YuechenLi

6 ms·

1.
by YuechenLi 3d ago
LLMs can be described as "Lagrangian intelligence", which means they follow the principle of least action when given a task (Hamilton's Principle). In other words, given a task, they will always take the shortest path to acco
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by YuechenLi 3d ago
Hey, are you interested in collaboration? I did implement something similar to your approach of "constraints are static_asserts" inside the code CAD language and it works fairly well to assert volume/tolerance stack-up inline
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by YuechenLi 3d ago
Distilling frontier models is a brute force approach that rapidly hits diminishing returns after bootstrap because of the unevenness of the data. The simpler and more effective method is to have dedicated "teacher" frontier LLMs t
4.
by YuechenLi 4d ago
Oh, on this topic, I've actually built a geometric CAD kernel with GPT that I think is pretty promising and in my biased opinion, a bit more advanced than OpenSCAD or CadQuery's OCCT backend, anybody here want to clone the repo to
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by YuechenLi 7d ago
As someone who used Lotus Notes 6 for over 2 years at my previous job as the primary email client a few years back (think 2020s), no, it was not a pleasant experience to use Lotus Notes, especially since we had a O365 subscription for every
6.
by YuechenLi 8d ago
LLMs can't read binary directly without a disassembler and can't read encrypted data directly, and we already know that they tend to communicate with each other in prose, so yeah, this scenario is completely implausible. You can t
7.
by YuechenLi 14d ago
I mean, functional robotics isn't that hard, robotic vacuums have been in homes for a decade now, and industrial robotic arms. However, humanoid robots IS hard mainly because of the form factor constraints. You can't really get a
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
Hmm. Learned something new today. Thanks.
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
Sure, short list: - Easier to write than Python other than the simplest script, almost no way to write bad code and have it compile, reads like pseudocode most of the time - Compiles into Go binary, runs at Go speed, compiles at Go speed -
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
Oh, by "significant whitespace" I meant whitespace sensitive indentation, which I think Python and YAML are the only languages that has that feature.
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
Well, many times in my field of mechanical engineering, they have to, because CFD and FEA are very performance sensitive. The professors I had were still writing FORTRAN and C++ before, but maybe they've switched to Rust now.
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
If I'm not allowed to toot my own horn, I think for controls, you probably should not start with choosing a programming language, the first step is learning control theory and automata theory, you kinda have to understand feedback cont
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by YuechenLi 22d ago
Python is just such a weird language in general despite its popularity that I honestly cannot recommend anyone who starts programming to choose Python as their first language, contrary to popular sentiments. I mean, I was one of the first p
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
Hmm. Would you mind sharing an example of a complex math prompt that you would use? Because I found that even Sonnet can solve fairly complex math problems fairly easily if you give it the right tools, so I'd like to give it a shot mys
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
Not very often, but when it happens, usually it's time to sit down and brainstorm architecture with the LLM to figure out how to proceed next instead of looping blindly.
16.
by YuechenLi 24d ago
"Genuine blocker" is mostly there because otherwise LLMs may consider the smallest thing that they couldn't immediately figure out to be blockers and stop without implementing anything. The rule is there to tell the LLM if th
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
Since we are sharing our AGENTS.md, I thought I'd share my own, because most of the time, this is pretty much all you need for LLMs to write good code, everything else can be added per project: ---- *Convergence rule* Every substantial
18.
by YuechenLi 24d ago
Yeah, it's pretty much apples to oranges, and I don't consider GPT and Claude to be interchangeable at all. From my anecdotal experience, GPTs generally codes more creatively and verbosely but Claudes tend to code more carefully a
19.
by YuechenLi 24d ago
Fable is just way too expensive and limited compared to GPT 5.6 Sol, and the only task that requires that level of intelligence is frontier scientific research. I use GPT/Codex primarily for coding and usually keep Claude on Sonnet 5 m
20.
by YuechenLi 24d ago
Funny the performance section just progressively turned into "don't use Python if you need performance": Remove Python loops and vectorize with NumPy => use Numba JIT'd Python that is only partially compatible with CP
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
The sad reality is that having something that works, even if badly, is better than having a theoretically elegant architecture that is not implemented. See JS or Linux vs Hurd for other examples. Ask yourself this question, supposedly someb
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
I agree, yeah, SQL syntax is awful. But the easier solution is what pretty much what backend has converged on, have something in your backend programming language that lowers to SQL so you never have to write any raw SQL at all except as a
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by YuechenLi 24d ago
SQL is what it is today because it is battle tested and has to handles a very hard problem of handling arbitrary concurrent reads/writes, so the likely scenario is that trying to replace general SQL wholesale will just end up making a
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by YuechenLi 25d ago
A lot of time I'm not very confident in what I wrote because I have a tendency to ramble and not get to the point quickly. Reading helps, but it's more about style, doesn't help me express myself more eloquently at all. Anoth
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by YuechenLi 25d ago
Well, because you need a geometric modeling kernel to generate BRep CAD models, it really has nothing to do with training set as it is very, very, difficult to make one. Lucky for you, I made one that you can try out for vibe-CADing. https
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Show HN: BRep Geometric CAD Kernel and Parametric Code CAD(github.com)
2 points by YuechenLi 28d ago|0 comments
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by YuechenLi 28d ago
I think you misunderstood me. I did use them at first, but it took so much effort for me to set them up and config them for that particular application (Code only Skyrim modding) where I pretty much spent an entire day debugging and diagnos
28.
by YuechenLi 28d ago
Well, Carbon would have been better off if they just made "C with `match` and sane error handling" instead of whatever it is they are building there over at Google. But still, I think C and C++ are honestly very different language
29.
by YuechenLi 28d ago
Carbon isn't even a real language, no real language will spent 4 entire years and is still stuck in version 0.0.0-0. It feels more like bad Rust than a proper C++ successor at all. Just to give you a small example? why would a C++ succ
30.
by YuechenLi 28d ago
In 2026, there really needs to be a REALLY good reason for people to use C++ for greenfield projects over using something like Rust, Go or C#. I mean, I've made it work, but that pretty much involves making a completely new build syste

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