A key consideration when training an LLM is whether the target language is more or less resourced, whether this is English compared to Welsh, or Python compared to Excel. Typical training data for programming languages consist of real program demonstrations coupled with human-written comments. Here we present novel approaches to the creation of such data for low resource programming languages. We generate fully-synthetic, textbook-quality demonstrations of common library functions in an example domain of Excel formulas, using a teacher model. We then finetune an underperforming student model, and show improvement on 2 question-answering datasets recast into the Excel domain. We show advantages of finetuning over standard, off-the-shelf RAG approaches, which can offer only modest improvement due to the unfamiliar target domain.

In his apartment on March 17, 1970, Shel Dorf displays some posters to be shown at a convention in the U.S. Grant Hotel. The first gathering -- called San Diego's Golden State Comic-Minicon -- was put together by a group of comics, movie and science fiction fans including Shel Dorf, Ken Krueger and Richard Alf. This one-day convention was staged to raise funds and interests for a larger convention. Author Ray Bradbury bought a few items from the dealers at the San Diego Golden State Comics Convention in the U.S. Grant Hotel on Aug. 1, 1970. "I got a few issues of Mad magazine," he said. Called San Diego's Golden State Comic-Con, this was the first full-fledged convention in San Diego with a focus on comic art, film and science fiction. The event included 25 booths and three speakers: comic artist Jack Kirby and authors Ray Bradbury and A.E. van Vogt. Kirk Alyn, left, who portrayed Superman in film serials, signs an autograph for Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.