I am a pretty 'mid' software developer generally, have been working as a PM for the last 3 years so have gotten rusty. Got laid off in December.
In about 60 hours of work, I've built a MVP React webapp that is hosted on githubpages, uses firebase for a serverless backend, and integrates with OpenAI APIs to turn user requests into structured JSON that serves as a starting point for the users without having to code the complex logic manually.
Just used ChatGPT4 to figure out how to get a domain working with my githubpages hosting (turns out I skipped a step when I read the docs - and DNS issues can be confusing).
Each of those steps had me running into frustrating bugs that I could have spun my wheels on for hours - with ChatGPT4, it didn't always identify the fix immediately, but I was able to debug so much faster, usually resolving the issue in about 30 minutes. More than the time savings, I really appreaciate the effect it has on morale for me: I hate being stuck on a problem and not knowing what to try next. It feels like I have a senior engineer who I can slack a question and get a thoughtful response inhumanly fast at any time of day (even when coding at 2AM).
ChatGPT 4 has been a lot more helpful to me that Copilot, but I might just not know how to get the most out of copilot yet. Copilot is really nice for jumping past writing boilerplate, but ChatGPT 4 can synthesize entire solutions that span multiple files, which I haven't had success getting from copilot.
What's even cooler is that I had never even touched React before 3 weeks ago, and now feel like I'm moderately fluent in the general design principles. If I was doing self-directed study of React starting from the docs, I probably would still be playing with toy hello world problems, but instead I've gotten the project I was hoping to build to a viable prototype.
One source of delight is using AI to synthesize dictionary data. I have a bunch of ingredients that users choose from and being able to "autocomplete" a solid initial draft for new dict entries feels like magic.
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If you want to see what I built, or are in the Seattle area and want to try out AI-powered natural skincare formulation, here's my shameless plug: https://skincremental.com/
The core is all working and good enough, but probably have another week to get it to where I think it'll be ready to start doing some marketing.