What do you think about using ChatGPT to code the entire startup?
I have never actually built a product before and am currently building a product right now. I had some coding experience using python and javascript. Now I'm building my product using typescript and using ChatGPT.
While this approach facilitates progress and efficiency, particularly in areas like website design, it also raises questions about the learning aspect of coding.
It seems like using ChatGPT to code a startup would help me to achieve my goal of building the product (somehow). But I'm a bit confused of the learning side or the process of learning to get better of coding. What I'm learning is like putting a different chunks of code together and make it run, and also learning a bit of the logic behind the code.
As an indie hacker trying to ship fast (with ChatGPT), how do you treat the learning side of indie hacking in the era of AI? Let me know your thought!
To be able to do that with ChatGPT you need deep knowledge of the tech stack you would like to develop your product with and correct ChatGPT prompts, according to my personal experience.
ChatGPT tend to "lie" or offer hard ways to technical problems to solve, especially as an answer to weak prompts. You should be always aware of the code snippet's that it offers and be able to measure technical debts it brings.
Although I have no experience on, there are hundreds of AI solutions focus on programming. Maybe those ones might be what you are looking for.
On the other hand, don't make my negative comments regarding coding with chatgpt hold you back. If you find better way or better experience than mine please share here :)
Good luck with your product and happy coding :)
It seems to be the way. Using ChatGPT to learn from the code snippets and building the blocks, though sometimes confused to understand. Mostly I just skimmed through the explanation and paste the code. I hope to get better experience in really actually "learn something", and at the same time, ship the product as fast as possible.
To be honest you can do it as someone who only knows html and basic css knowledge, I have made a chrome extension totally using chat gpt, and I made a few websites too, nothing big, but it If you try to make chat gpt understand what you want it'll do it.
Good luck
That's a good inspiration. Thank you!
Yes, it’s a great way to learn
LLMs like ChatGPT are capable of producing coherent, correct-sounding text outputs. They do not guarantee correctness.
It is very helpful for when you have a lot of boilerplate code. But it is absolutely no help (and I would actively discourage using it) when you are working on items that require original thought and problem solving skills.
Think of ChatGPT (or Co-pilot) as obedient 3-year olds. You could trust them to do some boring repetitive tasks but won't reply on them for their understanding of business logic.
Hope this helps!
Absolutely, you can definitely start building your MVP with ChatGPT.
Just bear in mind that it’s just the beginning; perfecting your final product might need some expert eyes to polish what you've put together.
When using ChatGPT, having a clear vision and a solid plan is key because you’ll need to piece your project together bit by bit.
Remember, ChatGPT can only handle so many messages at a time before you need to start over with a new session...
and the new agent won’t remember your previous conversations.
It’s a bit like trial and error, tweaking as you go until each piece works.
This method can absolutely get you a workable MVP, although it might not be seamless and could have some redundancy and inefficiencies.
But don’t worry, once you’ve built your MVP, you can always refine it later with a specialist to enhance its performance and cohesion.
So go for it, start building, and see where it takes you!
Thank you so much! Very useful advice
Yes you can make a websites with the help of chatgpt, but you have knowledge about html, css and java script to make useful website.
I would recommend using plain JavaScript instead of TypeScript, at least for now.
What are the tradeoffs in both?
typescript code for development and it requires extra time but when you need to develop the mvp in short time then js is much faster for development time in compare with ts
You are right I’m currently using typescript for the first time. And it definitely takes more time to code even ChatGPT is helping.
Any reason why you aren’t considering a no code approach until you get some functionality and maybe product market fit? Just wondering as in some cases it seems like a potential, but maybe not in this case. Apologies if this comes off as a dumb question.
No worries. That sounds right
its up to you to let the gpt explain to you every block of code and then spend as much time with it as you find useful.
I agree it's up to me