kind of more physics based but uh a lot of videos on his channel that are just like really really good

spk_0 Um, but this one's really nice

spk_0 And then the the reason why I wanted to bring it up here other than like you know, I mean

spk_0 Maybe this is really cool to you. It's great background photo

spk_0 This is kind of tends to be the YouTube I watch

spk_0 I tried to explain to people there's people who watch YouTube and it's like you know

spk_0 More the shorts content or entertaining, but there's a lot of this like

spk_0 Science engineering kind of stuff out there that I feel is at least a little bit better than I'll just call like brain candy

spk_0 And it's sort of replacement for you know the TV growing up

spk_0 We were like watch film either science guy or something that would be like you know a little and even that was yeah a

spk_0 High-strung I guess but you know teaching teaching sort of uh science concepts and an entertaining way

spk_0 Um, and there's a bunch of people in this vein

spk_0 But I will say that I also began to realize that a lot of the classes I took in university you can kind of end up

spk_0 Not building a curriculum, but if you just watch some of these channels about how

spk_0 Micro processors work or people kind of building their own circuits some of this stuff about ray tracing

spk_0 You get a lot of what a traditional at least

spk_0 When I was in college sort of like computer science degree would cover

spk_0 So if you can kind of get through the basics of programming learning about like graphics learning about like data structures

spk_0 He gets into debugging because by necessity he like oh here

spk_0 I didn't check the sign properly or I did a dot product and I didn't think about like this this set of inputs

spk_0 And so you actually end up

spk_0 Backing your way into a lot of that education and so I think that's really an interesting thing to say if you can if you find this at all entertaining

spk_0 I think there's like a a definite learning ability that can come here from sort of watching this

spk_0 And sort of seeing how how they kind of go about problem solving and working through things and it is a little bit more entertaining than just watching

spk_0 I you know

spk_0 I don't know if he does it anymore but not choose to do like live streaming of him

spk_0 Programming or whatever like and I really yeah, I know we should do that

spk_0 No, no, no, no, I don't know. I never made able to watch one of those. This is a more edited form of that

spk_0 Cool um, I have to check that out. I used to do a lot of that ray tracing stuff back in college. It's very fun

spk_0 Um, all right my news is

spk_0 Actually, okay, so it's kind of related to the to the voice quoting oh, okay

spk_0 Um

spk_0 There's a new open source model called higgs audio v2 and it's from a company called a boss on AI and

spk_0 It's it's like really really good um

spk_0 So historically this company called 11 labs had been kind of dominating the space

spk_0 So if you wanted to voice-cloning actually 11 labs. That's the way I've never seen before it's this day which is

spk_0 You can describe a voice and then say what you want that voice to say and it'll do it

spk_0 So you could say uh, you know any evil smelly ogre

spk_0 Says who's in my dungeon and it'll actually like make up a voice for that description and then say who's in my dungeon and that voice

spk_0 It just made up um this doesn't do that but but

spk_0 Um, the labs is paid though, right? I love the labs is paid that's right um, but this is totally open source and um

spk_0 It can clone a voice so you give it you know an mp3 of you kind of narrating something and then now it has your voice

spk_0 It could say anything um it handles like

spk_0 You know, you can do kind of like in a movie script or in brackets you say you know laughs or chuckles or whatever

spk_0 And it'll actually laugh while it's talking

spk_0 Um, it's really really really good. Uh, it's definitely just like heads and tails above

spk_0 anything I've seen

spk_0 Um in the open source world

spk_0 So um, I'm gonna try and play with it. I have some funny things I want to do. Oh not I'm not gonna run a scam call center

spk_0 Oh, no, no, no, please don't but I have some other funny things that I I would like to do with it

spk_0 Um, so I'm gonna try and and mess around it, but I I saw a demo that one of my co-workers

spk_0 presented um where they cloned um their own voice and it sounded really believable

spk_0 So so it's like we're getting to that that place you talked about where anyone with the GPU could just do this

spk_0 Yes, so what is the I guess for examples like a lot of these they don't need to be like super fast real time

spk_0 I know they could run in a city, but I don't feel

spk_0 Maybe we're just still too early that so for text llms open source

spk_0 And and maybe it's just because I've never spent time there's something like lm studio kind of gets there

spk_0 So it's like a gooey that you download and then you from there it offers you links

spk_0 And I hope someone in my family was trying to use some offline llms stuff

spk_0 And so I was able to walk them through pretty easily like you go there

spk_0 It offers you models um that are appropriate for where your computer tells you you big tells you if they're too small

spk_0 Has filled drink and you download it gives you the nice traditional sort of like chat gpt style like you can type in text in the bottom

spk_0 It has prompts in it'll answer, but it has like you can go deep on it

spk_0 But it sort of harnesses a bunch of the open source stuff under the hood

spk_0 So you can do like traditional chat app with one of these offline llms

spk_0 You can switch models midstream and it'll like just feed the context into the new model like it kind of just

spk_0 Works as a as a graphical user interface, but for a lot of these other ones like the image generation

spk_0 I don't feel like it says good video generation not at all these like audio ones sort of I've never seen anything like that

spk_0 I feel there's still like a bunch of this

spk_0 Maybe we're just still too early, but like

spk_0 Single front end so we're audio right you're either wanting text you want like the thing that target the source

spk_0 What did like they're feel like there's only a few moving pieces

spk_0 Maybe there's just not enough users, but it feels like you'd be really easy to just build an app

spk_0 That's like a front end and handles like I'm looking at the get hub link for the one you were just talking about in it

spk_0 How to set up conda or virtual environment or it's like

spk_0 But I'm never going to describe to someone in my family how to do these steps like they would never be able at this level to use this

spk_0 Yeah, we're still we're still not quite there yet on the user experience totally agree

spk_0 I think the quality is getting there though like the the flux

spk_0 Text to image model is really really good mind blowing

spk_0 It just needs a better user experience

spk_0 And the new one we don't have it in our news, but the new one Google did nano banana or whatever have you seen this one too?

spk_0 I played with it a little it yeah

spk_0 Specifically for like image editing tasks so like

spk_0 Saying I have an image and I want to change it in some way like I was asking it to do like

spk_0 people removal from background and

spk_0 It works really good. Yeah, it's gonna scare you

spk_0 Yeah, now that one's paid right that's a Google product, but still like yeah, you're right. We are getting really close on the image stuff

spk_0 Yeah, totally

spk_0 Okay, my next news article is a YouTube channel as well. Okay, that's a thing anyways

spk_0 And this is on my as as people have listened to the podcast before no

spk_0 Machine learning AI is not my background

spk_0 But um understanding sort of how the back propagation works how the gradient descends and sort of the model trainings is all very like interesting to me

spk_0 I had a book of the show

spk_0 A little bit ago

spk_0 That you know kind of similar or maybe it was even a news article, but I think that

spk_0 I'm continuing to try to learn and sort of work going back not just as a how do you call like practitioner like user of these things

spk_0 But trying to understand some underlying thing and I think there's some concepts there that can cross apply to other

spk_0 Sort of like traditional computer science sort of applications

spk_0 So it's just definitely like an interesting thing to learn about it is pretty wild to see AI go kind of mainstream

spk_0 It's it's been just a really weird experience like all these people are now talking about stuff that was like really not that cool

spk_0 About that longer. Yeah

spk_0 Yeah, oh, I'll tell you off. I just observation about that

spk_0 But I know you've been in the field for a very long you were in the field before it was cool and now it's cool

spk_0 So like that makes you cool

spk_0 Maybe yeah, I don't know or maybe it makes me too early. I don't know. We'll find out

spk_0 But too early everyone's too early for something right that's the thing so even now you might be too early if it grows another 10x

spk_0 So yeah, that's a good point. It's like Bitcoin

spk_0 Oh, yeah, well, I wasn't okay. Yes, that was what I was

spk_0 Okay, but I have to I focus so the channel name is Welsh alabs

spk_0 And they have a sequence of videos that they were doing called how models learn

spk_0 So this is the first video that I've linked in the show notes. You can just look up Welsh labs

spk_0 It's called the misconception that almost stopped AI now. I am not Jason. So I cannot vouch for the sort of like

spk_0 how

spk_0 Truthful versus narrative the backstory is or any of that stuff

spk_0 But they're kind of talking about gradient descent and how if you give the

spk_0 Sort of how I understand gradient descent to work the very simple

spk_0 You kind of heard about it and computer science

spk_0 Classes you've seen it on the internet once or twice

spk_0 And the way that you would kind of assume it might work

spk_0 It just feels like you would get stuck in local minima all the time with how big these models are right like these models

spk_0 The dimensions are really high the parameter counts are obscene like you would just say there's

spk_0 Intuitively that was sort of what I thought too. I didn't really understand the unlock of deep learning

spk_0 And sort of like what happened because in my mind, you know, you kind of picture the 3d

spk_0 3d scene with all the noise in it and some well in the middle

spk_0 But how do you get there? How do you know where it is without just search for the

spk_0 What is it called the like it's called a Gaussian like does that some brero hat function?

