For those who know me well, know I was a hockey dad. Ariel was involved in youth hockey from the age of three, till well let’s say she is not done at 24, she works as a referee. When she was between five and ten, one of the most important ways to improve her skills was not during practice, during games or any other structured environment; it came during some free play time.  

She went to open skate and played tag with friends; there were open hockey ice times where she and her friends could play. There were no coaches, no parents, no one judging them. I built an outdoor rink in my backyard where she could skate and play with friends. Kids could make up rules, try things they would not do in front of coaches and just well be kids. There are articles written about the importance of free play in hockey.  

But what about your job? I happen to be in technology, and it changes fast. We transitioned from mainframe to client server, to n-tier, to web-based applications over a thirty-year period. In the last three years, the tornado that is AI (really LLMs but let us make it easy) has thrown developers through a loop.  The question is how does one keep up; how do you make sure that you are staying up to date? Maybe if you are lucky where you work gives you sometimes to experiment or R&D time. Some companies give some training or allow employees to attend conferences.  

If someone loves technology, they may play in their time with what is new.  I have always found ways to play with tech; there is always something that drives me to learn.  Sometimes what I learned is a complete failure. Spending time on how to make my own cryptocurrency or NFTs was a waste of time. In 2022, a class I took on Artificial Intelligence though sparked a huge joy. Now this was pre-Open Ai’s release of GPT; the class was focused on using libraries like “scikit” and how things like Google are able to identify a person in a picture. From that class we had to build some data viewers, where I first found the Streamlit library.  This showed me how to build prototypes quickly and found instant applications for work.  

When I started to play with Chat-GPT and relalized it would write code, I wrote my blog post about the updated version of pair programming. What I was not prepared for was the massive changes that would occur so quickly. I demonstrated the AI development dozens of times at work and got interesting feedback. Now, a lot of programmers are on board, but they still think it is prompt and have the AI write code. But what happened over the past month pushed me to play deeper than I was previously.  

Openclaw (previously Clawdbot, Motlbot) hit mainstream, and at the end of January I had installed it and was kicking the tires. Like many others, we saw plenty of security issues. We also saw the extreme power this AI Agent had. This was the promise of AI.  

Over the past four weeks I decided to play with two of these User Agent Tools and build one of my own. What I learned is that these tools are here now, I did not write a code line in any of the three tools, and they all successfully built me a personal assistant health tracker. I could track if I had a good eating day, what workout I did that day, my energy level etc. I am interacting via telegram; I message it what I want it to do, and it does it. Yes, there is more I need to do, like give it a voice and add lost functionality. But the cost of building these applications, about $10 each in LLM, costs.  

But what was unreal was I did not give it requirements; I gave it a goal. I wanted to improve my accountability of becoming a better person, father, friend, son, and employee. I let the AI ask me questions and create the product. It created ways for me to interact with it so it could figure out what to build. I really could go on and on about what this technology can do, as well as where it is going, but that will be another essay.  

This is about free play; I would not be able to improve myself as a technologist without experimenting. This free play has driven me to get my team to use the tools, to bring in specification driven development versus thinking we are just coders. We are there to enable the business through software, and it is changing. The only way you can keep up is to play.  

Now there is a downside. In a quick text interaction with a friend who is in the same business, they mention they do not look at technology when they are not at work. They need a break. In fact, there are articles that were written about the possibility of “burnout” including the fact that the dopamine hit building so quickly it is addictive. Steve Yegge calls it an AI Vampire.I cannot disagree with my friend who does not want to play after work, and I assume she has the freedom to do some R&D in the office. That is still “free play” as doing R&D does not guarantee and outcome, well the outcome can be “this will not work.”  

To recap, free play is key to getting better, whether you do it during your job, or outside you need to experiment and play without needing a guaranteed outcome. Technology changes so fast that you do not have a choice but to change.  Bruce Lee once said, “To change with change is a changeless state.” in part two of playing i will go in deeper about my thoughts on AI, but for now play with it.  

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers, have nothing to do with it. I do not write for financial gain; I do not take advertising, and any product company listed was not paid. But if you do like what I write, you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. The fundraising site had to be restarted, and NYP Hospital made changes to their donation sites. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket; my intention is to keep it free.  You can comment, but note it is moderated, and spam will be removed.   

 This Blog is a labor of love and was originally going to be a book. With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web, I chose this path. I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content. I apologize in advance for my ADD as topics may flip. I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.  AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information. Images without notes are created using an AI tool that allows me to reuse them. And as always spelunz iz opshunal.