I have been using computers to handicap horses for many years. My first computer was an Atari 400. It had 16K of RAM, a crude BASIC language and cassette tape storage.
Hey, that was a big step up from calculators. I had borrowed a friend's HP41C to write some reverse Polish handicappers.
What I'm saying is, I've been around a while - maybe too long.
Nowadays the hype is all about artificial intelligence (AI,) but I would rather stick to human intelligence as there's little enough of that to go around, anyway.
Although I am no programmer, I am pretty good at hacking small ideas into snippets of code.
The trouble I'm lazy. I don't want to learn the proper way to code or how to test or document. I like learning the hard way. I just want the program to do what I need done right now.
Such little snippets tend to grow over time. My latest "program" is a Python algorithm written to learn the pandas library by combining various data about horses into a selection method that sorts the race by most likely to win. It ranks the horses and outputs a semi-pretty text table from top to bottom.
That code started with, "Hey, I wonder how to use the pandas library?"
It's a weird library. I've been trying to wrap my head around it for two years. It is slowly sinking in how to use it and abuse it. You could say I monkey around with it until it works.
I have found that if you just keep trying, you'll eventually either figure it out or not. Persistence.
Anyway, I am kind of in-between writing programs and just cleaning up code, debugging a little and updating some offsets for different racetracks.
The Algorithm is now being used to make selections at Oaklawn Park in beautiful Hot Springs Arkansas. You can follow my picks on Patreon and on my website. I may even start adding some video to YouTube.