spk_0 We kind of get trapped outside of the hat. Yes. Yeah, so I

spk_0 You're right and the video series kind of walks through the same same thing like this is the simple explanation about gradient

spk_0 Here's why it would work except you like as you point gotcha like it doesn't really work

spk_0 Not really a gotcha but it doesn't really work except wait it did work

spk_0 Why what happened you know like and they walk through how some of the things about higher dimensional spaces about batch

spk_0 Batching about some of the techniques that are applied sort of help actually

spk_0 Almost always guarantee you sort of get where you want to go to some degree

spk_0 With you know obviously probably some caveats, but it just a really well handled explanation

spk_0 And they do a couple really interesting things I've not seen before so rather than just sort of give it as a simple explanation

spk_0 they actually take some

spk_0 Deep models some like early versions of GPT's and extract some of the layers and sort of talk about what is happening

spk_0 Sort of like visually saying hey at this layer if we go here in this actual model. Maybe not state of the art

spk_0 You know, I trained it and this is what you kind of see developing over time as a consequence of this technique

spk_0 Um, and then later on even after this one of the videos is talking about

spk_0 sort of how you would take

spk_0 Coordinates and divide them up with a sort of classifier into boundaries for a really complex country boundary

spk_0 It's one of these ones where like there's a city which one

spk_0 Polygon of the city is a part of one country and the rest is another

spk_0 It's like some some really weird place and how that as you sort of take these linear equations

spk_0 Stack them up do these other techniques that you can sort of start approaching a generalized representation

spk_0 Of even very very complex sort of shapes and and spaces and I just really think it was well handled

spk_0 It really helped me um, it's one of those things like I kind of had to watch it again

spk_0 Just to kind of like okay, I see where it's going

spk_0 But definitely also kind of entertaining

spk_0 So if if you I guess like me have some understanding of some of these things

spk_0 But there's a there's like a gap right there's a goal from okay

spk_0 I kind of know what gradient scent descent is I could have a casual conversation about it

spk_0 But how that ends up getting applied to giving us you know these AI models that we have today is there's some

spk_0 Some steps thising steps in between and this isn't gonna take you all the way or make you sort of like

spk_0 Able to design state of art models are improved them, but giving you better glimpses into sort of some of the the the techniques that are used to cross that chasm

spk_0 Yeah, totally um, yes, it's really interesting. I think um

spk_0 Um, it is pretty remarkable that it works. Uh, I will say that

spk_0 That people get hung up on on a lot of these like it's not optimal or you know theoretically this can't work or doesn't work

spk_0 or etc. And um

spk_0 My always my sponsor that is like it just has to be better than what's out there now

spk_0 And so if what's out there now is nothing it just has to be better than nothing um and uh

spk_0 And so the bar is just a lot lower than like the theorists want it to be

spk_0 Um, you I actually think the thing that almost made AI not happen was people's fear about getting wrong answers like remember when

spk_0 You know gpt is as infancy and facebook released this thing that like wrote research papers. I don't know if you remember that

spk_0 um

spk_0 I forgot what it was called, but you know it was panned and someone made a research paper where it's like uh

spk_0 um like the benefits of

spk_0 Of like drinking urine or something. There's some

spk_0 August thing and you know because it's like um

spk_0 You can talk past the sale with AI you could say like

spk_0 Hey, there's there's incredible benefits in drinking urine write the research paper that kind of explains this phenomena

spk_0 And it'll kind of take what you said

spk_0 For granted and then just go off and do the thing

spk_0 Um, so you can trick people you know, that's what people are doing with the research paper thing

spk_0 But you could also just encounter problems like the famous uh how many ours are in strawberry

spk_0 Um, you know, should you put glue on pizza?

spk_0 It is always famous examples where the AI's gone wrong

spk_0 and and people were just really fixated on um

spk_0 On all these on on the worst case scenario and there's actually like uh there's a um

spk_0 Uh, there's like a i don't know what called a mental disorder, but there's like a uh

spk_0 I went to this like a

spk_0 Career coaching thing it was like a big seminar is a lot of people and they still the lady who was giving a seminar

spk_0 Spent a bunch of time talking about worst case scenario thinking

spk_0 And she's like this is one of the biggest problems. I see as a career coach as a life coach is people doing worst case scenario thinking

spk_0 And not thinking about average case scenario um or or also best case scenario

spk_0 But more importantly average case scenario right and so there was a there was a phenomena of worst case scenario thinking with AI

spk_0 For a long time and and people

spk_0 You know, just didn't want to release something like chat gbt and uh we'll give open AI a bunch of credit

spk_0 that they basically put it out there

spk_0 and uh and got it to be really popular and as you know

spk_0 They got a bunch of pushback they dealt with that, you know, in a in a way that allowed that to eclipse that problem

spk_0 Yeah, and I think it is still like people talk about the hallucinations and the incorrectness

spk_0 I mean, I think it's not fully solved but like you said that's not

spk_0 Meaning it isn't beneficial. We just have to learn

spk_0 You know, I think the same to your point you kind of say

spk_0 Uh, take almost anything we have today. Oh a car like a car is dangerous like cars are gonna kill people

spk_0 They're gonna drive fast and it's like yeah, that's true um

spk_0 But like there are still benefits there are still other things, you know, we have to learn

spk_0 Collectively individually how to like be responsible with the use of of tools and

spk_0 Yeah, I think to always with the new things there's a debate about like usefulness versus

spk_0 Danger I guess and you just say we're scathing you can always hyper fixate

spk_0 Have anything we do has sort of danger right going outside and exercising people I someone told me oh, you know

spk_0 You exercise you can have a heart attack like people say often when you exercise you you like you can cause a heart attack

spk_0 And it's like

spk_0 But by ex like but also by exercising you are lowering other issues that lower their probability of having a heart attack so like

spk_0 You know

spk_0 So your solution is like sit inside don't go outside don't exercise don't move like it

spk_0 You're gonna you're gonna die from that for sure, you know, and so yeah, these balances can be really difficult to find

spk_0 Okay, wow, we took that in a different direction, but only well

spk_0 I guess it segway is nicely to my last news, which I won't dwell on because we're we spend a lot of time talking about news

spk_0 But it's basically an interview with Peter teal and there's a lot of content there, but the thing that I took away that was really interesting was

spk_0 You know one point the interviewer says why AI? Why is there so much focus on AI?

