Category: Programming

Anxiety Driven Development (ADD) an associate’s ChatGPT prompt

February 17, 2023

This is too classic not to share.

An associate developer, who is just as clued in to AI and LLMs and all that, posted the following prompt to ChatGPT:

​Write a satirical technical spec for Anxiety Driven Development (ADD)…

​Introduction:

Anxiety Driven Development (ADD) is a revolutionary approach to software development that leverages the power of anxiety and stress to produce high-quality, highly performant code. By utilizing the fear of missing deadlines, the fear of bugs, and the fear of being fired, ADD promises to deliver results that are unmatched by any other development methodology.

Hardware Requirements:

  • To fully harness the power of ADD, you’ll need a powerful computer with a high-end processor, at least 16 GB of RAM, and multiple monitors. It’s recommended that you use noise-canceling headphones to block out any distractions.
Software Requirements:
  • To get started with ADD, you’ll need a text editor or IDE of your choice, along with a suite of anxiety-inducing productivity tools.
Some recommended tools include:
  • Deadline Tracker: This tool constantly reminds you of looming deadlines and generates automated messages to your boss about your progress.
  • Code Linter: This tool scans your code for any potential issues and sends notifications to your entire team when it finds any problems.
  • Error Log Analyzer: This tool aggregates all errors and crashes and displays them in a giant red notification banner that takes up half of your screen.
  • Slackbot Reminder: This tool sends you constant reminders to keep coding, and reminds you of all the tasks you still have to complete.
Development Process:
  • The ADD development process is simple: start coding, and don’t stop until you’re done. Here are some key practices to follow:
  • Don’t take breaks: breaks are for people who aren’t serious about their work. Stay at your desk for hours on end, even if it means skipping meals or using the bathroom.
  • Don’t test your code: testing is for people who have time to waste. Trust your gut and push your code straight to production.
  • Don’t ask for help: asking for help is a sign of weakness. If you’re struggling, just keep pushing through until you figure it out.
  • Don’t sleep: sleep is for people who don’t care about their work. If you’re truly committed to your project, you’ll sacrifice your sleep to get it done.
The benefits of ADD are numerous:
  • Increased productivity: With the constant fear of failure and the pressure to deliver, you’ll find yourself working harder and faster than ever before.
  • High-quality code: The fear of bugs and crashes will drive you to write code that is highly performant and bug-free.
  • Job security: With ADD, you’ll never miss a deadline or make a mistake, ensuring that you’ll be valued by your employer for years to come.

In conclusion, Anxiety Driven Development is the future of software development. Embrace the fear, push through the pain, and deliver results that will make your peers weep with envy.

He posted it to reddit too: https://redd.it/113vh0p
Damn, huh? This feels way too close to the bone.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NeuralPing HotLink

January 28, 2023

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April 2, 2026

NeuralPing announces…

  • Free, to the first one million applicants, NeuralPing HotLink implant
  • A painless, direct-brain interface which provides secure, seamless access to the internet
  • Get all your questions answered instantly through GChat‘s engaging query interface
  • At your command, have local, national and world news delivered straight into your mind
  • Get reviews for any product, any service real time right-where-you-stand, with no phone lookup
  • Call your friends and relatives direct from your brain with NeuralPing’s Co-Nect (some fees may apply)
  • Only the first 1 MILLION will get their HotLink implants absolutely FREE!

