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Macil
@macil.tech

I finally found the book that got me interested in programming when I was 8. In 2019, I started trying to find the book again from memory and failed. Yesterday, I pasted my old notes about the book into Claude with research mode on, and it found it after 11 minutes.

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Macil
@macil.tech

(The book is from 1983. I was reading it in 1999.) The example BASIC program and the logic gate diagrams made me obsessed when I realized how easy they were to follow. I started writing silly BASIC programs in my notebooks. I also enjoyed the futurist images and ideas in the book.

Macil
@macil.tech

I struggled trying to find this book. There are a lot of books titled "Computers". I ordered multiple to check them. I gave my notes to ChatGPT (ancient GPT-4) in 2023, but it didn't do any better than me. Yesterday I remembered my search and realized it was worth trying again with today's AI.

John David Pressman@jdp.extropian.net

I spent a lot of time asking earlier LLMs like GPT-4 ambitious questions and being disappointed with the answers, so it's been kind of a challenge to get myself back in that mindset of "hey, it might actually be able to answer this now, give it another shot".