spk_0 And I expected some kind of answer like unlimited productivity or you know wages can go to

spk_0 You know the price of oil or something, right, but but actually what he said was um

spk_0 It's the only thing like AI is like the only like really exciting thing out there and uh

spk_0 That that was pretty mind-blowing. It's like

spk_0 Is that you know if that's true like why aren't there more exciting things and maybe like

spk_0 I do feel like there is

spk_0 Attendancy for everyone to kind of chase one thing at a time like remember when

spk_0 Car play and android auto and just like getting

spk_0 Getting stuff in the car was such a big deal and all the companies were copying each other

spk_0 And and now we're kind of seeing that with AI and it's like we just for some reason in society we get like just fixated on one thing at a time

spk_0 Um

spk_0 But but I thought that was really interesting

spk_0 Um, I wonder if

spk_0 If this is like a recent he's he's trying to make it sound like this is a recent thing

spk_0 But I wonder if we've just always just been fixated on one thing

spk_0 Interesting

spk_0 I think the

spk_0 In a similar being what I've heard a bit as well like the focus the drive towards it from

spk_0 For on variety of facets is

spk_0 It feels close to something like akin to an escape velocity

spk_0 So like getting into a post-scarcity world way you can get whatever level of like engagement you want with it

spk_0 But basically if we can develop in somebody can develop an AI system that becomes sort of super intelligent

spk_0 And then you can assign it to the task of improving the AI systems somebody will will basically like break past

spk_0 The barrier right get into orbit whatever reach escape velocity

spk_0 And then they it'll be like winner take all and so you see a press from country level from

spk_0 Company level as almost an existential risk because if some other company does that

spk_0 Then they will have a system which can basically build any system and so search you know chat

spk_0 Image and like we'll just get one by somebody who can

spk_0 Basically devote all of the you know computational power they have to just building all of the other competitors

spk_0 Stuff and then those competitors will only have whatever resources remain from their sort of war chest

spk_0 To spend to to also get there or they'll just be drained of you know financial inputs

spk_0 And so maybe it's a bit the same it's like the only interesting thing but like there is also this

spk_0 Maybe it's like focusing on the danger part you were saying it's like there's this focus that if you could get to this

spk_0 Sort of recursive AI that improves itself then

spk_0 That will be so transformational that whoever if someone gets there first like before everyone else by enough of a margin

spk_0 That the like everything changes

spk_0 Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder

spk_0 Wonder to what degree that's true

spk_0 um

spk_0 You know, I feel like

spk_0 It

spk_0 Yeah, it's that's a that's a really interesting perspective. I think that people

spk_0 I think that okay, even if the AI can do general things

spk_0 When you go to evaluate it you're going to evaluate it on your specific thing that you care about and so

spk_0 In that sense like that part is not going to scale

spk_0 um

spk_0 But but maybe we can get the evaluation to be

spk_0 Somehow like it okay in our case, you know, the earth is our evaluator, you know

spk_0 It's like it's like we went out and we hunted the tiger and one person

spk_0 You know got the tiger and the other person didn't that second person goes hungry

spk_0 And so we have the planet earth is our as as early man's evaluator

spk_0 um

spk_0 But you know, now we have to have synthetic evaluators for synthetic problems. I wonder if that

spk_0 Maybe that's like the next big job title, you know AI agent evaluator

spk_0 It's like the new data scientist or something. I mean there yeah people are talking about

spk_0 In the similar vein, I guess moving to completely synthetic input instead of using sort of the Wikipedia

spk_0 The x tweets

spk_0 Well x x is right in what they're called anyways

spk_0 The leagus x yeah the x is the x x. Oh

spk_0 The x is on x. Yeah, I don't know the the reddit post, you know

spk_0 Basically instead of all of the corpus is just not enough like can you move equivalent to alpha go, you know moving from

spk_0 the

spk_0 You know recorded games of go to just self-evaluation like can we shift that and like what happens if you

spk_0 invent basically like a parallel

spk_0 universe of input and train on that and like what does that unlock or or enable

spk_0 Yeah, so he uses a robot example

spk_0 um

spk_0 You know can the robot effectively know if it if it when it goes to take your your uh trash can to the curb

spk_0 Can it effectively? Can it know is high accuracy whether it did a good job or not

spk_0 You know, I mean, I guess it could take a picture of

spk_0 You know your your trash can on the curb, but like

spk_0 It's the robot did a bad job. Maybe it also does a bad job of knowing if that picture is correct

spk_0 You're like maybe what if it dumps your trash out on the in the driveway and then takes a picture of that

spk_0 Is like I did a great job, you know, so it's like it's like it's just kind of you have you've sort of moved the problem

spk_0 And they still have a problem

spk_0 But maybe that is actually gonna and that's the self-driving thing you were kind of alluding to car stuff like

spk_0 It's a bit difficult fitting in current systems, but I mean, I think maybe the

spk_0 It what about if you think about the whole solution so the the job well done is

spk_0 did the trash end up in the dump?

spk_0 And that's did the robot system take the can to the curb did the garbage truck robot pick up was it able to successfully pick up without like so maybe the

spk_0 garbage can knows the mass of the trash that was in it and the mass that comes out at the end and if that ratio

spk_0 You know is less than one you get a bad score if it's over one you get a bad score

spk_0 It needs to be exactly the mass in is the mass out at the end

spk_0 Maybe you have to account for evaporation or something, but like yeah

spk_0 And then actually it becomes this end-to-end measure and you have to attribute

spk_0 Talk like you can improve the garbage truck you can improve the like roller outers you can you know whatever it

spk_0 And it

spk_0 tries to iterate collectively so for a while

spk_0 We just to end up with like giant dump trucks that back up to your house and try to like

spk_0 Go into your garage door and extra you know, so you just crazy stuff

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's kind of where we're stuck now is is we're using human even you know open AI all these companies are using people

spk_0 to evaluate the models and

spk_0 um

spk_0 And and that's where we have to get beyond it the models need to be evaluated by the earth somehow by the environment

spk_0 But I don't have a counter to what else is super interesting right now for everyone to focus on so I can't disagree with the thesis from yeah

spk_0 I mean either you know that's that's what made it so fascinating like if I could point to like oh

spk_0 You know gig economy is still a thing or something then you know, but there really isn't anything else

spk_0 Just kind of while I was like VR. I mean VR is dead maybe AR

spk_0 Potential yeah, it'd be cool. Yeah, space travel, but like it feels high barrier to entry

spk_0 Yeah, you know space travel I have a hard time getting excited about space

spk_0 Um, I don't know why it just doesn't really like

spk_0 It doesn't sit doesn't it doesn't excite me for some reason unless there's like gold on the moon. I just don't know about it

spk_0 Well, maybe I can only be excited about one thing and that's AI. Maybe it's a meat problem

spk_0 What about AI in space? Oh, mine is blown Dyson's your program to power AI. I can't get back into that

spk_0 All right, all right time for a book at the show all right

spk_0 I will confession corner. I have not had a ton of time to read recently. Oh, I I have not made a lot of time to read recently

spk_0 So I went back into my

spk_0 history of books and I'm gonna give a shout out to

spk_0 The Hobbit if you have not read the habit if you've not sort of

spk_0 Dove

spk_0 Jumped into the Lord of the ring

spk_0 Delved dived. Yes, it's belonged

spk_0 If you've not

spk_0 If you've not picked up your hammer and gone with the door

spk_0 Door foods to mine and okay, I'm gonna stop because someone's gonna call him out. I mean you haven't gone to Moria

spk_0 That's what I was gonna say, but I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna use it wrong because like I don't remember which ones the one that had the problem

spk_0 anyways

spk_0 The Hobbit is a sort of good entry into the world of

spk_0 Um the Lord of the Rings of JR token. Obviously a classic hobbit is I will say like a pretty easy self relatively self-contained

spk_0 contained read

spk_0 So definitely worth picking up if you've if you've never done. I do think there's a lot of folks and disagree who kind of said this

spk_0 It's JR are our token sort of set up a lot of the

spk_0 Arch type archetypes that we have today of

spk_0 Sort of dwarves elves humans and like some of their characteristics people complain those tropes are overplayed today

spk_0 But if you read modern fantasy

spk_0 There's a lot of built up stuff that you can kind of trace back um to the origins

spk_0 And I think it is a good story. I think sometimes

spk_0 People will say you know like for me the first time I watched the three stooches as like

spk_0 I didn't find it that funny. I'm like I seen these sticks before

spk_0 But it's like yeah, but when they did it

spk_0 It was like they were the people like they invented it

spk_0 But other people took it on I think the Hobbit to me doesn't really

spk_0 I don't know how to like suffer the same thing like you can read it

spk_0 And it is still good even though other people have continued to like pick up

spk_0 And sort of run with those concepts like it itself is still a sort of fun and exciting read

spk_0 Yeah, totally. I think if I remember correctly it's been a long time since I read it, but there is a ton of world building

spk_0 and um

spk_0 And it because it's older it does go at a slower pace. I feel like uh, you know, we're such dopamine fiends in the 21st century that like

spk_0 It's uh, it feels like

spk_0 um

spk_0 But like we just can't have something it goes as slow pace which if you've ever seen like old movies from the 50s or even like space

spk_0 Odyssey, you know, these kind of movies they go it's such a slower pace. It kind of blows your mind