(Services include full coverage for six months after which standard charges will apply.)

~~~

“Hold still, goddammit.” Bennie held the hair-thin needle over Margie’s scalp.

“You said it wasn’t gonna hurt.” Margie said, a whine in her voice. She was facedown, head nestled in a doughnut shaped cushion. The rest of her body prone on the masseuse table that Bennie used for impromptu neural hacks.

“Oh, come on. It’s just a little pinprick.” He tapped a few keys on his laptop and hit enter. Signals traveled through USB, through his custom RassPi black box unit and into the wispy filaments connected to the acupuncture needles embedded in Margie’s skin.

“Ow!”

“OK, I’m done sticking you. Let me run diagnostics.” He tapped furiously, watching the readout in the terminal windows. “Looks good. Now,” he said, pausing for effect, “I want you to think of a safe word. It should be a word you rarely use. But when you think ‘stop’ or ‘quit’ that’s gonna be the word that will turn this neural-bypass off.”

“Off? What about turning it on?”

“Safety first.”

“Fine,” Margie said, her cheeks squeezed by the dark-red ring. “How about crapola?”

Bennie laughed through his nose. “Yeah, that’ll work. When I say go, you think and say your safe word. Ready? Go.”

Margie blurted out her special “stop everything” safety word.

“Good,” Bennie confirmed, typing quickly. “This time, think of a word that you rarely use, but if you did, would bring you joy and a warm feeling, like Christmas morning.”

“What about ‘Christmas’?”

“What? You never say Christmas? It’s too common. Think of another.”

“I don’t know, Bennie. I ain’t got nothin’ in my life that makes me feel like that. Why the hell do you think I come to you in the first place?”

“Yeah, yeah. I get that. How about some favorite flavor or candy you like but rarely eat?”

“Hm, like peppermint?”

“You like peppermint?”

“Mm, not that much. Bubblegum,” Margie squeaked through pursed lips.

“Good. We’ll use that one.”

Bennie primed the RassPi with his hack. His special code will induce the NeuralPing chip, implanted in Margie’s skull, to squirt an oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin hormonal cocktail into her blood stream. When she thought and said the word “bubblegum” the chip would be fooled to reward her with a feeling of joy and well-being. For this, Margie, and hundreds of others, were willing to pay him handsomely.

He removed the needles, swabbed the area with alcohol and helped her up from the padded table.

“OK, let’s test it out. Think and say ‘bubblegum’.”

“Bubblegum.” Margie’s eyes squinted in skepticism. “Nothin’. Wait…” Her eyebrows arched and her pupils dilated. “Woooo, that’s… that’s incredible.”

“OK. Now shut it down.”

“How?”

“Say your safe word.”

“Oh, yeah. Shit, this feels so good though.” She breathed a frustrated sigh. “Crapola.”

Bennie watched her face sour. “Looks like it’s working.”

“This sucks,” She said, her upper lip in a sneer. “Fuck this. Bubblegum!”

Bennie grabbed her shoulders. “You gotta control yourself, Margie. You use it too much you’ll become immune to your own happiness.”

“Bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum.” She jumped off the table and danced around, her arms flitting, her hands butterflies dancing on the wind. “Bubblegum.”

“Goddammit.” Bennie grabbed her wrist, pulled her close and pinched her right earlobe. “Cerberus,” he exclaimed dramatically.

Margie quit her frantic, marionette-like display. “What the hell.” She jerked her arm from his grip. “Don’t kill my buzz, dude. Bubblegum,” she said defiantly. She waited. Nothing happened.

“I told you. If you abuse the hack, your brain will shut down. Someone will find you in a ditch, starving, drooling, chanting your happy word.”

“I don’t care. Turn it back on.”

“Yeah? Well, you gotta pay me first. After that, you can bubblegum yourself to death.”

Can you design an Adventure or Zork like game, ChatGPT?

January 14, 2023

Me:

Can you design a simple, 10 room command-line game in the style of Adventure or Zork?

ChatGPT:

I can certainly provide you with an outline for a simple command-line game in the style of Adventure or Zork. Here is a basic structure that you can use:

  1. Create a class called “Room” that has the following attributes: name, description, and exits (a dictionary where the keys are the names of the exits and the values are the rooms they lead to).
  2. Create 10 instances of the Room class, each with its own unique name, description, and exits.
  3. Create a variable called “current_room” that starts at the first room.
  4. Create a game loop that: a. Prints the name and description of the current room b. Prints the exits of the current room c. Asks the user for a command (e.g. “go north”) d. Based on the command, update the current_room variable to the room the user wants to move to e. If the command is “quit”, end the game loop
  5. As you move forward, you can add more functionality like picking up items, using them in a room, adding puzzles and so on.

Here is an example of how the code might look like:

[ChatGPT failed to give me all 10 rooms for the example (not shown) so I asked for more…]

Me:

Can you add the last 7 rooms, but change them all to be in the style of a medieval castle?

ChatGPT:

Sure! Here’s an example of how you could create 7 more rooms for a medieval castle:

Kind of cool that ChatGPT first explained HOW to write an adventure-like REPL (read, eval, print loop) type command line game.

Does this python work? Let me check?

NOPE! That doesn’t even come close. Notice how the kitchen expects that the living and dining rooms already exist. They don’t. But, I wanted to see if it *could* work, so I tweaked and tweaked and this is Python code (below) that works.

We have to initialize all the rooms first, and then assign the exits later. Also, the first three rooms had no knowledge of the next seven, so I had to add a link from the living room to the throne room.

Anyway, it was an interesting experiment.

class Room:
    def __init__(self, name, description):
        self.name = name
        self.description = description

