Experimenting with fine-tuning a local LLM to emulate 80s and 90s technical writing style

Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti

19d ago· 11 min readenInsight

technology programming technical writing ai & machine learning

Summary

The article discusses the author's experiment with fine-tuning a local LLM (instruct model) to write technical documentation in the style of a software technical writer from the 1980s and 1990s. The author explores the concept of "local first" specialized LLMs for tech writers, contrasting them with more powerful connected frontier models. The piece details the process of gathering old tech writing lore, preparing training data, and fine-tuning the model to emulate the distinctive style and terminology of retro technical documentation.

Source

Hacker NewsExperimenting with fine-tuning a local LLM to emulate 80s and 90s technical writing stylepasso.uno

Key quotes

· 3 pulled

In my predictions for 2030 I wrote that tech writers would be using specialized LLMs, running locally on powerful hardware.

I see hints of this move to 'local first' among engineering pundits, but we're not there yet, in part because of how much more powerful connected frontier models are.

That doesn't mean we can't experiment, though. That's precisely what I did last week, trying to fine-tune an instruct model to write like a software technical writer from the 80s and 90s.

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In my predictions for 2030 I wrote that tech writers would be using specialized LLMs, running locally on powerful hardware. I see hints of this move to “local first” among engineering pundits, but we’re not there yet, in part because of how much more powe

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