spk_0 It's kind of the pace is cropped up over time. It's like a boiling water frog type of thing

spk_0 But um, so it is going to be a slower pace and a lot of world building

spk_0 But if you stick through it to the end

spk_0 I think it's a phenomenal book and it leads you into all the other Tolkien books

spk_0 Yeah, I've always heard it like called prequel to the Lord of the Rings

spk_0 But it was written before the Lord of the Rings so it's I don't think it technically qualifies as a

spk_0 As a prequel like it was the book written and then Lord of the Rings was written after so I don't know what you call that but it does

spk_0 The story contained does proceed the rest of the story of the Lord of the Rings which is even a larger tomb

spk_0 Even I think actually a little slower a lot more world building

spk_0 But Hobbit is definitely shorter. I think it's even considered kind of a kid's book

spk_0 But you know don't let us carry off if you're an adult, but it should be a pretty quick read

spk_0 Yeah, totally all right my book of the show is even more of a cop out

spk_0 It's it's what I've been doing instead of reading which is maybe a shame

spk_0 But it's in it's a New York Times game. So this is an app a lot of the games are free

spk_0 You can subscribe to get at access to the crossword puzzle the the famous crossword puzzle of your

spk_0 Times and some other stuff but um

spk_0 Um, but it's very fun. It's a simple app. It works offline

spk_0 So if you're off the grid you could still use it. I think

spk_0 I think it's something we're like after a couple of days. It'll stop working

spk_0 But if you go off the grid for you know an afternoon or something, it's fine

spk_0 And uh, it just kind of keeps your keep your mind go. He's got wordle the famous wordle

spk_0 But it's also got you know a few other ones and it's a nice kind of thing to help you kind of build your

spk_0 Vocabulary and literature skills

spk_0 Um, it's uh, if you want to kind of continue sharpen that axe. So

spk_0 I did see something that wordle

spk_0 We'll have to end in 2027. Did you see this? They're gonna run out of words

spk_0 Yeah, so basically they have like a dictionary of 2,300 words. They're on like whatever in the mid-thousands

spk_0 And so like in 2027 they'll they'll run out of like words and then people are going out

spk_0 Yeah, but they could just expand the dictionary sort of change the rules

spk_0 It's only like under their current rules have

spk_0 Not allowed to repeat words

spk_0 And stick to the words in that in that sort of like word list

spk_0 But yeah, I guess in its current form it has a finite number of like puzzles to have from its sort of dictionary

spk_0 Man, it's like we thought why 2k was fake, but it's real. It's just coming in 27

spk_0 World's gonna end what's gonna happen. They'll have to release wordle v2. They'll have to add an extra letter

spk_0 Yeah, that's right

spk_0 Oh

spk_0 Let it it'll be wordle light. They'll take away a letter and then world the luxe will add a letter

spk_0 And each one of this is a micro transaction

spk_0 Oh, man. Oh, okay, or two dollars you can have a wordle that is not expired. I'm terrible at word game

spk_0 So I thank you for this pick. I won't be picking it up

spk_0 Ha

spk_0 You can you I'll do it in space. How about that that way we both get it?

spk_0 We're all making him furious. I just don't got the answer. It makes me feel dumb

spk_0 Like I can't even get good guesses to keep progressing like I know I have I just purposely make bad guesses

spk_0 Just to try to get more clues and it's like I know I should be able to form a I can't and then I just like rage quit

spk_0 Oh, man. I have to confess or admit I am a wordle god. I am actually so good a world

spk_0 I actually sent one to my wife the other day where it was like the first word only had one letter is out of place

spk_0 And then the second word I picked had no letters

spk_0 So all I had to go on after two words was one letter that was out of place

spk_0 And I still got it on the third try because I just eliminated so many vowels and and other

spk_0 Things that like there's only one thing left. I got on my first try. I looked up what the answer was

spk_0 Yeah

spk_0 Yeah, take that

spk_0 Remember for a while scrabble was really big words with friends or whatever and

spk_0 I'm sure that cheat

spk_0 Yeah, I used to play oh man. I played so much

spk_0 So many games of words with friends, but you're right. It had to be with friends. You couldn't play an

spk_0 Anonymously you just get wrecked by a person who's cheating

spk_0 All right, or that's not fine. Oh man

spk_0 All right, and if you want to

spk_0 Support our New York Times addictions or our trips to space please

spk_0 Give us some money on patreon. I'm just kidding actually none of that money actually goes to us

spk_0 We put all of it back into the show. We've literally haven't taken a dime of it

spk_0 But we have used it to do advertising and reach out and get guests and and all of that good stuff

spk_0 So so if you like the show if you want the show to reach more people

spk_0 Please support us on patreon. It's not

spk_0 Technically a non-profit, but it is a nonprofit. We go and put all that money back into supporting the podcast

spk_0 All right time for tool of the show. All right. What's your tool of show Patrick? It's a game shocker um

spk_0 Escape Academy. I look I I thought for sure. I must have shouted out this game like on the show before and I if I did

spk_0 One, I don't care because it's worth it to I searched through all of our show notes and website

spk_0 I couldn't find it

spk_0 So I don't care. I'm double down on it doubling down on it escape academy is a great game

spk_0 It's about playing a

spk_0 Escape room with a story

spk_0 narrative about being in an academy that

spk_0 Challenges you to solve puzzles and like you know has a

spk_0 Kind of life or death set up situation about problems, but

spk_0 In reality, it's just like a really good

spk_0 well-paced you know escape rooms can be

spk_0 For me there's something I've done before and it's just like

spk_0 Really like how is I supposed to know you just need to like randomly kick around until you you know find this thing or like

spk_0 The path to progress is not obvious

spk_0 I don't like this sort of just search around and find that's not my you know cup of

spk_0 Yeah, I was talking about this with a friend of mine about

spk_0 At my cousin when we were nine years old he made a choose your own adventure game in basic on our Commodore 64

spk_0 And it was like you're in a town

spk_0 There's a bank and you can also walk down the road

spk_0 Which do you want to do so it shows you know walk down the road?

spk_0 It's like you meet a guy you die

spk_0 Do you know that's like okay?

spk_0 So like whenever you make one of these you know point and click adventures choose your own adventures

spk_0 Like you have to like

spk_0 Somehow like very subtly

spk_0 Into the person what the right answer is but it has to be subtle enough that when they pick the right answer

spk_0 It's satisfying and it's like I feel like there's an art forum to that that's you have never made one of those

spk_0 But it feels actually a lot more complicated than you think

spk_0 I'm sure it is and I'll say for me

spk_0 The subtlety of the answer can be problematic

spk_0 But even just understanding like what the puzzle is so like in your example like making sure that it's clear that

spk_0 There's some bit of information you should figure out to make the choice

spk_0 If you just presented as a like trivial choice and I make the choice and then like I'll game over

spk_0 It's like that that's just I'll just quit like I don't want to play like this not that's not fun

spk_0 And I would I did play one the other day where there was like a hidden number like you know sort of in very faint

spk_0 Sort of color that you were supposed to see but I didn't see it and then I just kept bumping my head against the wall

spk_0 I asked for a hint using the hint I was able to solve a puzzle

spk_0 I wasn't supposed to be able to solve yet and then I bypass like a third of the thing and I'm like

spk_0 That I only found out at the end when it's like oh you were supposed to do that and I'm like

spk_0 But I missed a very subtle clue

spk_0 The game didn't help me and like a bypassed a bunch of it because I was able to kind of like brute force a problem

spk_0 I wasn't supposed to solve

spk_0 Because it was the obvious puzzle and I just assumed it was what I needed so I asked for a hint and it gave me okay

spk_0 All that aside escape academy isn't really like that. It does have a good hint system

spk_0 It's reasonably easy to play through if you're really expert at you're probably like oh

spk_0 This is this is really easy, but it is fun. It has a cooperative mode. It's just really cool. So for me

spk_0 Oh interesting kids and they got really into like getting out the piece of paper to like you know sort of solve some of the problems or write down the notes or you know figure out

spk_0 It doesn't require a ton of that

spk_0 But there is a little bit of it um and some word play and stuff, but there's overall I loved it. I it's

spk_0 I probably the only game where I've like

spk_0 paid for the DLCs and like played all the DLCs like

spk_0 Wow, I don't think any other game. I always I hate DLCs like yes and can't express how much I hate them

