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My Podcast Journey In this era of information explosion, efficiently acquiring knowledge and continuous learning has become an important topic. This article shares my experience of using podcasts for English learning and expanding my technical horizons, hoping to provide some reference for friends who want to try listening to podcasts. Background: Loads of Free Time Brought by the Pandemic The 2020 pandemic changed the way many people work, with remote and hybrid work models becoming mainstream. This change brought more free time at home and during commutes. Facing the uncertainty of China’s socio-economic prospects, I decided to use this time to improve my competitiveness, especially in English language skills. ...

Introduction For typical LLM interactions, a single prompt or a few rounds of chat are sufficient to achieve the desired result. However, some tasks require the LLM to access information beyond its internal knowledge base. For example, retrieving today’s weather information for a specific city or searching for a particular anime necessitates calling external functions. What is Function Calling? Function calling in LLMs empowers the models to generate JSON objects that trigger external functions within your code. This capability enables LLMs to connect with external tools and APIs, expanding their ability to perform diverse tasks. ...

Mastering the Art of LLM Prompts Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and Claude possess remarkable capabilities. However, unlocking their full potential requires effective communication through well-crafted prompts. This guide delves into the art of prompt engineering, offering a step-by-step approach – from fundamental principles to advanced techniques – to harness the true power of LLMs. Step 1: Choosing the Optimal Model Latest and Greatest: Newer models like GPT-4 Turbo offer significant advantages over predecessors like GPT-3.5 Turbo, including smoother natural language understanding. For simpler tasks, extensive prompt engineering may be less crucial. ...

Always Abandoning English Vocabulary? Learning from Duolingo 🦉 to Let Words Remind You Memorizing vocabulary is inevitable in learning English. From primary school to graduate school, and even in some jobs, you need to remember words. But gnawing on vocabulary books or rigidly memorizing on a phone is extremely inefficient. Now that LLMs are so popular, why not use them? After all, the ‘L’ in LLM stands for Language. LLMs might lack precision in other rigorous tasks, but languages like English are their forte. If technology can solve a problem, don’t trouble yourself! This article shares how to use the Eudic Dictionary API, an LLM, and a Telegram Bot to create an English vocabulary learning assistant, making vocabulary memorization less painful. Of course, you might find it annoying after a few days, as the inspiration comes from the Duolingo App 🦉. ...

Traefik is a widely adopted open-source HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that simplifies the routing and load balancing of requests for modern web applications. It boasts dynamic configuration capabilities and supports a multitude of providers, positioning itself as a versatile solution for orchestrating complex deployment scenarios. In this blog post, we will delve into the architecture of Traefik and dissect the key components of its source code to furnish a more nuanced understanding of its operational mechanics. ...

Introduction In the age of real-time interactivity where services like ChatGPT excel, it’s crucial for developers to leverage technologies that allow for seamless data streaming in their applications. This article will delve into the world of HTML5 Server-Sent Events (SSE), a powerful tool akin to the technology behind conversational AI interfaces. Similar to how ChatGPT streams data to provide instant responses, SSE enables web browsers to receive updates from a server without the need for repetitive client-side requests. Whether you’re building a chat application, a live notification system, or any service requiring real-time data flow, this guide will equip you with the knowledge to implement SSE efficiently in your applications, ensuring a responsive and engaging user experience. ...

Introduction Basic Process Choose a project Encountered in work Daily use Familiar with the tech stack used by the project … Identify a problem Code Spelling Documentation Tests … Fork Modify Code Tests Comments Documentation Sign contributor agreement CLA DCO Submit pull request CI Review Merge Follow-up Close issue Wait for release Continuous contribution to become a maintainer General Principles How to Be a Qualified Open Source Project Contributor Identify your skills and tech stack, and choose a matching open source project. Understand the code structure, functions, and specifications of the open source project, and read its contribution guidelines. Various types of contributions are welcome, such as fixing bugs, adding features, writing documentation, tests, etc. Start with small changes, such as modifying documentation, spelling, adding test code, fixing bugs with a small scope. Core process: Create and submit a pull request (PR), and wait for reviews and feedback from other contributors. Maintain good communication and collaboration with other contributors. Follow the open source project’s code of conduct. How Non-Native English Speakers Can Participate Better Improve English proficiency, especially reading and writing skills, to better understand project requirements, documentation, and code, and to clearly express ideas and suggestions. Choose open source projects with active communities and friendly atmospheres to get more help and support, and learn from other contributors’ experiences. Follow the open source project’s contribution process, such as fork, clone, branch, commit, push, and pull request, and abide by the project’s coding style and specifications. When submitting issues or PRs, try to use simple and clear English to describe the problem or feature, and attach relevant screenshots or code snippets. When communicating with other contributors, be polite and respectful, don’t be afraid to ask or answer questions, and respond to their reviews and feedback in a timely manner. If unsure about certain English words or expressions, use dictionaries, translation tools, or grammar checkers to assist communication. How to Get Open Source Project Maintainers to Quickly Review Your PR Follow project guidelines: Before submitting a pull request, be sure to check and follow the project’s contribution guidelines. Ensure the request meets the project’s specifications and standards. Ensure consistent code style: Follow the project’s code style and formatting requirements to reduce the amount of code that maintainers need to modify during review. Provide detailed description: When submitting a pull request, ensure you provide a sufficiently detailed description explaining how the modification solves the problem or improves the project. Provide test cases: Try to ensure that new code is covered. Some projects check unit test coverage and covered lines. Reply to comments promptly: Once your pull request is reviewed, reply to the maintainer’s comments as quickly as possible and consider the opinions and suggestions discussed. Github Flow ...

