AI Machine Learning With Chat Interface - Revolutionizing Programming & Learning to Code?!

[olePigeon]

This is like right out of Star Trek. It's a machine learning API with a chat interface. You can ask it things in natural language like, "write me code in perl that merges two excel spreadsheets." It'll then spit out code to do that. Then you can do things like, "comment all the code," and it'll comment everything and explain what it does. Then do something like, "convert the code to C++," and it'll do that. Later on, Luke says that you can even feed it your own libraries. So if you have custom libraries and code, etc, you can tell it to write code using those as well.

This got me thinking that even an idiot like me might be able to generate something useful. It's pretty crazy how fast this AI stuff is going.

Even more, I'm wondering if it can do coding for vintage computers. @Bolle @tashtari @Crutch @cheesestraws Could one of you brilliant coders fiddle with it? Maybe get it to write a System 7 extension or something? It seems like it could be a great launch pad for projects.

I wonder if someone could get it do do PCB layouts, too.

 

[olePigeon]

OK, I just fumbled through and got my website back up and going after several years of pulling what was left of my hair out. It just took me about an hour of chatting with it like a normal person.

I know next to nothing about PHP and got it to work.

This is just insane!

Next step is to add some cool functionality. I have a small database of icons I made for file types, so now I'm going to get it to show little icons based on the files.

 

[olePigeon]

Since I don't program very much, I am tickled pink with how this is going. Here is a test file I'm working on:

Bitcider

I've managed to talk my way into creating some PHP code that lists all the non-directory files in a directory, displays their file size, and then compares the file extension with a list of .gif files and display the corresponding matching .gif file for each file.

Next on my list is to add some exceptions. For example, if the file has an all-caps .IMG extension and matches a certain size criteria (such as 1.2MB, 360KB, etc.), that means it's a 5.25" raw image file; if it's 1.4MB or 720KB, then it's a 3.5" raw image file. If it is larger than 1.4MBs and has a .img extension, then that means it's a CD/DVD/HDD image in Disk Copy 6.4 format. Etc, etc. I'm having a lot of fun.

This will eventually replace a section of my index.php file for file listings. So it'll have the nifty nav bar at the top and everything. This is just quicker for testing.

 

[CC_333]

Interesting invention!

Can it program a modern web browser for classic Mac OS?

Or how about a modern OS that looks and feels like Mac OS 9 but with modern amenities such as USB 2 and Airport Extreme drivers (with proper WPA2/3), full multiprocessing support, protected memory and proper preemptive multitasking?

Perhaps I'm getting carried away!

c

 

[Scott Squires]

Even more, I'm wondering if it can do coding for vintage computers. @Bolle @tashtari @Crutch @cheesestraws Could one of you brilliant coders fiddle with it? Maybe get it to write a System 7 extension or something? It seems like it could be a great launch pad for projects.

I'm quite positive that it could not write System 7 code. It's entirely statistical association on trained inputs. Extremely advanced and impressive statistical association, yes. But if it doesn't have a huge corpus of System 7 example code to work from, it's going to fall flat on its face. (While pretending to do exactly as requested just with nonsense for output.) I would be extremely surprised if OpenAI trained it with thousands of 90s Macintosh programming books and magazines. But it's possible I'm wrong. I haven't tried it because it requires a phone number for creating an account.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

OK, I just fumbled through and got my website back up and going after several years of pulling what was left of my hair out. It just took me about an hour of chatting with it like a normal person.

I know next to nothing about PHP and got it to work.

This is just insane!

The craziest part of this is that 3 years ago, no one would have said this would be possible this soon. This is the kind of innovation that gets me excited!

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I would be extremely surprised if OpenAI trained it with thousands of 90s Macintosh programming books and magazines. But it's possible I'm wrong. I haven't tried it because it requires a phone number for creating an account.

I've got to watch the LMG Clips video when I've got time, but olePigeon said in his initial post that you could give it your own custom libraries, meaning that theoretically it could be possible to manually input those hundreds of programming books? Not sure how any of that works though... The thought of something like that is CRAZY to me though. Any of this. We're living in the future.

 

[Scott Squires]

meaning that theoretically it could be possible to manually input those hundreds of programming books?

No, unfortunately not. The language model's "memory" is limited to a small amount of data. For ChatGPT I believe it is around 4K tokens. Words break down into 1 to 3 tokens each or so. So the model can remember around 2000 words of information at a time, and that includes your query.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Ah, ok. Still possible that online archives of programmers reference books from them ended up in the dataset.

 

[olePigeon]

Well I'm running into the limitations of a free account. The code can't be very long (3000 "tokens".) It would require a full account with API access to do anything really meaningful.

But I'm having fun getting my website going. I now have the file list working, although it has a bunch of "else if" statements. I'm sure some of it could be reduced to an array, but I don't know how to do that yet.

Next step is to work on the directory listing. After that I'll combine them into my navigation page and have my website full and working. Hopefully by Christmas at the latest.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

This is some seriously cool stuff. Can't wait to see where things are in another year!

 

[olePigeon]

Working well enough. I've managed to stumble through and get the directory listing part of my website working again. Next step is to get the file list working. Then I'll upload my software collection to it. I'll be removing all .bin encoded files and standardizing on .hqx.

The website generates HTML 3. I believe it even works in Mosaic on a 512k. Netscape 3 recommended, though.

It dynamically generates the little icons I made to show you what kind of file you can expect to find inside the directory. Then when you click on a directory, the file list itself will show the file size and the appropriate icon for the file type. It'll look something like this once it's implemented.

I might put a an icon matrix somewhere to indicate compatibility, but that would require maintaining a database (even if it's just a text file.) Not sure I want to do that.