Read more papers. That's my biggest lesson from college and it took a few decades to sink in: Papers are your best source of distilled knowledge.
Back in college we had this gnarly information and queuing theory class. I kept banging my head against that exam for 2 years and couldn't pass.
Then I said fuck it, ignored all the textbooks and the lesson notes and the professor, and read Claude Shannon's original paper. My friend, A Mathematical Theory of Communication is one of the best papers I have ever read.
That paper made me realize my professor's entire class was based on 1 formula. Everything else derives from that in different situations. That's it. Memorize one formula and you can pass the class.
Papers aren't just for college
In about 3 hours yesterday, I was able to catch up on the latest and greatest in agentic development and build a mental framework for where there be dragons by reading a few papers.
No lengthy youtube tutorials. No scattered documentation. No frantic scrolling through twitter or tiktok. Just a calm afternoon on the patio reading a few papers.
Yes the wall behind me is not great. I wasn't looking at that and it belongs to neighbors so nothing we can do.
tldr on agents: Basic loop has been the same since the simulacra paper in 2023. Current hard parts are feedback loops, memory, retrieval, and tool building.
More on agents for another day. Need to do some experiments and play around. My e2e-testing experiment from January was technically an agent solving ambiguous goals. Same loop.
When papers won't do
Papers don't work in every situation though.
Nothing beats in person conversation with experts when you need info that's going to be in papers 6 months from now. Go to meetups, visit conferences, hang out in chatrooms with other experts.
This feels like a waste of time. No one event or chat will bear fruit. But you're staying informed about the adjacent possible.
Nothing beats a book when you need to catch up on decades of research or enter a new field. Find a book that cites its sources, the more the better.
Cheers,
~Swizec
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