Launching refreshed version of LLM Engineering weeks 1-4 - see README

guides/04_technical_foundations.ipynb

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+{
+ "cells": [
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Technical Foundations\n",
+    "\n",
+    "It's crucial that you feel comfortable with the basic technical concepts that we work with. This will make your experience of the entire course so much better - it can be very frustrating if you're not sure what's gong on.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "These guides should build confidence in the underlying technologies we work with."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 1: ChatGPT versus OpenAI API\n",
+    "\n",
+    "### What’s the difference between ChatGPT and the GPT API, both offered by OpenAI?\n",
+    "\n",
+    "#### ChatGPT is an end-user tool. It’s a Chat product designed for consumers who are AI users.\n",
+    "- It has a free plan, and it also has paid subscription plans with more features.\n",
+    "- The subscription plans give the user near-unlimited access to use the Chat product.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "#### The API is a service provided for AI engineers - software engineers and data scientists - working on other commercial products.\n",
+    "- It allows technical people, like you and me, to access the underlying models (like “GPT4.1” and “o3”) so that we can build our own products.\n",
+    "- If we wanted to, we could build our own version of ChatGPT using the API, and charge our end-users for it.\n",
+    "- Like most APIs, OpenAI charges a small amount based on API usage. For most examples on the course using gpt-4o-mini, it’s of the order of $0.001 per API call.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "### I’m paying $20/month for ChatGPT - why do I need to pay more for the API?\n",
+    "\n",
+    "- Hopefully this is now clear. The API is not for consumers; it’s for engineers to build their own platforms that they can charge for.\n",
+    "- If you were to have access to the API based on your subscription, then you could offer ChatGPT tools to others at a cheaper price, and put OpenAI out of business!\n",
+    "- Keep in mind: each API call may require 10,000,000,000,000 floating point calculations - that compute uses electricity!\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Instead of calling the API, you can run open source models locally, but typically they have 1,000 times fewer calculations — and even though it’s tiny, that processing still hits your electricity bill.."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 2: Taking a Screenshot\n",
+    "\n",
+    "You may already be familiar with \"taking a screenshot\" on your computer, but if not (or if you think this means taking a photo with your camera..), please review this tutorial:\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/681f691b-6644-8012-b07d-207c68f259d5"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 3: Environment Variables and the `.env` file\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This tutorial walks you through everything you need to know about .env files!\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Obiously you don't need to add the .env file to .gitignore, as I've already done that for you. But it hopefully explains the point well.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/68061e89-dd84-8012-829d-9f4506c7baaa"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 4: Networking basics\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This tutorial covers networking and typical issues with certificates, VPNs, DNS and the like.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "The sections give a summary; you should ask ChatGPT to expand on any section if it's relevant to your situation.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/680620ec-3b30-8012-8c26-ca86693d0e3d\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This is a more in-depth guide to tackling SSL / certificate issues, which is common in corporate environments:\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/68c2efc4-0280-8012-933b-5e89d7db6b58"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 5: APIs and Client Libraries - foundational briefing\n",
+    "\n",
+    "We use APIs a lot in this course!\n",
+    "\n",
+    "It's essential to understand the fundamentals of what's going on when we make a call to an API, and to be comfortable with words like \"endpoint\" and \"client library\".\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Please review this guide:\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/68062432-43c8-8012-ad91-6311d4ad5858"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## Topic 6: uv, package management, environment management\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This lays out the Dependency Management situation and why we love uv! And a crash course in how to use it.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "https://chatgpt.com/share/68c34d46-18a0-8012-8d65-0a0cce615912\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Note that this guide suggests `uv run python xxx` which works fine, but simply `uv run xxx` works too and is more common."
+   ]
+  }
+ ],
+ "metadata": {
+  "language_info": {
+   "name": "python"
+  }
+ },
+ "nbformat": 4,
+ "nbformat_minor": 2
+}