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🤖How I Wrote a Program Without Understanding the Code

Last month, as I watched my brother meticulously scan through countless messages on obscure Discord crypto forums, I realized the enormity of the challenge he faced. He's always been the one with his finger on the pulse of everything crypto-related, from promising new blockchains to intriguing Bitcoin NFTs, known as Ordinals.

But, oh boy, the noise! Imagine a bazillion people all talking at once, throwing gifs around like confetti, and chatting about everything under the sun but rarely about the stuff you actually need.

That's when it hit me: I needed to help him with this.

There was just one catch - my coding knowledge was almost non-existent. Yet, I was determined to find a solution.

The mission was simple: We need to filter the crypto chatter and find useful information without spending our lives in front of Discord.

The Solution: Using GPT-4

So, we got down to business with ChatGPT. Thanks to its new beefed-up context window, we could copy chunks of chat from the servers and feed them into ChatGPT to get a neat summary. It was a solid start, but let's be real—it was kinda tedious.

ChatGPT does a decent job, but it's not exactly built for handling and remembering massive loads of data. And oh boy, the error messages! They kept popping up, forcing me to start over more times than I cared to count.

I was sure there had to be a better solution, and this thought frustrated me. After some back and forth with ChatGPT it gave me a step-by-step roadmap to build an application that could use a script I’ve found online to archive Discord channels, make summaries automatically using the OpenAI’s API (it’s much better remembering things than ChatGPT) and send it in a Discord message.

The Learning Process:

What came next was a thrilling ride of trials and errors. The process was the following:

This back-and-forth, with instant help and code adjustments, really sped up my process. It was a game-changer, saving me from endless Google searches and forum dives.

Key Milestones:

In no time, I was leveling up from basic stuff to whipping up shell scripts and Python programs, and even getting the gist of config.json files. I even started playing around with Docker images and files, learning about deploying code online.

If this sounds like gibberish, don't worry; it did to me too just a week ago. But now, my program can autonomously operate in the cloud - a feat that seemed impossible a couple days back.

The Impact:

We're really in the golden age for makers and doers. General AI, like ChatGPT, is this amazing leveler across all kinds of jobs.

This whole adventure in building stuff has been a game-changer for me. Not only did I give my brother a hand, but I also cracked the code on coding itself, all thanks to AI giving me a leg up.

Of course, I’m far from a skilled developer, but this experience has given me a new kind of confidence. Now, I see problems not as roadblocks, but as puzzles I can solve without needing years to master a skill or a team of pros backing me up.

I'd really recommend giving AI a shot to tackle some of your own real-life challenges. You might be surprised at what you can achieve with it.

ONE MORE THING

Play Monkey Island Adventure: Amsterdam or create your own.

ChatGPT User levelsio created a text based adventure game with the new GPTs feature. The game pays homage to one of the greatest early PC games series: Monkey Island, but in a brand new setting: Amsterdam. You can try it here if you have ChatGPT Plus: MonkeyIslandAmsterdam.com.

The creator also shared the instructions he used, so you can even create one for your own hometown.

⌚ If you have one more minute

• 🎓 Microsoft released a new free course for beginners on Generative AI

• 📱 UI Draw - draw and build a web app on your phone with AI

• 🛠️ Chinese factories transform thousands of GeForce RTX 4090 into AI accelerators to sidestep GPU ban.

AI Art of the Day 🎨

Industrial movie settings featuring a young geisha created with Midjourney by X user @ralphlentjes.

Prompt: a complex and detailed scene of a young geisha, industrial setting, captured in a wide shot. natural lighting, avoid modern or neon elements, and strive for a harmonious and unified composition, steering clear of stark contrasts or juxtapositions of objects --ar 21:9 --style raw --s 250

🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄

That's all for today, folks!

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