![]() I should perhaps say something about how Generative AI is used in the FrankenScore project. First of all, I have a prompt of about 4100 lines which prefaces every conversation with the AI chat client. The prompt consists of project documentation, background, design principles and goals, coding principles and conventions, explanations of central code and code examples. It also includes a major part of the source. This allows the AI to:
The copy on this website was almost entirely created by AI means, often using multiple iterations until I arrived at something suitable for publication. There remain a few passages that slipped me by as the AI produced text that reads a little too self-congratulatory on my part, but it was simply the opinion of the AI (though it is of course nice that it likes the code). I'll fix that during the days to come. Also, the technical comparison with other software is a bit too speculative and monotone. I'll change that, too. In terms of code, I've found that Claude 3.5 Sonnet reasons better at depth about Clojure code than GPT-4o and consequently is the superior choice for complex coding. GPT-4o is still useful for producing text, though. It isn't exactly bad at coding, but it has a tendency to vomit code at you at every opportunity, which is both tiresome and expensive. Also, it kind of loses track when conversations get very long. And they do; the chains of thought are sometimes complex, and a meandering AI can get costly. Therefore using Claude saves money in the long run. By the way, it's easy to tell when I am writing. Just look for signs of British English. You know, -ise and colour and whilst and so forth. The AI invariably produces American English.
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Any serious open-source project must have a website. (At least that's what Claude 3.5 Sonnet told me.) So here we are!
Let me quote from the project plan: 3. Website and Branding: - Develop a professional website for FrankenScore that includes: - An overview of the project - Documentation and tutorials - A blog for updates and announcements - A section for community contributions and plugins - Design a logo and branding materials to create a recognizable identity for the project. We have the blog and the Overview section. The rest will follow soon. There's a ton of material in the GitHub repo, plus a full wiki, which I'll put to good use here as well. As I windsurf through parentheses on my holiday, reviving the spirit of Igor Engraver in the form of FrankenScore, I'm struck by a profound realisation: this is how programming should always feel. Free. Uplifting. Intellectually stimulating. A far cry from being shackled to the oars of enterprise galleys, with some middle manager shouting "ATTACK SPEED!" at bewildered code monkeys. But why should this freedom be a holiday exception? As programmers (not "developers," please!), we should be grounded in computer science thinking. We need to regularly return to these ancient founts of wisdom, like Lisp, and apply their lessons to our everyday work. Otherwise, we're just highly paid button-pushers in a digital sweatshop. Remember when computer science curricula started with Scheme? It wasn't about the language; it was about learning to think algorithmically. Then Oracle, in its infinite wisdom (read: hunger for "cannon fodder"), saw Scheme replaced by Java Enterprise. And thus began the great shitshow that's lasted for decades. Yet, for all its faults, we must tip our hats to Java for gifting us the JVM. And here's where Clojure enters, marrying Lisp's elegance with the JVM's robustness and interoperability. It's like finding out your eccentric uncle and strait-laced aunt had a brilliant love child. But thanks to the JVM, your weird uncle can now fit into the enterprise world. Diving into Clojure led me to Rich Hickey's talks. The man veers into philosophical territory faster than a Silicon Valley startup pivots to blockchain. He ponders things like what names are, and why we use them - essential musings for any first-class programmer. It reminds me of my friend Niklas Derouche, architect and coder extraordinaire, who insists you must read Derrida to be a proper architect. Because nothing says "I understand this codebase" like a healthy dose of deconstruction theory. And he is right. Make no mistake. In three weeks of holiday hacking, I've made more progress and felt more fulfilled than in months of enterprise work. It's a stark reminder of what's possible when we shed unnecessary constraints and return to first principles. So, fellow coders, I challenge you: When was the last time you felt truly free in your programming? Perhaps it's time we all took a holiday to rediscover the Lisp arts. Who knows, you might just find your programming parentheses - I mean, paradigms - shifted. P.S. If you're about to comment that 'modern' languages and frameworks are just as good, save your breath. I'd sooner believe in the tooth fairy than in the supposed superiority of JavaScript or the 'agility' of SAFe. P.P.S. If you missed the Ben Hur reference (you uncultured git), this is sprint execution according to SAFe, with the CTO watching: 25 years ago, in the last millennium, we created Igor Engraver, a revolutionary music notation software. To promote our work, we printed t-shirts that showcased our dual perspectives: the musician's view and the developer's view. On one side of the t-shirt, we had beautifully printed sheet music titled "Your View." On the other side, titled "Our View," we displayed a piece of code—a higher-order function for creating a transposer function in Common Lisp. Fast forward to today, as I embark on revivifying these ideas as the open source project "FrankenScore: a Body Resurrected", I suddenly remembered those t-shirts and the key they held to a general pitch representation covering not only diatonic and chromatic but also microtonal music and its transposition. I recalled that I had kept one of these t-shirts. After searching through my entire flat, I finally found it at the bottom of my laundry basket. Remarkably, the quality of the print has survived 25 years! I took a photo of the t-shirt and fed it into ChatGPT, leading to a fruitful conversation about the ideas behind and generality of this pitch representation. Thus: document your ideas in whatever way you want - even on t-shirts. Twenty-five years later, if the fabric and print are good enough, they may become the foundation stones on your journey of ... developmental retribution? ;) ![]() If I were to revive my old project Igor Engraver, it would totally be called FrankenScore - a Body Resurrected.
But do I want to go down that path? Vestigia nulla retrorsum is, after all, an excellent motto, as Moina Mathers well knew. |
AuthorPeter Bengtson –composer, organist, programmer, cloud architect. Currently windsurfing through parentheses. Archives
September 2024
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FrankenScore is a modern, open-source music notation software designed to handle complex musical scores with ease. It is designed to be a flexible and powerful music notation software tool providing professional, extremely high-quality results. The core functionality includes inputting music notation, formatting scores and their parts, and printing them. Additional features can be added as plugins, allowing for a modular and customizable user experience.
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