Metrowest Boston Developers Machine Learning Group

Over the holidays I was pretty close to relaunching this meetup- and then I read the following post by Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI, Tesla) - which exactly summed up the way I was feeling...

"I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind." - A (Original X post here: Karpathy)

So, yes, we are back. I have booked three dates from 7pm-9pm (Thursday):

• January 15th
• February 5th
• February 26th

We started back in 2017- you can find about 100 hours of presentation materials in our repo:
Metrowest Boston Developers Machine Learning Group · GitHub

I envision these meetings to be a little different. In the past I would usually prepare and present two hours of content. I don't have the time to do that right now. These meetings will focus on discussing the LLM tools, processes, workflows, agents, IDE's (per the post above) that you use and sharing that knowledge with the group.

I'm on the fence as to whether the meeting will be available through Zoom. (let me know your thoughts)

I need your feedback- let me know your thoughts regarding this re-launch.

We will be back at Plymouth Church in Framingham. Drive around to the back- I will post signs to locate the entrance and where to go once in the building.

Happy 2026!

-Gene
Yes, I will still provide donuts and coffee.

Over the holidays I was pretty close to relaunching this meetup- and then I read the following post by Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI, Tesla) - which exactly summed up the way I was feeling...

"I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind." - A (Original X post here: Karpathy)

So, yes, we are back. I have booked three dates from 7pm-9pm (Thursday):

• January 15th
• February 5th
• February 26th

We started back in 2017- you can find about 100 hours of presentation materials in our repo:
Metrowest Boston Developers Machine Learning Group · GitHub

I envision these meetings to be a little different. In the past I would usually prepare and present two hours of content. I don't have the time to do that right now. These meetings will focus on discussing the LLM tools, processes, workflows, agents, IDE's (per the post above) that you use and sharing that knowledge with the group.

I'm on the fence as to whether the meeting will be available through Zoom. (let me know your thoughts)

I need your feedback- let me know your thoughts regarding this re-launch.

We will be back at Plymouth Church in Framingham. Drive around to the back- I will post signs to locate the entrance and where to go once in the building.

Happy 2026!

-Gene
Yes, I will still provide donuts and coffee.

Over the holidays I was pretty close to relaunching this meetup- and then I read the following post by Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI, Tesla) - which exactly summed up the way I was feeling...

"I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind." - A (Original X post here: Karpathy)

So, yes, we are back. I have booked three dates from 7pm-9pm (Thursday):

• January 15th
• February 5th
• February 26th

We started back in 2017- you can find about 100 hours of presentation materials in our repo:
Metrowest Boston Developers Machine Learning Group · GitHub

I envision these meetings to be a little different. In the past I would usually prepare and present two hours of content. I don't have the time to do that right now. These meetings will focus on discussing the LLM tools, processes, workflows, agents, IDE's (per the post above) that you use and sharing that knowledge with the group.

I'm on the fence as to whether the meeting will be available through Zoom. (let me know your thoughts)

I need your feedback- let me know your thoughts regarding this re-launch.

We will be back at Plymouth Church in Framingham. Drive around to the back- I will post signs to locate the entrance and where to go once in the building.

Happy 2026!

-Gene
Yes, I will still provide donuts and coffee.