Howdy from Oregon, AI led me here

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I was recently having a discussion with Gemini and I gave it the following prompt:

“There was a software package, and perhaps a research paper from the 1990’s that involved organizing data in the nodes of a graph. The software was, I believe, for taking notes and organizing related information in closely connected nodes. Any chance you know what this was?”

This was a long time ago and I couldn’t quite remember what I had seen. This led me to a software package that I was shocked to find out is still available nearly thirty years later… “The Brain”. I asked if there was a current opensource alternative and that led to a few possibilities including Logseq. Some more narrowing with Gemini and I decided Logseq was the one to try. It was only later that I found out that much of Logseq is, or was, implemented in Clojure which was an additional bit of serendipity.

I’ve been in the software world since the late '70s. I’m mostly retired and having a blast using AI to learn at an advanced pace. Can’t imagine what I would have done had I had access to AI when I was very young. Using an AI assistant I’m relearning basic electronics, including Arduinos and Raspberry pi, coding using my old friend Emacs and modernizing by learning Clojure and vibe coding with Aidermacs. I use a combination of Grok, Gemini, and ChatGpt. I dabble with StableDiffusion.

Anyway, am very enthusiastic about journaling this journey in something akin to that software I saw 30 years ago.

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Hello Strider,

Yep, this mirrors my experience. I was very skeptical until a year ago, but then I realized how useful it can be for learning new stuff. I use Claude. It’s like having a personal teacher. Of course it shouldn’t be blindly trusted, it’s always wise to double check the answers, there are sometimes errors or imprecisions. But the possibility of asking follow-up questions, clarifications, examples etc… is what makes these tools extremely powerful.
I’m studying machine learning and often I want to deep-dive into concepts and fully understand the mathematical underpinnings of the theory (my background is in theoretical physics): these assistants are a huge time-saver, together with the occasional search in StackExchange. Without them, I would be stuck for days on the most difficult part of the books, trying to fully grasp some results. Now it takes a few prompts to confirm that I’m getting things right.
Of course the flip side is that probably I’m not training myself to solve problems autonomously, but at this moment in my life, learning stuff and being productive is more important than mere brain work out.

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