I’ve been having a lot of fun using Chat GPT to program some tools for me that I envision being able to share in the future and resolve problems that don’t have tools currently. That sentence stuff and sound right.

In any case it’s been a lot of fun because it’s been going well but today I hit a few snags that frustrated me. I worked for a long time getting a few changes made and we just couldn’t get up working done copy so I switched to another tool looking for an easy win and the same kind of fail.

My allocated time for this kind of activity is over and now I have to go clean up dog poop.

The problem seems to stem from the way that these things work. They’re design is to take whatever you input into your new window and act on it. If I type question they answer it. Like I type a piece of gibberish they will try to interpret it and answer it. In the past I’ve had a little bit of fun when the voice module accepts input that wasn’t intended for it, like the tail end of a TV statement or when I am talking to someone else in the room and my input to them is totally non sequitur and unrelated and yet that’s their job to take whatever’s put into that window and interpret it and answer it.

The problem comes in when I wish to modify something we have been working on together like my PHP program tools. When I enter the modifications that I would like to see into that window, they do what they are programmed to do and that is to write a program that does what I ask. Unfortunately I didn’t ask for that I asked for modifications to be existing program and the bizarre pride like experience is that they don’t want to tell me they have no idea what the previous tool was. So they start to write an application that does what I asked for as a standalone program instead of modifying the existing code.

So every time I ask for a change previous things that worked are erased. But not in 100% way which is what makes it not only frustrating but hard to spot because they might take elements of what was working like the colors and the CSS display a program that looks just like the old one with the modifications I requested but if I test any of the buttons or features they’re no longer there. It’s like they looked at the output screen of the last program that worked but not the actual coding that made it work.

I think I figured out a solution but it’s frustrating because it means every new prompt window I have to paste the entire block of PHP code and then ask for modifications to that code. Every task has to be self-contained in that prompt window. That’s fine until my prompt window limit is reached.

Anyway the point is today was a frustrating day rather than a day of successes and completions and now I have to go clean dog poop. Life not so great today.

It’s the 18th of the month and I’m out of money and food. Argh