Hi, I’m Xianmin, 33 years old, a programmer living in the countryside, unemployed for two years.

This Week’s Self-Help Actions

Last weekend, I took on a writing job for an academic paper about machine learning.
I don’t know much about machine learning, but I can write some Python.
With AI assistance available, I boldly accepted the project.
Looking back now, it was a bit presumptuous.

I spent four full days coding. During the first two days with little progress, I almost gave up.
On the third day, things started moving forward, but hardware limitations and AI debugging loops became challenging.
The main issue was my lack of understanding. When asking AI for explanations, I could read every word but couldn’t grasp why things were done certain ways.
I didn’t have time to study the fundamentals, so I had to push through with countless new AI conversations and experiments.
The most troublesome part was the loss of context - I had to keep summarizing our previous progress for the AI.
Nevertheless, I managed to achieve the experimental objectives, with only one day left before the client’s deadline.
On the final day, I hurriedly produced a paper of nearly 20,000 words, of course, with AI assistance.

When I submitted the work, I felt completely drained of energy for the entire week.
This was my first time writing an academic paper and my first time coding for machine learning.
This job wasn’t just stepping out of my comfort zone - it was like rolling in uncomfortable darkness.
Although I’m not entirely satisfied with the quality of the paper and code, at least I delivered something to the client.
This money wasn’t easy to earn!

In retrospect, for a professional, this would have been a two-day job.
One day for coding, one day for writing - equivalent to 500 per day, making it somewhat feasible.
My main challenge was being completely unfamiliar with machine learning, which requires time to learn.
I estimate it would take two weeks to grasp the basic knowledge.
But I’m unsure what else I could do with machine learning knowledge besides writing papers.

This Week’s Income

  1. Completed 2 small orders +110 yuan;

Closing Words

  1. Have you had experience in tutoring academic paper writing?
  2. Do you think machine learning is worth investing time to learn?

If you have any thoughts about a middle-aged unemployed programmer’s self-help journey, please leave a comment. Thank you! 🙏