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@gothick @pandion This is probably far closer to the truth than you might think. Here is a true story:

This was back in the mid 1980’s, the early days of expert systems, before they had that name. At my institution (gov), if you wanted a computer you had to write, submit and get approval of an Automated Data Processing (ADP) plan before you could buy it. The plans were complicated with many rules, cases, etc., and consumed tremendous amount of time to prepare and review, often with many iterations.

Fresh out of grad school, I could not let this stand. A couple of us worked for about a month and created an expert system to write perfect ADP plans. The system was built in HyperCard! It asked users a series of necessary and sufficient questions and filled in the ADP Office’s template plan. It was hugely popular and people made plans and finally started ordering the computers they wanted. Success! But wait, it gets better.

About two months later, I got a call from the ADP Office asking for help. They were being inundated with ADP plans and couldn’t review them in a timely way (as if they ever did). Could I write them a program to help review the plans? I was astonished that they were clueless about my ADP-Writer program, and I did not enlighten them.

It was trivial (but I took plenty of time) to create ADP-Reader. So ADP-Reader was “reading” plans created by ADP-Writer! Users were happy, the ADP Office was happy, and I was a hero.

After six months or so of this, I couldn’t let the charade continue. I pulled back the curtain and … it wasn’t fast, but the ADP Office was defunded and ADP plan requirements were eliminated.