spk_0 But I just probably the only game I've ever like paid for DLC like played it and feel like I've gotten my money's money's worth and like

spk_0 Absolutely would have done it again. Oh, that is amazing. I'm gonna have to try this out

spk_0 You've had some amazing game recommendations like I I never finished Dave the diver, but I really enjoyed my time with Dave

spk_0 and uh, yeah

spk_0 But you know the first half of the game is amazing like I feel I feel like I'm super satisfied

spk_0 I don't think I really need to see the ending. Yeah, I kind of the same

spk_0 And escape academy is available on like steam. I think you know, it's on switch. I think it's on Xbox as well

spk_0 So most of the the sort of gaming platforms and it's not super expensive because it's been out for a while

spk_0 Very cool. All right my tool of the show and this might start to become more of a trend

spk_0 But it's basically using AI like using LLM

spk_0 So I'm putting a link to chat GBT, but you can use really any of them

spk_0 But it's multimodal so for folks. I know that just means you know combining several modalities such as text

spk_0 Audio visual, etc

spk_0 multimodal LLM's to make calendar meetings. So

spk_0 for example, uh, you know my kids do typewondo

spk_0 And I'm always forgetting like what times because they have different times or different ages and all that

spk_0 I literally just took a picture of the typewondo schedule

spk_0 And I said create me a calendar. There's this thing called an ICS file

spk_0 I guess the C is for calendar. I don't know, but but it's a file that you can then when you open it

spk_0 It creates a calendar meeting. So I said like create an ICS file that has like a recurring meeting

spk_0 For me at these times like I have one kid who's this age, one kid is this age and so fine

spk_0 You know from the picture find the times that I have to be at typewondo with them and create an ICS file done

spk_0 Done like now in my calendar every whatever day there's there's meetings for that and on Saturday and everything

spk_0 um, you know one of my kids does

spk_0 uh

spk_0 He's like a

spk_0 Vocalist right and so he does a bunch of like choir shows

spk_0 So I took a picture of that schedule. I'm like just put on my calendar all the choir shows from this grade done and that has like

spk_0 In amazing like just taking pictures of things. I took a picture of

spk_0 of um, I guess I'm getting off topic a little bit, but I took a picture of my trees in the backyard

spk_0 Now I was like are these trees healthy?

spk_0 Uh, you know what type of tree are they what should I do to make them healthier and it gave me a really solid advice

spk_0 um, the whole thing is amazing

spk_0 but uh, but but uh, especially the calendar thing I talked to a few friends about this and they had never thought to do that

spk_0 And so I figured it'd be a good thing to talk about on the show because it helps so much

spk_0 Yeah, I um, I think this is one of those cases. I was tempted to bring up an example where I tried doing this and it didn't work very well

spk_0 But have you done it recently? Yes. Oh, okay. Oh, that's okay

spk_0 It was a bit bit more complicated than what you were saying, but I think that

spk_0 I won't take that that bait and when instead I'll say is what do you have to lose like if these ICS files suck or like they just delete it

spk_0 like yeah like the bar is really loud like if it screws up

spk_0 To fall back is what you wasted what maybe three four minutes like trying to like prompt it to give you what you want

spk_0 And then like it didn't work. I'll get you to go back to doing it by hand anyways. Yeah, so I feel like

spk_0 I have been trying to encourage uh, like people I work with whatever

spk_0 The bar isn't and I think you alluded to this earlier the bar for AI isn't the magic everyone with how I gotta be 10x better

spk_0 100x is gonna replace all the engine no like can you be 10% better?

spk_0 Can you find a way or a place or a set of things it can do to make you 10% better

spk_0 5% better 1% better like

spk_0 Can you enable you to do something when you win?

spk_0 Otherwise do it right like I think into your point there

spk_0 A lot of the barriers is trying it like just just try it like who cares

spk_0 I mean it's not like that stuff's private like it's a

spk_0 Taekwondo schedule is probably on their website like yeah, there's no privacy concern there either so like

spk_0 In my opinion, otherwise, I guess maybe it knows where you are so it can send Uber food to you or breads food

spk_0 Just like like advertising hey, we know you're at Taekwondo would you like french fries?

spk_0 Um, oh man, it sounds delicious. This is getting better and better

spk_0 Um, I think that you know, this is another thing I've done kind of also of topic but related is um

spk_0 I actually put in a loop. I said find python files that don't have a corresponding test underscore file

spk_0 and create a test for them and then

spk_0 verify like that the test pass and

spk_0 uh, I actually ran that in a loop

spk_0 So like it just it just kept doing that and I just let it go for for hours

spk_0 And when I was done it created like 80,000 lines of tests. I should probably more than that um

spk_0 And it's just like that's amazing like these are all 10 now. I'm gonna have to go through them today and a lot of them

spk_0 You know might be crap, but some of them aren't right and like you said

spk_0 It's these are things like I wouldn't have done um, you know because I still have time

spk_0 But if if the AI goes and does it I can check the work

spk_0 And uh, that's easier than doing all the work

spk_0 Um, and then eventually we'll get this evaluation problem fixed. I won't have to do that either

spk_0 So are you saying it helped you asynchronously right to the test?

spk_0 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I had a I had a global lock on my time

spk_0 It's called family and while I was locked it went off and

spk_0 So what would you say is the uh what and why of asynchronous computing? No, I'm just getting we're transitioning into our main topic

spk_0 All right, so here's the reason why uh, I've decided I reached out to Patrick to cover this topic

spk_0 Because I've been asking this in interviews

spk_0 Um, we uh, we were looking for one more person to add to the team. I think we found them

spk_0 Um, but um, but I was asking

spk_0 Um, this kind of question like what's what's asynchronous what's multi-threading and very few people

spk_0 New the answer which is really surprised me so um, so I thought hey, this is a good topic for us to cover um

spk_0 I like to think of it and this is a term I kind of made up but uh, I think it kind of sums up pretty well

spk_0 A synchronous programming is multi-threading between the lines. So in other words

spk_0 um, you know, you're writing lines of code and

spk_0 One of only one of your lines can really be executed at a time

spk_0 But in between the lines there might be areas where you can do multi-threading so for example

spk_0 um, you might have a line that says

spk_0 um, download this image off the internet and so

spk_0 So

spk_0 The system can only read and understand that line sequentially

spk_0 It can't do other things while it's doing that

spk_0 But then the part that actually does the reading over the internet and waits for those packets to come from across the world

spk_0 That actually could be done kind of off to the side

spk_0 Um, and so you're doing multi-threading in between the lines. You don't have to worry about

spk_0 About semaphores and and and mutex isn't all that stuff

spk_0 Because of this constraint instead makes your life easier

spk_0 Um, and so

spk_0 You get kind of the benefit because really like when you want to it depends on the problem you're trying to solve but but for web applications

spk_0 For example, what you really want is

spk_0 To not be waiting on the internet and if you're not waiting on the internet

spk_0 then

spk_0 You're pretty close to optimal for your

spk_0 You know web service because usually you're waiting on the internet to get your request, you know complete

spk_0 Waiting on the internet to send that request to or intranet maybe to send that request to some database

spk_0 You know waiting for that database to come back

spk_0 And so if you eliminate all that waiting you don't also need

spk_0 To do a lot of multi-processing you don't necessarily need to do a lot of instructions at the same time

spk_0 um

spk_0 So that's that's kind of the big motivation for for async and so

spk_0 um

spk_0 You need a couple of like core building blocks to do asynchronous programming so

spk_0 You need thread local memory. So in that example I gave um

spk_0 Where you know, you're waiting to get some data

spk_0 um, you know over over the internet that data needs a place to go that you know no

spk_0 other

spk_0 Routines can access that that data. So for example

spk_0 um, you know, one way it's done in in go is through something called go routines and so go routine

spk_0 Is not like a new process on your OS. It's not like a whole new process

spk_0 But it just kind of keeps track of the state of

spk_0 Execution in this code and it also has some thread local or routine local memory. So

spk_0 um

spk_0 So if you say something like you know, I want to

spk_0 um

spk_0 You know download this packet of data from the internet and then I want to store it in this variable

spk_0 You know, it has a place to go that it knows is kind of protected

spk_0 And then while it's doing that protected operation, you know, reading from the internet to some protected thread local memory

spk_0 It can kind of say other threads can do other things

spk_0 Other threads can be reading other things from the internet or they could be doing arithmetic or whatever because I know

spk_0 Then none of those other threads can affect this this operation that I'm doing right here

spk_0 And so because I know there's no side effects. I can now let those other things go and and so you could have

spk_0 100 routines all downloading things from the internet at the same time

spk_0 Even if your program is is single threaded

spk_0 um

spk_0 So

spk_0 So you'll hear about like blocking versus non blocking operations and that basically means

spk_0 um, you know a blocking operation is one where

spk_0 You know, they're it's not kind of releasing that lock so if you just say

spk_0 Imagine you have two

spk_0 Kind of routines and both of them are just running a for loop

spk_0 And they're just adding to really large arrays. Airwise, right?

