by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just had a chattering bot filter through layers upon layers of a spreadsheet and provide the answer<\/em>. After a moment, I realized I could have written a simple program to do that, but that was true for me, not everyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I just solved a problem with data presented in a spreadsheet. It was one of those, “For every case of X, find the rows that meet condition Y, then find the rows that further meet condition Z, then find the rows … and put the results in a table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The spreadsheet had about 500 rows. I could have done this by hand, e.g., see this, then see that, then see the other things. I could have let Excel filter the data, then filter again, then … until I had an answer. Instead, I tried a chattering bot (names withheld to protect the guilty). I was able to find left-handed pitchers who struck out three batters on less than twelve pitches on the road when the game was after 9 p.m. and it was raining slightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Satisfied with how quickly I had solved a problem, I began to ponder the situation. I could have written a ten-line program to do that. Python would have been the choice for today (it is<\/em> the Pascal of this century). The C programming language would have also worked. The list of languages that would have worked is quite long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That, however, is me. I could have written a program to do this. Then again, I programmed a video game on a computer in 1978. I think everyone can write computer programs. Perhaps everyone can<\/em>, but not everyone does<\/em>. (Enough italics for one blog post.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suppose that is one of the great benefits of these chattering bots. Type what you want the computer to do in English. It happens. No extra training required. It happens. Life is easy or at least easier. Low code? Nope. This is no code. Okay, this wasn’t the most difficult problem in the world. This chattering bot did, however, save me a lot of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips I just had a chattering bot filter through layers upon layers of a spreadsheet and provide the answer. After a moment, I realized I could have written a simple program to do that, but that was true for me, not everyone. I just solved a problem with data presented in a spreadsheet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,83,23,3],"tags":[470,200,145,126],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-computing","category-programming","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-computing","tag-programming","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4612,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions\/4612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}