Don't bite. You're right.

Having spent a good weekend learning how to perform latent-steering through playing with pytorch and a local Gemma4 model, there is no way I could have groked any of that in the the way I did without hands on time.

This is on an M3 Max 36GB I've had for a couple of years. No further outlay needed.

My thinking is totally aligned with yours, perhaps its because I am trying to do a second act at almost 50 from blue-collar to white collar office work. I have no formal degree, but I have been hobby programming for 20 years. I have made a habit of "letting myself be available to all lessons"... the localllama group has made this journey really fun if nothing else. I have learned an ABSOLUTE ton from this era!

I have been contemplating a move in the opposite direction because I have just been exhausted and depressed, so for me, really learning this stuff this way has been about managing those feelings, about a sense of pride and ownership of my processes.

I don't know if it has changed my mind about a career change but as I am sure you can understand, I no longer feel like I am running away defeated.

My very best wishes to you :-)