Good point. I think we need an extensive ramp up document to teach all the fundamentals, best practices, rom routines and BAAIC speed up techniques to quickly ramp up any ai or fledgling programmer for that matter.
Oh I remember aside from the variable thing I did teach it the one programming technique which was turning off the screen scroll and turning it back on with on error goto. -- John. On Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 4:36 AM [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > He John, > > My experience is roughly the same with Codex and Claude. Giving variables > overlapping names was the source of many bugs. > > This is where “SKILLS.md” comes in handy. > > You can basically use this with either agent (not sure about > Antigravity/Gemini) > > https://github.com/Grimakis/m100-programming-skill > > At minimum, you can ask it to reference the .md files. > > The beauty of the SKILL feature is that it only loads that SKILL.md into > the context (to prevent it growing too large), and then it reads it to > determine if it should add or remove the other files from it’s context > depending on the task. > > See if it helps you at all. > > -George > > On Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 5:56 AM Alex <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I didn't know only the first two characters of variable names were used >> either. >> >> Is that documented in any of the manuals or just the kind of dirty secret >> you figure out the hard way? >> >> >> On December 24, 2025 7:32:49 AM UTC, "John R. Hogerhuis" < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> So I was inspired to play with Gemini Pro and generate a little game for >>> the Model 100. I get Gemini Pro usage for free as a student since I take >>> woodworking classes at a local community college. >>> >>> The first two levels kind of work. It took a lot of iterating. It cannot >>> actually do its own testing in gemini, so it generates the code blind with >>> no testing and throws it over the wall to SQA/me (like a real programmer!). >>> Somehow it was generating Model 100 BASIC code almost off the bat without >>> directly feeding it any manuals. I eventually fed it the quick reference >>> guide. >>> >>> One bad problem it had through several iterations was that it didn't >>> know only the first two characters of variable names were significant. So >>> it was controlling different things with the same variable. Teaching that >>> fixed a lot of frustrating jank and if I realized it it probably would have >>> take far less time to get it to this point. >>> >>> The idea is that you pick up gems and a key. When you get the key the >>> portal opens and you can go to the next level. >>> >>> Kind of fun. I didn't have to write any code at all. I only had to look >>> at the code to see why it seemed unable to fix reported bugs, and that was >>> a failure to understand our version of BASIC. >>> >>> -- John. >>> >>