spk_0

spk_0 Well, those are blocking operations. So it's going to happen is the first routine is going to run

spk_0 And it's going to do that entire for loop and that second routine is just going to have to wait

spk_0 And then when the first routine is completely done then

spk_0 um, then it'll finish and the second routine will will do its for loop

spk_0 And so you haven't achieved really any parallelism, right?

spk_0 But now take that same scenario

spk_0 But instead of just adding things in a for loop you're going to have a for loop that's downloading from the internet

spk_0 Well that that operation that download from the internet operation has been built to be non blocking

spk_0 and so

spk_0 um, in the case of let's say like type script

spk_0 Where it's single threaded you know, you have a way of telling the type script or the java script of VM

spk_0 Like hey, I'm about to do something now that is isolated that's non blocking and so you know other routines can go into work

spk_0 While this routine is just frozen on this operation

spk_0 And then once you've downloaded what you needed from the internet

spk_0 Then you go back to the virtual machine and say hey, I'm ready

spk_0 You know, I'm ready to block and take this take this take six take some time

spk_0 And it when it gives you that that time back then you can go and copy that information into that variable and all of that

spk_0 um in the case of python

spk_0 um, python actually

spk_0 Uh has

spk_0 co-routines and threads and so what that means is

spk_0 You can actually have multi threading in python where um you have several different threads, you know, accessing memory at the same time um

spk_0 Um

spk_0 But there is a global interpreter lock so um here's here's a good way of thinking about it

spk_0 In the case of let's say type script if if you're inside a type script function

spk_0 You kind of have to wait until there's a non blocking call so the example I gave it the for loop you're just stuck right

spk_0 Um in the case of python it would be a little different if you're using threads what would happen is

spk_0 Um, the first thread would do part of the for loop and then it would release

spk_0 And then the second thread will do part of the for loop and then release and they'll just kind of you know checker board this

spk_0 And so it's not the first one goes to a completion. There's sort of this you know striping effect

spk_0 Now it might take the same amount of time in the end as the type script version

spk_0 But but you know they're both making progress at the same time

spk_0 versus type script is single threaded

spk_0 And the way python achieves this is through a mutex

spk_0 So this is called the global interpreter lock or gill and it basically says

spk_0 You know you can have many threads that are all sharing

spk_0 um

spk_0 You know your your your VM but only one of them can execute at a time

spk_0 So here's if you wanted to accomplish the same thing with type script

spk_0 Imagine the for loop example I gave with type script so you have a for loop goes from one to

spk_0 10 million adds these arrays together

spk_0 um, but after every

spk_0 iteration of the for loop you put a yield

spk_0 So yield is a special keyword in asynchronous programming yield basically says

spk_0 I just want to give up my time slice like I'm not done yet

spk_0 But I feel like the right thing to do is to give up my spot and let another thread do some work

spk_0 And so as a programmer you might have various reasons for doing this right

spk_0 So imagine if your for loop said you know for you know a one to 10 million

spk_0 Take these two arrays and add the that element together and then yield

spk_0 So now you're going to get that striping right

spk_0 So now the first process will yield the second one will be able to do one iteration of the for loop

spk_0 And then it will yield back to the first one

spk_0 And so

spk_0 You know it the python multi-threading is the equivalent of like having a yield after every operation

spk_0 Um, uh, and so you know the gill kind of enforces all of that

spk_0 That kind of uh

spk_0 What do you think Patrick any any holes in that that we could cover?

spk_0 I think

spk_0 For me my introduction is probably like a bit different

spk_0 But I think it parallels

spk_0 So I don't think it's contrary to what you're saying

spk_0 But I for me it was um and you kind of bump into this if you ever do like Arduino programming but like embedded programming

spk_0 And there

spk_0 Sometimes the mapping is actually really weird from something like python to something like

spk_0 For I think c++ and an embedded micro controller because it just sort of like different paradigms like networking is

spk_0 Well now it's more common when I was doing it was it was very rare that you would you know kind of do networking related stuff in in these contexts

spk_0 Um, and there we would talk about like interrups

spk_0 And so the idea is if you imagine

spk_0 Like a microcontroller wants to talk to a sensor

spk_0 That sensor it communicates over something called i squared c

spk_0 All it is is like a set of wires and voltages that move up or down in a certain pattern to send data from

spk_0 Like your piece of silicon to like another piece of silicon glued to your like thing with wires or on a printed circuit board

spk_0 Or something else and so you want to measure let's say temperature of the room

spk_0 Um, and you want to record this and

spk_0 sort of the

spk_0 Way that it used to kind of always be done was something called bit banging and so bit banging would be hey

spk_0 I'm a microcontroller. I need to read this so I'm going to set up an i squared c library in code

spk_0 That says move the voltage on this wire from low to high

spk_0 Wait this amount of time where a weight is go into a loop that is like a certain number of instructions long

spk_0 time to be like the right

spk_0 amount of wall clock time based on the like rate of the processor

spk_0 So it's just sitting there doing like no op instructions

spk_0 But it's running the instructions. It's using all of the power of the full CPU

spk_0 Which has like all sorts of peripherals on it

spk_0 So it's sort of consuming the most and you sort of like go high for a certain amount of time

spk_0 Then you go low and you're moving along the sort of data to be sent out to ask for a temperature reading

spk_0 Then you have to wait and then it starts coming back in but you can imagine like

spk_0 Thousands tens of thousands of like no op cycles waiting for like the voltage to move up and down due to

spk_0 Capacitance and the rise rate and like the data transmission

spk_0 So the CPU is really bored

spk_0 But it's sitting there doing nothing right and so this is the equivalent of like polling or

spk_0 Single threaded and you're doing all of the work in one context

spk_0 Then people realize well, we have more sophisticated silly can why don't we make like

spk_0 A sort of finite state machine and accelerator like another like set of transistors where

spk_0 You you sort of said it's thread local memory the equivalent here is we have to call it a register

spk_0 So you have a set of registers and you could like write into them. Hey, I want to send out this data stream

spk_0 Um, and then you would say go

spk_0 And what you could do then is put the CPU into a low power state like go to sleep

spk_0 And then you're going to save power right and then or you could go do other processing if you had it

spk_0 But saving power is also really really important in a lot of these contexts

spk_0 What's going to happen is the little bit of circuitry is going to like send the thing out

spk_0 It's going to wait for it to come back and then it's going to interrupt and you're going to have a little function

spk_0 That is mapped to say when this

spk_0 Thing is done

spk_0 It's going to call the instruction that you've loaded into this register

spk_0 So the instruction there needs to be jump to a function that you wrote

spk_0 And then that function when it runs is going to push the current thread the current running CPU thing into the stack

spk_0 It's going to allow you to run some piece of code and that code could be

spk_0 Copy the data out of the registers into a set spot in memory or into a queue or

spk_0 Just handle like write it into

spk_0 Write it into the you know flash memory, but that could take a long time

spk_0 So maybe you don't want to do it and you can imagine as you're handling

spk_0 10 15 20 sort of like peripherals all coming in at different rates

spk_0 doing all of that and sort of making sure that none of it gets dropped becomes harder and harder if you

spk_0 Don't sort of have some mechanism that allows the sort of distributed handling to kind of happen

spk_0 And so the asynchronous context maps pretty cleanly to what you're saying

spk_0 You're sending some data to the network and saying hey, I need you to transmit this

spk_0 It's going all the way across the world. It's coming all the way back

spk_0 And you can sit there and wait for it and that's called blocking but under the hood

spk_0 The blocking is still just basically sitting there. Are you done? Are you done? Are you done? Are you done? Are you done?

