Probably a 5 min conversation with a frontend dev would have gotten me that answer faster, but that isn't something I have access to at the moment. And it was far enough down my priority list that it probably would have stayed unimplemented for a long time. With the back and forth with ChatGPT I got there in maybe 30 minutes of playing around. So a direct solution - for sure not. But better than my alternatives, I think so.

One way I think about it, AI can learn when there are many high quality examples. There are tons of blog articles on small topics but none really like "here's 1000 lines of sparsely documented code, good luck". The ability to navigate that is a secondary skill and can't be achieved with even genius parroting.

Until the parrot becomes even more clever, perhaps...

fix the above download isssue (https://github.com/uncbiag/ICON/blob/752532ff339a6511dfa93f4...)

Modify an existing class to take the number of iterations as a parameter instead of relying on hardcoded constants (https://github.com/uncbiag/ICON/blob/752532ff339a6511dfa93f4...)

Fix a function to gracefully handle an old version of git

This last one is illustrative, as its proposed solution looks elegant, correct, and well explained, but totally fails.

QuadmasterXLII: This function crashes if an old version of git is installed that doesn't have the :(exclude) feature. Can you fix it? ``` def initialize(run_name=None, output_root="results/"):

    global output_dir_impl
    global initialized

    if initialized:
        raise Exception("footsteps can only be initialized once")

    initialized = True
    if not run_name:
        if "FOOTSTEPS_NAME" in os.environ:
            run_name = os.environ["FOOTSTEPS_NAME"]
        else:
            print("Input name of experiment:")
            run_name = input()
    output_dir_impl = os.path.join(output_root, run_name) + "/"

    suffix = 0
    while os.path.exists(output_dir_impl):
        suffix += 1
        output_dir_impl = os.path.join(output_root, run_name) + "-" + str(suffix) + "/"

    os.makedirs(output_dir_impl)

    print("Saving results to " + output_dir_impl)

    with open(output_dir_impl + "info.txt", "w") as f:
        f.write("Command:\n")
        f.write(" ".join(sys.argv) + "\n")
        f.write("System:\n")
        f.write(subprocess.check_output(["hostname"]).decode())
        f.write("Python:\n")
        f.write(shutil.which("python") + "\n")
        f.write("Git Hash:\n")
        f.write(
            subprocess.check_output(["git", "describe", "--always"]).strip().decode()
            + "\n"
        )
        f.write("Uncommitted changes:\n")
        f.write(
            subprocess.check_output(
                ["git", "diff", "HEAD", "--", ".", ":(exclude)*.ipynb"]
            ).decode()
        )
        f.write("Current working dir:\n")
        f.write(os.getcwd() + "\n")
        try:
            shutil.copy(sys.argv[0], output_dir_impl + os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))
        except:
            pass

ChatGPT: This function checks whether the :(exclude) feature is available in the installed version of git by calling git diff with :(exclude).ipynb. If the feature is not available, git will return an error and the function will crash.

To fix this, we can add a check to see if git supports the :(exclude) feature before calling git diff with it. We can do this by calling git help diff and checking the output for a mention of :(exclude). If the feature is not supported, we can call git diff without the :(exclude) feature.

Here is how the fixed function would look like:

Copy code ``` def initialize(run_name=None, output_root="results/"):

    global output_dir_impl
    global initialized

    if initialized:
        raise Exception("footsteps can only be initialized once")

    initialized = True
    if not run_name:
        if "FOOTSTEPS_NAME" in os.environ:
            run_name = os.environ["FOOTSTEPS_NAME"]
        else:
            print("Input name of experiment:")
            run_name = input()
    output_dir_impl = os.path.join(output_root, run_name) + "/"

    suffix = 0
    while os.path.exists(output_dir_impl):
        suffix += 1
        output_dir_impl = os.path.join(output_root, run_name) + "-" + str(suffix) + "/"

    os.makedirs(output_dir_impl)

    print("Saving results to " + output_dir_impl)

    with open(output_dir_impl + "info.txt", "w") as f:
        f.write("Command:\n")
        f.write(" ".join(sys.argv) + "\n")
        f.write("System:\n")
        f.write(subprocess.check_output(["hostname"]).decode())
        f.write("Python:\n")
        f.write(shutil.which("python") + "\n")
        f.write("Git Hash:\n")
        f.write(
            subprocess.check_output(["git", "describe", "--always"]).strip().decode()
            + "\n"
        )
        f.write("Uncommitted changes:\n")

        # Check if git supports the :(exclude) feature
        help_output = subprocess.check_output(["git", "help", "diff"]).decode()
        if ":(exclude)" in help_output:
            # :(exclude) is supported, call git diff with it
            f.write(
                subprocess.check_output(
                    ["git", "diff", "HEAD", "--", ".", ":(exclude)*.ipynb"]
                ).decode()
            )
        else:
            # :(exclude) is not supported, call git diff without it
            f.write(
                subprocess.check_output(
                    ["git", "diff", "HEAD", "--", "."]
                ).decode()
            )

        f.write("Current working dir:\n")
        f.write(os.getcwd() +