Is ChatGPT the holy grail for building side projects?

For sure - just speeds up some of the cumbersome tasks and also great and 'nudging' in the right direction. Really good at getting you started by laying out a framework to lillypad off.

Not a holy grail, but a useful tool.

It’s very rare that I get gpt to give me code I actually want to use, but it gets me past the blank page when I’m working on something new.

It catches typos and small logical errors of code that I paste into it, which is nice.

My biggest use of gpt is for writing small functions that are easily explained in English like “loop through all files in this directory, convert them from json to csv with each row having these columns from the json”

That’s boring to write by myself, but takes a few moments for gpt.

These transformer language models were designed to translate languages. No reason it can’t translate English to code

As a developer yes chatgpt is game changer. For example if I want to do some complex logic which need me to think how to implement it , I will request the code from chatgpt.

This saves time and I manage to build mvps within weekend.

I have a rule for building mvps which it must be done within weekend because I believe in failing fast and iterate fast ( checkout my article regarding When Building MVP, Speed is the Focus ).

So chatgpt help me to outsource logics and the best part is chatgpt will give the logics in function or class so I just need to call it in my code without altering it.

I know for me as a designer & WP developer with a number of ideas for side projects, ChatGPT came along at the perfect time to actually catalyse pursuing them. Majority of the hinderances to those side projects were clear coding challenges, such as ones requiring complex interpretation of data and calculations, or custom integrations with external APIs — two things that ChatGPT is amazing at.

While I could have eventually figured out the code myself in those circumstances, the fact that ChatGPT understood the API requirements for my coding language, and could step through its logic process so I can address issues, did in fact drastically decrease development times for me. I’ve been able to see one major side project through to fruition with custom integrations into Stripe, and another client project that would have otherwise probably taken double the time or required me to bring on another coder.

It's an undertalked about story. But yes has definitely been the case for me and I'm sure others.

Experts won't benefit that much (since they already know their area of expertise). But it has dramatically reduced the length of time for newbies to get up to speed with a new technology/solving a new problem.

It's like 5-10x more efficient than scouring Stackoverflow or sitting through YT tutorials.

No doubt it's going to significantly reduce the time to build small side projects and save a lot of time.

As a developer i think chatgpt is incredible. Ensure you have sufficient of technical knowledge and ask chatgpt to debug and build in advance is amazing. save me lots of time

I'd actually wanna counter the general comments here with the fact that it's almost a multiplier booster to your already existing skill level.

If you're a beginner, then you have no way of verifying that AI didn't just lie to you or if there are certain fundamental issues with the provided code.

I've had examples where the provided code worked but it used outdated packages, so I had to keep iterating with it over the output to get something that is actually usable and I'm not sure that most juniors would be able to deal with these kinds of issues. At least in the current form that we have AIs

So far ChatGPT really helped me to overcome the “writers block” when struggling with copy for landing pages, social posts, etc.

I typically end up using only a small portion of what the AI comes up with writing the rest myself. Still a great helping tool.

I’ve never gotten any useful code out of it. It mostly just hallucinates something that makes absolutely no sense. Although the “rubber duck effect” is helpful.

With ChatGPT on your side, your side projects can go from "maybe someday" to "done before your coffee gets cold!" - if you already understand coding that is.

I've also been exploring the capabilities of ChatGPT for my side projects. While it's true that it can sometimes produce unreliable code, the time-saving aspect is undeniable. It's like having a co-developer who can instantly generate code snippets or even entire functions. However, I do agree with some of the commenters here that it's essential to have some foundational knowledge to make the most out of ChatGPT. It's not a complete replacement for human expertise but certainly a powerful tool in the developer's arsenal.

I've used ChatGPT and am in fact using it as a supplement presently to help me build my next app service which will be a Chrome extension. It's useful and can be extremely helpful but, is in no way good at creating complex applications from scratch or creating well-crafted solutions in pre-existing code bases with exceptional complexity.

It has certainly unlocked some superpowers for me. The most impressive thing I’ve stumbled on lately is using ChatGPT to tell me how to get ChatGPT to do the thing I want to do. For example, I wanted to extract structured data from unstructured text. After fiddling with prompts for hours, I just described the problem, my goals, and the types of documents, and asked it for a suggested workflow and prompt. And it gave me a great suggestion! Required very little tweaking.

So yes, it’s pretty amazing.

I’m An animator and a lot of the time i use code to do 3d animation and language itself is called VEX a very esoteric language, i was super surprise it’s supported. What I’m curious to know is whether GPT4 superior to 3.5 in terms of code writing,

ChatGPT and Github Copilot are very helpful but GPT is a beast. I'm trying to build products on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 but it's quite unreliable. Many downtimes in the evenings, random errors, 32k model is not enabled in my account, and so on. But I'm still optimistic because such issues will be fixed over time.

It definitely speeds up the process, but it isn’t always perfect. It gives a great template and of there are problems, ChatGPT will correct whatever problems you bring up.

Certainly! even if it's not 100% accurate it's PERFECT in giving hints and knowing from where you should start, it's definitely a time saver!!!

Was wondering, has ChatGPT drastically decrease the time it takes you to build side projects?

Yes, it’s like having a pair programmer next to you. But it only works good if you know how to use it by asking the right questions in the right way. This still requires some knowledge and experience. If you better understand what you need, ChatGPT can help you better of course.

I use it daily to help me with complex questions, code and repetitive things like writing unit tests.

Definitely, it replaces a lot of the boilerplate systems that I used in the past, and it helps me get up to speed with APIs and technologies that I wasn't familiar with. Beyond that, I think Copilot is more powerful.

Source: I wrote https://domainbrainstormer.com with heavy use of ChatGPT, as a weekend project.

It does help but only if you are explicit about what you want.

Depends on the project and what prompt you give. Also, I always use chatgpt to create scripts like migration and parsing in NodeJs and it's generating them pretty good. Sure it puts you ahead and gives you something to work.

yes, it helps a lot when I need some new tech, and chatgpt will give a brief intro. It can save me a lot of time for myself.

For sure! There is just less interference in the process of development with it as co-pilot. And there is also the confidence factor it brings - in the back of your head you know a lot of problems can be solved working with it rather than hoping to land on a post / thread.

Yes, most definitely! ChatGPT takes away most of the time consuming tedious tasks. It also helps me with my creativity.

OpenAI's helps in achieving the milestone which was the most cumbersome i.e. handling NLP. Hence its good that even backend engineers are now able to unleash their creativity and create awesome tools.

For sure