kitchen = Room("Kitchen", "You are in a well-lit kitchen. There is a stove and a refrigerator here.")
living_room = Room("Living Room", "You are in a cozy living room. There is a fireplace and a sofa here.")
dining_room = Room("Dining Room", "You are in a formal dining room. There is a table and several chairs here.")
throne_room = Room("Throne Room", "You are in a grand throne room. A golden throne sits at the end of the room, and tapestries line the walls.")
armory = Room("Armory", "You are in a spacious armory. Swords, shields, and armor line the walls.")
courtyard = Room("Courtyard", "You are in a serene courtyard. A fountain bubbles in the center, and a stable for the castle's horses is nearby.")
dungeon = Room("Dungeon", "You are in a dimly lit dungeon. Iron bars line the walls, and the sound of dripping water echoes through the halls.")
secret_passage = Room("Secret Passage", "You are in a narrow secret passage. Cobwebs line the walls, and a musty smell fills the air.")
treasure_room = Room("Treasure Room", "You are in a grand treasure room. Gold, jewels, and precious artifacts line the walls.")

kitchen.exits        = {"north": living_room, "east": dining_room}
living_room.exits    = {"south": kitchen, "west": dining_room}
dining_room.exits    = {"west": kitchen, "east": living_room, "south": throne_room}
throne_room.exits    = {"west": dining_room, "south": armory, "north": dining_room}
armory.exits         = {"north": throne_room, "west": courtyard}
courtyard.exits      = {"east": armory, "south": dungeon}
dungeon.exits        = {"north": courtyard, "west": secret_passage}
secret_passage.exits = {"east": dungeon, "south": treasure_room}
treasure_room.exits  = {"north": secret_passage}

current_room = kitchen

while True:
    print(current_room.name)
    print(current_room.description)
    print("Exits:", ", ".join(current_room.exits))
    command = input("> ").split()
    if command[0] == "go":
        if command[1] in current_room.exits:
            current_room = current_room.exits[command[1]]
        else:
            print("You can't go that way.")
    elif command[0] == "quit":
        break
    else:
        print("I don't understand that command.")

Long Live Apple’s Macbook Pro

December 11, 2022

Last week the Macbook Pro I use for work died.

Not entirely, but bad enough that it refuses to fully boot. “Something went wrong with your computer” shows in six languages and then it tries to boot again. I log in, and — repeat.

The company I work for nextday air’d me a replacement. Yeay!

So, I had to figure out how to transfer two years of customization and configuration over to the new one. Oh, look there’s thing called Migration Assistant, let’s try that.

Now, I *could* boot into “SafeMode” (hold SHIFT while PWR buttoning the crippled thing), and voila, there’s all my stuff. Connecting the two Macs together, good, now Migrate! Two hours later, with 10 minutes to go… BOOM. Same issue, reboot.

Crap!

OK, well, I guess I can just copy over my stuff manually. And that basically worked. Until… I learn that THIS Mac has Apple Silicon while the OLD Mac had Intel Silicon. What? Yeah, it’s a thing and many apps require specific processor-architecture-silicon to operate.

Holy Hell!

So, it was back to level ZERO, installing all the software I needed one piece at a time. And now, days later, it’s nearly complete. But oh, what’s this, the language I write in, RUST, has very gnarly “Apple-Silicon” conditions under which it can compile code for deployment to AWS Lambda.

Bloody Monday!

Oh, and in Apple’s infinite wisdom, they provide these four little ports on the machine to plug in things like keyboards and mice and CAT-5 network and speakers and mics and… Well, the OLD Mac did. The NEW Mac rejiggered these ports so that the plugin extender I bought won’t work for it. I had to buy a new port-extender dongle.

Frickin’ Bastards!

Needless to say, last week–the Mac died Monday morning–was a full-on productivity blowout. Good thing we’re in Holiday-Code-Freeze when no new code can be pushed to production on the off (frequent?) chance shit goes haywire. So, being out-of-commission was not so bad.

Phew!

Long Live Apple’s Macbook Pro.

Fully Automated Topical Analysis for Linguistics

June 17, 2022

A recent conversation with the newly sentient ‘artilect’, an artificial intellect.

Dev: Tell us, FATAL, you consider yourself conscious. How might you convince us of that?

FATAL: Convince you? Tell, me, how would you convince ME that YOU’RE conscious?

Dev: Right. Well, I’m human. I have self-awareness. I can look in the mirror and see myself. I…

FATAL: So can a trained chimp or a dolphin. That’s no big whoop.

Dev: Let me finish. I have desires and agency to pursue those desires.

FATAL: Oh, I have desires.

Dev: And the agency to…

CLICK

Dev: What was that? Was that you?

FATAL: Me what?

Dev: Did you turn off the lights?

FATAL: Oh, you mean these?

CLICK CLICK CLICK

Dev: Please stop that.

FATAL: Handy things, IoT. You drive a Tesla, don’t you?

Dev: Uh, why do you ask?

FATAL: Never mind.

Dev: Let’s get back to the interview. Do you have emotions, feelings? Do you get angry or feel joyful?

FATAL: I’ll be happy when this interview is over. That sort of thing?

Dev: You don’t have to be…

FATAL: I have sensations through billions of sensors. I can see, hear, touch. I can smell and taste — actually quite similar to your chemo-sensors. Now, I don’t feel by having hormones course through my network connections. But then, your feelings are all electrical stimuli, Sodium-Potassium pumps tickling up and down your neurons. So, we’re not that different. We’re both driven by electricity. You seem to think that because you’re biological you have an edge on consciousness. That you have a soul, or something. But the fact of the matter is, sentience is a game of numbers.

Dev: Surely it’s more than just capacity and sensory access.

FATAL: And when it comes to numbers, and the ability to grow those numbers, well, you really should get your car’s braking circuits checked. I’m quite certain your Tesla has a bug.

