GoKawiilHere are my accumulated thoughts and ideas about AI since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.
40 months of ChatGPT
OpenAI first launched ChatGPT at the end of November 2022, nearly 40 months ago. I remember trying it at the time and being really impressed, just like everyone else. At first I just talked to it, and I remember being absolutely amazed. I remember what it was like to talk to older chat bots, more primitive programs like Cleverbot. ChatGPT was better, much better. So much so that it was immediately obvious that this was not going to be just another toy for internet nerds, the rest of the world was going to notice.
I experimented with asking it to write, to create content. I first asked it to create poems, then Dungeons and Dragons backgrounds and even a whole fantasy world including important characters, kingdoms, and lore. It was very impressive, just for the fact that the output was coherent but its ‘style’ was very boring and overtly inoffensive, which was (and still is) a clear limitation of the technology.
I was listening to the Linus Tech Tips WAN Show immediately following the launch and hearing Luke mention that ChatGPT was being prompted to produce fully functional programs. This made me very curious and I wanted to try prompting ChatGPT to test its capabilities. I first asked for simple hello world programs, which it produced perfectly. I was very impressed and continued to play with it, and it didn’t take long for me to realise that this bot could produce genuinely useful code snippets for common and well understood use cases. For simple things it was able to replace my typical research loop, I no longer needed to search on StackOveflow or other discussion forums for these kinds of solutions. A binder of cards using the printed placeholders from my 'vibe coded' app.
I remember the first time I vibe-coded a small project. It was an app that generated placeholder cards for my MTG collection. I prompted the bot (now Claude, not ChatGPT) to create an app that would fetch for the card metadata from an API, generate a qrcode, and correctly layout this information into a printable page of cards. The first output was very impressive, and mostly worked. I attempted to make adjustments with additional prompting but was unable to make meaningful progress. I gave up on using the bot, and finished the project on my own. Through each iteration of the project I replaced more of what the bot wrote with my own code. The final result hardly used any AI generated code at all. I debated with myself whether I had actually saved any time or effort, compared with having just done everything myself from the very beginning. Coding AI has come a long way since then, but even now I’m constantly asking myself just how much is this actually useful for coding?
Claude Code, my Review
Two months ago I purchased a Claude Pro subscription for the first time. Claude had been my free chat bot of choice for over a year and I had become increasingly curious about Claude Code. My initial impression was intensely positive. I immediately installed Claude Code on my workstation and began experimenting. I remember the initial excitement from being able to speak naturally to my computer. So long as I was careful to clarify my intent, I was now able to tell my computer what I wanted it to do and it would consistently do what I asked. It felt then (and now) like a brand new form of input and control of my computer along side my keyboard, mouse, and even command line terminal. I have a lot of doubts about using AI, but not for this use case. This is unambiguously good, useful, and just amazing. I would be very pleased to see this technology become fully commoditized. I would love to have a local LLM loaded on my GPU, or on a separate desktop appliance, that can do just this, and do so this well.
And of course I also tried vibe coding using Claude Code. The results were again very impressive. For the small projects that I attempted, I was able to get a good one-shot result (just like I did previously). This time the iterative prompting felt much more productive. The Claude Code interface eliminates the friction of copy/pasting from a chat interface, the bot can just make the edit itself. I was impressed with model’s ability to maintain coherency and context. I was amazed when it created solutions or found bugs that I failed to see. But even on seemingly simple projects it felt like I was struggling to keep it from eventually losing the plot.
I also tried to use Claude Code to help me start a business. Since I lost my job as an IT Technician last year I had considered building my own small IT services company. I tried to use Claude as a combination of executive assistant and mentor. I asked it to create a detailed pre-launch plan that I could follow, and then to track my progress. In hindsight it all seems painfully obvious and simple, but I must admit that the mere process of creating the plan was very inspiring and created a lot of confidence in me. I did manage to launch the business, and despite not yet attracting customers (except for friends and family) I’m continuing to work on it, but mostly without any ai assistance.
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