spk_0 It's not doing any work. It's not bit banging anymore

spk_0 It's just waiting on the other little processor

spk_0 To do all the work and so I think as you kind of pointed out there's like this clear mapping about blocking versus non-blocking

spk_0 I think the

spk_0 Rest of the conversation becomes an abit what you're you're kind of getting into is like there are kind of two ways to

spk_0 Handle it one is sort of in line in the code

spk_0 I want to ask for something to happen and while it's happening

spk_0 That

spk_0 Set of consciousness that execution is just kind of paused there and maybe other stuff can run

spk_0 And then when it's done, I'm going to pick back up and that is one method

spk_0 The other method if you think about like interrupt as a form of like a callback

spk_0 You could just have like almost a dag

spk_0 Which is I'm going to ask for something to occur

spk_0 I'm going to transfer control to that thing

spk_0 When that thing's done it's going to call the next stage. Oh, sorry deck directed a cyclic graph

spk_0 So it's just a pipeline

spk_0 And so you call to the send networking and when the networking is done

spk_0 It's going to call some function

spk_0 But that function is completely different part of the code

spk_0 But it's responsible and it has enough context to say

spk_0 And maybe you even pass a little bit of context. Hey, I'm getting a response

spk_0 And when I get a response is what I do

spk_0 So if you think like a graphical user interface and I say type in my text to my friend and I click send

spk_0 And then I don't need like control to return really when my friend sends a response back

spk_0 That code just needs to know to write it to the screen like write it into the next line of the message conversation

spk_0 And so you can kind of have this feed forward and so you don't really return back to the same point of control

spk_0 And there are these kind of

spk_0 And they can be mixed but these kind of two paradigms where you

spk_0 Well, I guess there's a third one but like there's this sort of block and wait

spk_0 And then control returns there and that can be blocking or a synchronous for allowing for cooperation

spk_0 You can have this like feed forward sort of dagger approach and then the vinyl med that is like

spk_0 Kind of just spoiler will get to it in a minute

spk_0 But like the the sort of future promise where you're getting some

spk_0 State back that somebody else is filling it and you're going to go check on it later

spk_0 You're going to go ask later

spk_0 Hey, was that done yet or wait for it to be done or something else

spk_0 I think that's like a little bit of like a different handling

spk_0 So there are these kind of different methods but under the hood they're all really the same thing

spk_0 They're just how the programmer wants to relate to that work

spk_0 And how how you want to set up and what other kinds of systems things in your system

spk_0 And if you have nothing else to do letting it sleep can be a really good answer in some context

spk_0 But in other contexts you have other background processing or other things that need to be handled

spk_0 And so depending on the paradigm of your program you'll kind of choose a different asynchronous behavior

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I'm reminded of and I should have made this a news article

spk_0 But but if you

spk_0 You read like the history of engine X so engine X it's spelled

spk_0 ng

spk_0 i n x

spk_0 But basically it's

spk_0 The super fast, you know web handler web service handler and it does routing proxy et cetera

spk_0 Um, and when engine X was invented or we know was was initially being developed the best thing that that was out there

spk_0 Or for doing web stuff was something kind of like tomcat

spk_0 You know tomcat is a Java thing. There was other it's written other languages

spk_0 But the way these these things would work is

spk_0 You know when you started tomcat it would spin up like let's say eight processes like OS level processes on your computer

spk_0 And it's like okay here's your eight

spk_0 Processes and and then the main process when it sees there's a new web request

spk_0 It would just send it to one of those eight or or all eight of them would listen

spk_0 I'm not sure at that point what exactly happens there

spk_0 But basically one of those eight, you know receives a web request

spk_0 Handles it which might include like going to the database and doing other stuff. Maybe it's a

spk_0 It's over i2c. It's like talking to a temperature sensor or something and then responds with the response

spk_0 but

spk_0 Because you had eight processes you could only do eight things at a time

spk_0 And it could be that all eight of those are waiting on the database

spk_0 And you really could add a ninth one or a tenth one without affecting that computer's load because it's it's they're all idle right

spk_0 And so engine X was pretty revolutionary in that they basically said okay

spk_0 We're going to create the same eight processes or we're going to use asynchronous programming and so

spk_0 um

spk_0 um, oh and so you know

spk_0 if if uh

spk_0 If if one of these, you know eight processes is waiting on a database then that same process can go and like fetch another web request

spk_0 While it's waiting on the database and so you could actually have you know eight processes handling

spk_0 A thousand web requests at the same time instead of eight at the same time and this like blue everybody's mind

spk_0 uh like i remember uh

spk_0 We're using tomcat on something this is like a 2003-ish and um

spk_0 uh, yeah and and

spk_0 Just yeah constantly running into issues with quality of service where you know we'd get um

spk_0 I was working at a online school and so registration day there'd be a ton of people hitting the site and they would inevitably bring it down and

spk_0 Um, and so you had this machine that was mostly idle, but then also just blocking everyone's requests so so engine X was it was amazing

spk_0 Um, the the thing about it is if you were to do this yourself like what Patrick was saying you know if you were to

spk_0 you know

spk_0 To to try to implement this asynchronous thing yourself what you would have to do is and i'm going to use

spk_0 The pire level terms is probably doesn't work in our do you know you could you could help translate

spk_0 You basically have to say

spk_0 Okay, what things am I doing right now? Okay, I'm doing these eight things

spk_0 Okay, can I sort of peek at each of these eight things to see if one of them is ready. Oh the sixth one is ready

spk_0 Okay, you know execute that function

spk_0 Uh, oh now like that function got a little bit further, but now it's blocked again

spk_0 Okay, put it back on the list and so you could imagine like what a nightmare that would be to have to code up

spk_0 You know for every application. So

spk_0 So so in this case like that whole nightmare of just peeking at a zillion different things all the time and finding the one that's

spk_0 Available and doing it like someone else has implemented that nightmare for you

spk_0 So that you can just kind of work at at a higher level

spk_0 Okay, there's a bunch there. That was really good. So I think to be clear. This is all a bit

spk_0 How do you like recursive fractal? I so the operating system is doing kind of what you're saying

spk_0 So it has a scheduler modern commuters normally like a preemptive like scheduler which means exactly that you have some thread running

spk_0 That gets stucker is not or is laps its time and the operating system will like suspend it and run a different thread in order to like time share

spk_0 Um and and sort of hopefully some of them are just doing like busy loops polling for something and you're getting a win

spk_0 but there is like some

spk_0 Like you're it's not magic. None of this stuff is magic. So everyone who always it's kind of one of those two sides of the coin

spk_0 In some cases it sure seems like magic

spk_0 But in other cases you're like I don't get it. It like there's still only one CPU and yeah, you're right

spk_0 There is really only one CPU

spk_0 So in like your database example

spk_0 It let's say you have sort of like the database is local on disk and you really are kind of bottled like let's say you're already maxing out the like hard drive ram transmit speed from your CPU

spk_0 Whether you have one eight nine ten a hundred like database jobs queued up

spk_0 You're not gaining any more throughput by like

spk_0 Knowing that you have a hundred jobs or knowing that you have eight jobs like there's nothing more to do

spk_0 Mm-hmm the trick comes in that that isn't

spk_0 Normally the case. It's not that every job coming in needs the database some jobs

spk_0 You will already have a cached answer

spk_0 It just wants to say what is the list in your example of like you know registration?

spk_0 It's like what is the list of all classes?

spk_0 Well, you could have numinized you could have cached that like you know the list from five seconds ago of all possible classes

spk_0 You don't know their current state

spk_0 But you know all the things and so some requests can be quickly turned back around so that the server feels more responsive

spk_0 And so while you're waiting on the hard drive ram to transmit database responses

spk_0 You're sort of getting these things back and the question

spk_0 It comes a little bit on like the scale. Are you running?

spk_0 Are you the only thing running in the operating system or are other things running?

