How LLMs Actually Work: A Developer's Mental Model

Most of us use LLMs every day now, but if you asked the average developer what's actually happening between hitting enter and getting a response, the answer is usually some mix of "it's a neural network" and a shrug. That's fine — you don't need to know how a database B-tree works to write a query. But understanding the mental model behind LLMs makes you dramatically better at using them: you stop being surprised when they hallucinate, you write better prompts, and you understand why things like...