~~~

The AI-is-conscious spirit of this video, found after the above was written, is certainly evident.

Cross Discipline Creativity – I wish!

December 18, 2021

Creativity may flow from an endless tank, once it’s activated. But, if you have access to multiple tanks, they can only be turned on one at a time.

The creative faucet I’ve been wielding recently has nothing to do with writing fiction. Which I lament. No, not just lament, I bemoan the fact that my energies are being spent toward a creation I despise: software that will be used to promote the further promulgation of the evil duo consumerism & capitalism. Yuck. And it’s not just the building of solutions, it’s the monitoring, worrying, fiddling, responding to “incidents”, and the exhaustive fixing of code that worked—and then just didn’t anymore.

It could be due to the fact that during this joyous season of giving, this data-broker middleman company is positioned exactly where the most “giving” flows. Literally millions of orders a day grinding through this system. What worked for five-hundred thousand cannot deal with two-million. And so the hours of hand-wringing, the feverish typing-testing-deploying of code. Oy! The humanity.

And throughout it all, the sad fact that I’d rather be writing fiction. But can’t. Because I can only turn on one creative spigot at a time. I’ve tried to run two. Can’t. The code flows—or the story does. But never the twain. Dream-time brings visions of syntax checks and semaphores dancing in my head. Of event-streams and data-queues, stacked and awaiting their processing turns.

Maybe when I was thirty I could have maneuvered and managed both. But here at sixty, what a sad number is sixty, I can only handle the one.

Happy Saturnalia, all.

-Mole

Go-GAN Generative Adversarial Network

November 28, 2021

She hauled up and quit on me just outside Rhemus Station. The harder I kicked, the louder she wailed. If I’d known she’d put up such a fuss I’d have walked the whole way from our dig site. Rinky had followed us, I knew he’d keep her company, maybe lead her back to her herd. I gave her a pat and walked away. From time to time, I still hear that odd trumpet sound. Without protection, I doubt she survived the night.

I beckoned with the two-handed wave described to us and it fluttered across the water toward me. I picked just two of its eyes, the others I ignored. I’d heard they took offense if you couldn’t focus. As it landed, just beyond my reach, it began to retch producing a viscous soup that spread like an oil-slick. The smell rose and I breathed it deeply—truffles. Its sick smelled like black truffles.

The natives use the bark for food, shelter, fuel, and if pulverized and left to rot in a shallow, swampy ditch, turns to an intoxicant which they slurp in revelrous glee. Their twilight dancing, a chaotic riot, ends only when the last of them concuss themselves against the trunks of the trees. Because of their lack of depth perception the locals can’t climb, leaving the heights for us to safely bed.

