Giving Good Commands: Be Specific Imagine you have a robot chef. You walk into the kitchen and say: "Make something to eat." The robot chef stares at you. Make what ? Breakfast? Dinner? Three courses? A bowl of cereal? A gourmet meal? Your command was technically understandable — but it was not specific enough to act on. The robot cannot guess what you actually want. So it does nothing, or it guesses and makes the wrong thing. Now try: "Make one slice of white toast with butter." The robot gets to work immediately. There is one correct result, and it can achieve it. Four Things Every Good Command Needs A good command answers all four of these questions: Question What It Means --- --- What to do The action — what kind of thing should happen? On what Which thing is being acted on? How Any details about the way it should be done How much / how many A specific amount, if relevant Applied to the toast example: Question Answer --- --- What to do Make toast On what White bread How Toasted, with butter How much / how many One slice All four answered → a clear, actionable command. When Commands Go Wrong Here are common ways a command can fail, and why: Too vague > ❌ "Make the text bigger" Bigger by how much? Which text? On this screen, or everywhere? What font size is it now? > ✅ "Set the title font size to 24 pixels" Missing a target > ❌ "Delete" Delete what ? The whole file? The selected word? The last character typed? > ✅ "Delete the last character in the search box" Contradictory > ❌ "Save the file but do not overwrite the original" If the file already exists, saving it replaces it. This command is impossible to follow as written. > ✅ "Save a new copy of the file as Budget March2026 v2.pdf" Too many things bundled together > ❌ "Open the file, fix the title, save it, and print three copies" This is four separate commands joined into one instruction. Better to give them one at a time. You Already Do This Well Without thinking about it, you already give specific commands in your daily life: You do not say "set an alarm" — you say "set an alarm for 7:30 AM on weekdays" You do not say "search for something" — you type the exact words you want You do not say "order food" — you say "one medium margherita pizza, no mushrooms, thin crust" Specificity is something you naturally know matters when you want the right result. Programming is just applying that same instinct to instructions for computers. Computers Do Exactly What You Say Here is the hardest part to get used to: computers do exactly what you say, not what you meant. If your command has a small mistake, the computer will follow the mistaken version — every single time, perfectly consistently. This sounds frustrating at first. But it is actually the computer being reliable. A correct command always produces the correct result. An incorrect command always produces the incorrect result. There are no surprises — just the result of what you wrote. The programmer's job is to write commands so clear and specific that there is only one possible way to carry them out. The Test of a Good Command Before giving a command, ask yourself: 1. Is there anything in this command that could mean two different things? 2. Could someone follow this instruction and end up doing the wrong thing? 3. Have I left out any information that is necessary to carry this out correctly? If the answer to any of these is yes — the command needs to be more specific. 🎯 Try This Yourself The Awkward Waiter Your job is to order things. Your volunteer's job is to serve you — correctly, but in the most unhelpful way the words allow. 1. Lay out ten ordinary things on a table: a cup, a spoon, a bottle of water, a plate, a biscuit packet, a pen, a napkin, and whatever else is nearby. 2. Write down five orders on paper before you start. Things like "Bring me some water." "Give me a biscuit." "Set the table." 3. Now read them out one at a time. Your waiter must do exactly what the words say — but whenever an order could mean more than one thing, they must pick the least helpful meaning that is still correct. "Bring me some water" can be one drop. "Give me a biscuit" can be the whole unopened packet, handed over sideways. 4. The waiter scores one point every time they can surprise you and still be right. 5. Now rewrite each order they scored on, using the four questions: what to do, on what, how, how much. Run it again and try to hold them to zero. What to watch for: every point the waiter scored was a hole in your command, not bad behaviour on their part. A computer finds those same holes every single time — the difference is that it is not being funny, and it will not tell you it found one. 🤔 Check Yourself 1. "Make the text bigger." Which of the four questions does this command leave unanswered? Three of the four: On what — which text? The title, one word, everything on the page? How much — bigger by one step, or double the size? How — bigger just here, or everywhere in the app? Only "what to do" (make it…