I got the chance to try Langchain as part of a hiring process. I was already having my eye on it for a personal projects though.
The moment I tried it and went through the docs, the entire abstraction feels weird for me. I know a bit here and there about LLM, but Langchain make me feels like Im learning something entirely new.
How agent and tools work and how to write one wasnt straightforward from the docs, and the idea of having an AI attach itself to an eval or writing its own error/hallucination-prone API request based on a docs doesnt give me a lot of confidence.
The hiring assignment specifically mentioned to use Langchain thought, so I did. But just as a glorified abstraction to call GPT and parses the NL output as JSON.
I did the actual API call, post-processing, etc. manually. Which I have granular control over it. Also cheaper in terms of token usages. You could say I ended writing my own agent/tool that doesnt exactly match Langchain specifications but it works.
I guess Langchain had its use case. But it feels pretty weird to use for me.
Resume: I am a tech-agnostic fullstack developer that has helped a lot of startups and individuals build products. I am a fast learner and has worked in various industries such as finance, tax, government, entertainment, developer tools, and more. Currently freelancing at Toptal. See more information at https://linkedin.com/in/adityapurwa
I built https://playtune.app to have rhythm game with unlimited musics because it uses YouTube as the music playback provider. I play it often with my daughter.
I consider removing the restart feature (or maybe just for her) because she kept restarting whenever she missed just a single note
1. They probably get their fasting rewards if they do bad things at night, but they still got sins from doing that bad things at night. Its just that if you do it during the day it invalidates your fasting rewards and all you get is hunger and thirst.
2. Dinner party is a cultural thing, because we didn’t eat during the day and we have the same time to break fast, it became a party because everyone do it at the same time and usually at the same place. But the day of breaking fast (the Eid Iftar), you are supposed to eat in the morning to declare that Ramadan has ended and you can continue eat at day.
3. Another cultural things. Here, it happens few days before the end of Ramadan. The government mandates company to pay bonus during religious celebrations (christmas for christians, eid iftar for moslem, chinese new year for chinese, etc).
Even deeper, the essence of Ramadan is to not eat and drink while you need it the most, during the day, where you work and get tired.
It resonates with the feeling of holding your anger even when you have the rights to be angry. Holding your arrogance when faced against someone who had less money, fame, etc, than you.
And Ramadan fasting is more than just not eating and drinking. You are not allowed to lie, to be angry, to speaks foul/dirty.
A study on judicial rulings show a link between rulings and the time they have been issued between food breaks [1]. It appears that the more hungry the judges are, the less they show clemency.
Similarly, living in a Mulsim country, I have not observed the virtues that supposedly stem from religious fasting.
I mean its still our choices whether to fast and hold our urge to eat even when we needed it the most (hot day, tired).
The same that its our choices whether to hold our anger and resolve things peacefully and objectively (someone messed up at work, we have the power to blame and fire them).
Ramadan fasting is just a part of islamic practice, just doing Ramadan fasting might not give any virtues. But Islam also teaches to treat everyone objectively, be patient, hold anger, etc.
One of my latest worst experience dealing with something like this was when renewing my driver license. Dealing with bureaucracy is exhausting enough and after filling the forms in the app they gave me a giant 404 screen.
I was frustrated until I carefully read the error message.
I made something similar during Covid to help people cope, but it was specific for people who played Sky: Children of The Light game. The game launched right before Covid hit us and it helped people to went through the isolation.
https://thatskywish.netlify.app if you wanted to give it a try. It follows the same principle that allows people to leave message for a friend anonymously.
Thank you for mentioning this. I moderate the content of this site once per week so there might be some message that temporarily pass through or I missed. I have removed some of the harmful messages.
I built Playtune https://playtune.app - a web game where you can turn any YouTube videos into a rhythm game. It comes from a frustation from playing rhythm game but they have limited song catalog. Playtune literally have millions of song that you can play. Any song that is uploaded to YouTube can be played as long as it allow embedding. You can even make a rhythm game out of five minute craft videos if you want or linus tech tips.
In Islam, the bank has to own the house 100% if they want to sell it. You are not allowed to sell item that isn’t yours in Islam. If the bank purchased the house via leasing and that it isn’t 100% owned by them, they are not allowed to sell it to anyone at all. You can not sell loan for loan in Islam.
It is similar to a seller buying some cars for $10k each, and sell them on their dealership for $15k each. They can provide installment payment for the buyer and sell it for $20k each and they can pay it per month for $500. The difference between price is not loan/interest, its their profits.
The bank does own own the house 100% in this case ... The distinction between profit calculated on de amount and duration of a loan and interest is the difference between 4 and IV. It’s the same amount, with the same reasoning behind it. It’s interest.
> 2) if you fail to pay, the property is in the hands of the "not-" bank that will kick you out, you will STILL owe them, generally more money than was to be repaid for you to get the property
3) if the bank gets into financial trouble you will lose your house
4) there are none of the normal protections (such as maximum interest rates, limits on administrative fees, ... and technically 2) is also an example of lack of protections)
Then I assume 2 would no longer be a risk? Bank owned the property, if you failed to pay bank will sold it to someone else who can pay, bank will then return your money if it sold higher than the set price.
Point is 3 is a weak contract issue, when you made the purchase, the contract should be clear that bank can not seize the house unless you failed to pay. If the contract says bank can cancel the transaction however they want or whenever they have issue, no one would want to do business with them. Imagine accepting a project but we put the terms, we can cancel the project and not return your money if we have issues with it.
Again 4 is also a contract issue, we have to draft the contract to make it feasible for both parties. It is basically an installment, you buy $100k house for $100/month. That’s it, the values are clear, the monthly payment will not go higher or lower, you can even pay the remaining directly with hard cash on the next month if you want.
Look if you think this is a good deal, people do the exact same deal in the US. They sell them, generally, to people in trailor parks. It's called "buy and lease back". Go ahead, it's certainly not hard to do.
A lot of states are working to outlaw these deals, because for these reasons and others they are considered abusive.
I am just trying to explain that profits in Islam are different from interest as you mentioned. If you want to learn more, I suggest you find an islamic scholar who had expertise on this field, they have better understanding on the law. It would result in misunderstanding if you tried to applied your terms / perspective without knowing the details of the law.
Well, I'm trying to explain that they are different in label only, and people are trying to use the different labels to force abusive loan conditions that you should never accept on unsuspecting people.
Stay very, very far away from these types of loans is the best financial advice here.
And, come on man, really, is it that amazing that financial advice from 1500 years ago is a little bit out of date ? Yes, the Jewish and Roman empires experimented a lot with interest rules and had some very bad experiences doing that, especially in the provinces, so yes, they considered it evil at the time Islam was created. Great. They also considered straight lines evil for a thousand years (not joking about the straight lines) ... And while both pieces of advice have some validity to them, they should be reevaluated when practical.
The moment I tried it and went through the docs, the entire abstraction feels weird for me. I know a bit here and there about LLM, but Langchain make me feels like Im learning something entirely new.
How agent and tools work and how to write one wasnt straightforward from the docs, and the idea of having an AI attach itself to an eval or writing its own error/hallucination-prone API request based on a docs doesnt give me a lot of confidence.
The hiring assignment specifically mentioned to use Langchain thought, so I did. But just as a glorified abstraction to call GPT and parses the NL output as JSON.
I did the actual API call, post-processing, etc. manually. Which I have granular control over it. Also cheaper in terms of token usages. You could say I ended writing my own agent/tool that doesnt exactly match Langchain specifications but it works.
I guess Langchain had its use case. But it feels pretty weird to use for me.