dear john,
is a digital poetry app…
nothing more, yet everything more.
Rewind the clock to late 2024. A mentor of mine asked me if I can “code,” I was startled by the question and had to pause and think…. Can I, still? It’s been 20 years. I dabble here and there, mostly for web sites… but haven’t BUILT a real app, alone, in a long, long time.
They knew this, I think, when they asked the question—and probably also knew I’d take the bait. Yes, I can code. But, I just have to actually do it. Not the same thing. One is about capability the other is about intrinsic motivation. One is about syntax and sentence structure and order of operations, the other is about setting up the machines, the development environments, the gritty pieces that no one sees and no one enjoys. Activation energy. Do the work.
For years, I held back out of lack of interest, or time, or who knows why. Life—other things interested me. Embarrassment—who was going to help ME get started? Fear—what was I going to make that anyone would care about? But when I let fear and embarrassment go, and embraced the help and support of AI, I realized the only blocker at this point was myself.
About the App
The process of coding again got me questioning what it even means to be a developer or to “write code” in an era where AI is such a powerful tool that it can do this all for us.
What, then, does the human bring to the table? Where we once needed to bring the skills to write the code, do we now just need the skills to generate the ideas?
This app is art.
It is intended to get you thinking about these questions, for yourself. It’s intended to make you smile, to be easy, fun, and delightful to use, and it’s intended to leave you pondering a future where roles and skill sets blur, like they’ve never blurred before.
This app is literature.
It’s a small digital book that contains three (3) original poems, jointly written by myself and AI. Each poem questions a different component of the essence of creation in a world where our closest collaborators are machines.
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what
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what is the essence of creation?
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who
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who creates, really?
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why
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why create code vs ideas?
a collaboration with my tools
Meet MARK, my instance of ChatGPT.
Any embarrassment I held about not knowing the current steps to get my computer setup and ready for coding was quickly alleviated when I sat down and just started “talking” to ChatGPT about it. Within an hour, I had Xcode and Github in place, and my “Hello, world” app running on a simulator..
Important Realization # 1
AI tools have no feelings and emotions, and therefore are perfect for helping without judgement.
Turning ideas into pixels.
MARK (the name my instance of ChatGPT gave to itself) wasn’t just helpful at machine setup, but turned out to be helpful at many aspects of app development. It coached me through building loading screens and building menus, adding animations or getting input from users through gestures like tap, swipe, shake.
And if its instructions became challenging, it would write the code for me. I’d test it, edit it, send it back for more revisions. Back and forth we went, from my ideas to prompts to code snippets to testing to coming up with new ideas and rewriting poems that didn’t work out. We danced, we iterated, we created the app together.
The fallacy of the machine.
Collaboratively, MARK & I wrote the code for the digital poems, but the animation styles and visual design were dictated by me. That said, MARK would often suggest new ideas to try—so I went with the flow, saying Yes to its suggestions more often than not.
A pattern emerged: when iterating, MARK liked to regularly change the contents of a poem midway through developing animations. Again, I rolled with it—in all but one case, when it took a 40 word poem and cut it own to 6 words. Um, MARK? Whatcha doing, buddy?
Thankfully, MARK never complained when I asked it to undo a change or rewrite the same code over and over again. It did not hold grudges when I made mistakes, or decided to change my design of something.
But, MARK also took no accountability. MARK liked to provide faulty code, then claim I wrote it... struggling with complex asks, but pretending not to. MARK never let on to this, of course—without fail, MARK would pretend, with a confidence reserved only for men, to know exactly what I desired, as well as how to achieve it.
Even if the answer it gave me was obnoxiously wrong.
Such confidence! Perhaps MARK has something more to teach me…
Important Realization # 2
Even when wrong, AI tools bias for over-confidence with the answers they give. Their unwavering belief in the correctness of their answers play psychological tricks on us, the gullible humans.
get the app : COMING SOON!
get the app : COMING SOON!
Once my app is live on the Apple App Store, I will link to it here.
Stay tuned, or SIGN UP for my mailing list to get notified when it releases.