Introduction Definition According to Wikipedia: Structured concurrency is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by using a structured approach to concurrent programming. The core concept is the encapsulation of concurrent threads of execution (here encompassing kernel and userland threads and processes) by way of control flow constructs that have clear entry and exit points and that ensure all spawned threads have completed before exit. Such encapsulation allows errors in concurrent threads to be propagated to the control structure’s parent scope and managed by the native error handling mechanisms of each particular computer language. It allows control flow to remain readily evident by the structure of the source code despite the presence of concurrency. To be effective, this model must be applied consistently throughout all levels of the program – otherwise concurrent threads may leak out, become orphaned, or fail to have runtime errors correctly propagated. ...

What are Generics? Generic programming is a style or paradigm of computer programming. Generics allow programmers to write code using types that are specified later, which are then instantiated when the code is used. Basic Usage of Generics in Golang Examples Map Operation package main import ( "fmt" ) func mapFunc[T any, M any](a []T, f func(T) M) []M { n := make([]M, len(a), cap(a)) for i, e := range a { n[i] = f(e) } return n } func main() { vi := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} vs := mapFunc(vi, func(v int) string { return "<" + fmt.Sprint(v * v) + ">" }) fmt.Println(vs) } Min Max Functions ...

Introduction to gRPC-Gateway gRPC-Gateway is a plugin for protoc. It works by reading a gRPC service definition and generating a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful JSON API into gRPC. This server is generated according to the custom options in your gRPC definition. Installation and Usage Dependencies Tool Introduction Installation protobuf Command line tool for protocol buffer compilation http://google.github.io/proto-lens/installing-protoc.html protoc-gen-go Generates .go files from proto files https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/ protoc-gen-go-grpc Generates gRPC related .go files from proto files https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/ protoc-gen-grpc-gateway Generates gRPC-gateway related .go files from proto files https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway#installation protoc-gen-openapiv2 Generates parameter files required for Swagger documentation from proto files https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway#installation buf Protobuf management tool, optional, simplifies command line operations and protobuf file management https://docs.buf.build/installation Steps Write buf configuration buf.gen.yaml ...

Concurrency in Python In Python, early concurrency methods were dominated by traditional multi-processing and multi-threading, similar to Java. At the same time, there were many third-party asynchronous solutions (gevent/tornado/twisted, etc.). In the Python 3 era, the official asyncio library and async/await syntax were introduced as Python’s official coroutine implementation, which gradually became popular. Processes Example of multi-processing programming: from multiprocessing import Process def f(name): print('hello', name) if __name__ == '__main__': p = Process(target=f, args=('bob',)) p.start() p.join() The API of multiprocessing is close to threading, making it relatively easy to create multi-process programs. It is a solution recommended by Python officially to bypass the GIL restriction of multi-threading. However, it should be noted that the parameters for creating a process need to be pickle-serializable. It is best to use process-safe data structures like Pipe and Queue (Official Programming guidelines). ...

2. Abstractions at Different Levels System Model Programs in distributed systems: Run concurrently on independent nodes Communicate via network connections that may introduce uncertainty and message loss Have no shared memory or shared clock The system model enumerates many assumptions related to specific system designs, covering the environment and facilities where the distributed system is implemented: What capabilities nodes have and how they fail How communication links operate and how they might fail Properties of the overall system, such as assumptions about time and order A robust system model makes the weakest assumptions, while strong assumptions create system models that are easier to reason about. ...

0. Preface “Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit” is a booklet introducing distributed systems freely published online by mixu in 2013. Two outcomes of distribution: Information travels at the speed of light Independent nodes fail independently Distributed systems deal with the problems of distance and multiple nodes. 1. Distributed Systems at a High Level Basic tasks of a computer: Storage Computation Distributed programming is using multiple machines to solve the same problem as on a single machine, usually because the problem has outgrown the capacity of a single machine. ...

When Do You Need to Compile CPython Yourself? Most operating systems provide compiled CPython versions. Generally, installing through a package manager is sufficient. However, in some cases, you need to compile CPython yourself to meet specific requirements: The Python version provided by the OS is too old, and the Python official website or system package repositories do not provide pre-compiled new versions of Python. Pre-compiled versions do not meet performance or extension requirements, for example, compiler optimizations are not enabled, or OpenSSL/SQLite versions do not meet requirements. ...