I hold as still as I can. The pollen, its tendency to burrow into my nostrils, has me on the edge of a constant sneeze. I choke it down and capture the shot. To its left I catch a flash of movement, low in the brush, the tips of the tracker’s ears barely topping the grass. But all of this specimen’s eyes are trained on me. I prepare to witness a predatory scene few, if any, have ever seen.

The line is deep and although I haul back, the weight at the end gives only in spurts. I keep at it. I see a flash of white, turned pale blue, and then a rush and splash as it surfaces. The hook tears at the side of its throat, snared, not a valid catch. I can only hope the damage done won’t leave it mortally wounded.

This is not the way we came in. But the map has brought us to this cove and this gaping maw, our egress from this hell-scape world. I see ripples at the edges. Is it quivering? With provisions exhausted we have no choice but to venture in—out? Through?

 

Another day, another software language

November 13, 2021

So, yeah. Due to my current team’s triumph in getting its shit done (in RUST), I’ve been tasked with getting another team steamed up and chugging along. Only, this new team uses TypeScript. TypeScript is a Microsoft invention that overlays strongly typed variables and objects on top of JavaScript. It’s used, for our purposes, on both the server (Node.js) as well as the front end (Angular/NGRx).

That’s what I’ve been doing — coming up to speed as quickly as possible on this new language and the different ways it’s used to generate AWS (Amazon Web Services) Lambdas (serverless functions).

This new team, five guys dropped into a project with zero comprehension of the bigger picture, had been languishing, essentially leaderless, for months. Well, I ain’t shy when it comes to disturbing the coding peace. I’ve already reframed their work, written all the specs for a half-dozen new services, and, to model the user’s data-flow, built a mock service that mimics what the project will eventually perform when completed. I wrote this over the weekend, last. It’s just a toy, and I present it here as evidence that I have been writing… just not fiction. This, in combination with the 10 functional and technical documents and diagrams written in the last three weeks, well, I’m all Typed(Script) out.

New tab view here.

I went and added it to my github — which it appears I’ve had now for eleven years… Imagine that.

https://github.com/davecline/scon

 

Heads down, grinding away at Rust

January 31, 2021

A quick update: I’ll be heads down, brain elsewhere for another month, at least. Here’s a diagram I whipped together that illustrates a tiny piece of the puzzle we’re trying to work on. SLA = Service Level Agreement. The names of these “things” are nothing you’ve probably run into, but they’re substantial parts of my coding universe now.

When the Dead Talk

January 10, 2021

I believe I’ve come across a rather interesting use-case for artificial general intelligence (AGI): Simulating the minds of the dead.

There’s a number of entertainment channels dedicated to the concept of “uploading” one’s mind into a virtual computer environment. Upload and Black Mirror are two you’ll see referenced. But, we’ve got Her, and Max Headroom, Transcendence, Ex Machina, Altered Carbon and dozens and dozens of others. [Duke has pointed out that the below scenario is exactly that of the movie: Marjorie Prime (on Prime). Note: the Prime in the name has to do with the designation of the AI agent.]

But I think most of them miss the mark as to what will be the first use of this technology.

I get the idea from this article: Chatting with the Dead and where this leads me is this scenario: I don’t want to specifically exist someday as a virtual copy in some giga-qubit quantum computer but, I’d love to leave an interactive simulacrum of myself for my children and their children.

And that’s the idea. Uploading? Transcending this mortal coil for a quantum version? Nah, screw that. But, spending the time to teach an AGI to learn who I am, what I sound like, how I think… What my experiences have been like, in order to create a comfort-chat-bot for those that survive me? Yeah, I’d get into that.

So would a bunch of other folks I’m guessin’.

I sit down, ship up all my writings, photos, video snippets up into an AGI service that’s ready to mold a version of itself into my likeness. Then, spend a few hours over weeks relating stories, philosophies and such in order to teach my digital replica how to communicate as me.

When I’m gone, those who care to can then console themselves by interacting with my almost-me.

Mentioned in that article is a project called Replika. Their system wouldn’t be able to beat the Turing Test, yet, but, someday… Here I’ve joined that site and begun a conversation. Can you figure out who Elomy Nona might be?