Lesson 1 of 48
Instructions a machine could follow
Turn something you can already do into steps that leave nothing to judgement.
Every line of code, every prompt, every model is this one move repeated: take something you understand loosely and state it so exactly that no interpretation is left. The gap between what you meant and what you wrote is where every bug in the next 47 lessons lives.
Do this
Write a procedure for an everyday task — making toast, tying a shoe. Hand it to someone who has never done it and let them follow it literally, refusing to answer questions. Fix every place they had to guess.
The question that unlocks the next lesson
Your instructions say “spread the butter on the bread.” Why does a literal follower fail?
- AThe step is too short to be a real instruction
- B“Spread” and “the butter” both require a judgement the steps never supplied
- CButter is not a machine-readable object
- DInstructions must always be numbered to be followed