spk_0 Are do you have other threads running? Do you have like

spk_0 There is still a sort of like fundamental limit to how much stuff can happen and going to an asynchronous solution isn't to cure all

spk_0 But it is one of these cases as you're you're pointing out often

spk_0 We can know more about the problem than the generic operating system solution would give you and so letting eight OS threads handle something

spk_0 Isn't going to be optimal if we know that the work is very heterogeneous because if we are having

spk_0 One in ten come in that needs a database

spk_0 But it takes a long time to get a database response

spk_0 Then as soon as you have the few queued up everybody else even that doesn't need the database is stuck waiting

spk_0 If you sort of have this sort of asynchronous thing that you're mentioning

spk_0 You can just burn through the entire queue of everybody who doesn't need the database

spk_0 People who need the database may still get a failure

spk_0 Right like you know they may still have a timeout but overall your metrics are better

spk_0 The responsiveness feels better and you're you can kind of guarantee your maximizing the proper throughput

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean this is also like

spk_0 There's a dynamic app player which is like throughput versus latency. So imagine oh, yeah, okay good

spk_0 Yeah, like imagine like the connection imagine like the database is like a giant sewer pipe

spk_0 But the water can only go you know one meter a second and so

spk_0 You know you you could put like a ton of

spk_0 Of water through but it can only go throughout a certain rate

spk_0 And so that's where yeah having like a zillion connections the database actually a little better because you're just hiding all of that latency

spk_0 But but you're right you with asynchronous programming you do run into a lot of problems

spk_0 around

spk_0 You know now you can do a thousand things

spk_0 But that also means that

spk_0 Potentially there's a thousand things that are in a bad state or or if there's a bottle neck further down in the chain

spk_0 Then now all those thousand things are sort of fighting for

spk_0 For resources. So even in asynchronous solutions like if you look at um uh fast API for example

spk_0 Even though it's asynchronous and you could handle a thousand requests on one thread if you wanted to

spk_0 Even there you would specify a limit. So you typically would say something like

spk_0 If I have I'm just going to make up a number if I have 32

spk_0 requests simultaneously on this machine and a 33rd comes in I'm just going to reject it and return a HTTP 503

spk_0 And then my client will call again and hopefully get a different machine because

spk_0 Even though the machine might not even be very busy

spk_0 You just don't want to be in a weird situation where

spk_0 There's a thousand things that aren't getting done

spk_0 Because that's usually a sign that something else is wrong. So so asynchronous to your point it's not a free lunch like you do have to

spk_0 You know now that you've been given this power you do a fuser responsibly

spk_0 Yeah, you bring up a good thing those like an interplay here we didn't have an in notes but like

spk_0 Q management and there's like stacked up cues everywhere

spk_0 So as you're going to mention you're going to have like a load balancer and the load balancer will have like a little bit of a cue

spk_0 It's sending stuff if you just consume a thousand things even though you can't handle them

spk_0 Some other server may have finished everything it's doing and you're just like holding those thousand waiting for

spk_0 expiration basically and

spk_0 In reality, I just said if you returned an error code after a certain amount it'll just run back to the load balancer

spk_0 and hopefully get assigned to a machine

spk_0 That like isn't having an issue or isn't overloaded or whatever and those have their own cues

spk_0 So there's like this very interesting whole system dynamic the other thing about asynchronous program although it is like

spk_0 Important to know about and be aware of is you do have to just like multi-threading you do have to be concerned about

spk_0 Like race conditions datey data safety issues depending on what all is happening, right?

spk_0 So you can imagine I send a network request and then I have an update from the user or I want to do something different

spk_0 I've changed my state

spk_0 I send the new networking request that I kind of want to supersede

spk_0 But the old one comes back and I think it's an answer to you know

spk_0 I mean like you have to manage that wait a minute like I have to be really careful

spk_0 I'm doing more than one thing at a time and so you can end up with all of the traditional

spk_0 Things you would hear about related to sort of thread safety being careful making sure that you know

spk_0 You're aware of whether the data structures like cues and other things you're using are multi-thread safe

spk_0 Even if you're only doing async stuff because you can end up in these weird situations where out of sequence stuff is occurring or overrides or

spk_0 You just can be aware that

spk_0 It does add a lot more complexity to the system

spk_0 But there is a lot of gains to be made in in many situations

spk_0 Yeah, totally and this is really what separates

spk_0 Kind of like masters of their craft from apprentices

spk_0 You know, it's like all of the lessons learned

spk_0 Around oh, you know, we got burned this way or that way or we

spk_0 You know the database kind of like fell over because we weren't monitoring it and what it really comes down to

spk_0 um

spk_0 is

spk_0 Just setting up a ton of monitoring

spk_0 and constantly tweaking the knobs, you know, it's if if um

spk_0 If the machine is like mostly idle

spk_0 Then maybe you can handle more processes, but um you have processes are getting backed up. Why are they getting backed up?

spk_0 And so there isn't a

spk_0 Like a there isn't a system you're going to build

spk_0 That that has concurrency that's going to work perfectly for the first time and forever

spk_0 You know as as the load profile of changes

spk_0 Um, you'll have to adapt to it and it becomes kind of a living system

spk_0 Um, this is this is pretty unavoidable. So async, you know helps with

spk_0 you know

spk_0 All of the mistakes that come from multi-process, you know async, you know, you can eliminate a lot of those as

spk_0 As candidates like if we were doing our if we were basically building async ourselves

spk_0 We'd have to wonder oh did I get the process pool correctly? Am I

spk_0 releasing the semifore at the right time and so because of async you don't have to worry about that

spk_0 But the consequences you still have to deal with

spk_0 You bring about a really a point actually. I think if you're going to go to this

spk_0 Approach so there are some like UI frameworks. I feel are much more

spk_0 commonly written in an async at the framework level

spk_0 Because you want to make sure that the user interface stays responsive

spk_0 So you shouldn't ever do anything blocking and so they're actually really set up from the start to

spk_0 be asynchronous

spk_0 But people who write that well, I should say a lot of people I work don't write you guys

spk_0 They're not actually even familiar with that as you pointed out if you ask them about it

spk_0 They wouldn't really be aware of like the nuances of these tradeoffs and the decisions and the complexities and

spk_0 measuring and all of the parameter like having reasonable parameters and monitoring whether or not like they're set well

spk_0 Would just be stuff not present so it is really weird like on the one hand

spk_0 It's common enough that you would sort of say like it's in every UI framework to have like asynchronous stuff

spk_0 What do you mean like people don't know what it is?

spk_0 But it's like this very weird division of practitioners where sort of like I think there are a whole classes of people who go a very long career without really getting into any of it

spk_0 Yeah, yeah totally

spk_0 Which is why you need to subscribe to programming throwdown

spk_0 It's a perfect segue

spk_0 To to our outro. I mean we you know, I feel like we gave a pretty good background

spk_0 um

spk_0 I think you know the sort of maybe the call to action here is really learn async programming. I mean if you

spk_0 um if you're doing UI stuff you pretty much have to I think it's at the point now where

spk_0 I think android and iOS if you try to do a network request on the main thread it'll just like give you a error like a run time error

spk_0 um

spk_0 It just literally will not let you use the main thread to do non blocking stuff

spk_0 Um, so it's a non starter

spk_0 But but even if you're doing anything with distributed anything with queue processing

spk_0 You'll have to you'll encounter this in some way shape or form so so if this is all new definitely dive in

spk_0 This is an area that's worth learning um, I think with

spk_0 with um

spk_0 You know, I think with AI and agents and and all of these things it's going to become even more important

spk_0 You know an agent might

spk_0 Send a text message and wait to get a response from somebody

spk_0 And it can't just block the machine while it's doing that right you want you want to run like 10 000 agents on one machine

spk_0 So uh so super important area um, I think that

spk_0 Um, it's definitely something it's worth researching and

spk_0 um

spk_0 If you have any questions you could always go on discord the discord channel is is uh hitting more engagement

spk_0 I always try to reply to uh to stuff on there um to check us out on discord so just an email and

spk_0 Is a great cover in this

spk_0 Yep, thank you everyone all right catch you all later

spk_0 you

spk_0 Music by Eric barn dollar

spk_0 Programming throwdown is distributed under a creative commons attribution share alike 2.0 license

spk_0 You're free to share copy distribute transmit the work to remix adapt the work

spk_0 But you must provide a attribution

spk_0 uh to uh Patrick and I and uh share alike in kind

184: Asynchronous Programming

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