I've built an app... With AI..... Hear me out!
Edit: I think I need to clarify further that this is a one off thing. I've never had AI build anything for me. This is just one time that I wanted to test it out, and the test came out with a good app that I thought I could share to maybe benefit some. Just to be clear, it's not thinking for me, I still learn on my own, and have AI ONLY explain concepts for me, not code, and it does very well. Asked for opinions, got downvotes. lol
Hi all,
I do code on my own without AI, but in all honesty, I'm not that great (I'm a junior dev at my job, and don't have a lot of experience). I always use AI to explain things to me, not code for me. I made that my mission, so I don't let it think for me because I want to learn. It explains things very well and I've been learning a great deal.
Today, I decided to test it out. I asked it to build an app for me that works on KDE Plasma, my favorite DE.
I use some appimages for some apps. I tried appimagelauncher and gear lever and had some issues with them.
I want to integrate appimages into my system. So, I did a small workaround where I created a small script in ~/.local/bin
that has one line after the shebang exec /<path to app image>/<appimage>
. Then created a .desktop file that points to that script. I made one for Suyu and VIA and they both worked. I wanted to do it for more apps, but it got repetitive, so I gave AI some requirements and told it to add what's necessary if needed.
I've never programmed in Python, and it chose Python. lol. Ok, let's go with it. It made a pretty nice app. The app does 5 things:
1. Creates that little script I mentioned earlier
2. Creates the .desktop file for that app and makes it point to the correct things (script, icon, startupWMClass(this is so the app will still launch after pinning it to the panel)....etc)
3. Copies the appimage into a "appimages" folder in the home directory
4. Adds an icon of your choosing to the app
5. It makes everything executable
I had it package the app into an appimage (that's something I've never done before and it was pretty freaking cool to learn) and I'm planning on making an .rpm and a .deb packages of it, too.
The honest part. I feel a tiny bit of shame deep inside. But then I look at it and I see an app that could help some people. Who cares how I created it? I have always wanted to contribute something to the Linux world, and this feels like it.
What I'm asking for: your honest opinion. Should I feel that little shame? Should I put it up on GitHub? It would of course be GPL licensed. Maybe some folks want to make it better or contribute or fork it. I love open source and I feel like this could be useful to some.
So, hit me.
Thank you
golden_zealot
in reply to DonutsRMeh • • •You're robbing yourself of gaining legitimate experience.
Ok.
Alright.
Seems like the exact opposite of just having it explain concepts to you, and not letting it think for you, and not letting it write code for you.
Ok, so you aren't actually learning any python, and it is just generating python code for you, which you made no attempt to change such that it would just be explaining concepts to you preferably in a language you do know. Sounds a lot like you aren't doing a lot of the thinking in this process, or writing the code.
Instead of asking AI to make this in a language you don't know, you'd probably be a lot better off learning some BASH and discovering that this is likely doable in a one-liner or function which you can associate to an alias.
So it is thinking for you, writing the code for you, and packaging it for you.
You should.
Programmers, artists, your boss, your future self when something breaks in prod and you realize that you have robbed yourself of so much experience by outsourcing any opportunity to obtain skill, knowledge, and wisdom that you have no idea what the fuck to do or why the problem is happening, and then someone sues you over it because it turns out in the mess of AI code which you haven't even looked at 60% of up until this point there are out of scope variables from a thread the AI found on 1337codeForum.fuck circa 2008 which lead to a disaster where some guy who actually knows how code works half way around the globe stack buffer overflowed the fuck out of you.
If you want honest opinions from people, then this is mine. That little shame you feel is probably larger than you think and it's because you aren't doing yourself any favors.
DonutsRMeh
in reply to golden_zealot • • •It was a one time test. I thought I have expanded on that specifically. English is my second language, so I could have explained it wrong, or not enough I guess. Appreciate the input regardless 😀
Edit: to add, those 5 steps I asked it to do are the work around I did myself without AI. I know bash. I just wanted it to make what I did in bash into an app. Hope this makes sense.
chickenf622
in reply to DonutsRMeh • • •You learn so much more doing it yourself instead of having AI write code for you. When I first learned how to admin an Apache server I had 0 understanding how it worked, but with some effort I'm now confident enough to do a simple setup on my own. I did follow along with tutorials and examples configs, but I made sure I knew what each part did at least on a high level. The reason I'm confident in this is that I know how to read the docs and how to troubleshoot issues when they happen.
When you let AI do all the work you don't learn the inner workings of a system and are only hurting yourself. If you want to use AI use it for writing some boiler plate you've already written hundreds of times or taking simple functions and converting them to another language. I use AI for basic and repetitive tasks, which is something it's great at. I don't use it for making large design decisions since that will (not "if", but "will") bite me in the ass later on when something breaks. Examples of good uses of AI (in my opinion): generating a list of US states in JavaScript, take a function that converts a strijg to a date object and try to translate it to another language, use it as a tool to bounce some high level ideas off of when you're at a development block.
DonutsRMeh
in reply to chickenf622 • • •untakenusername
in reply to DonutsRMeh • • •DonutsRMeh
in reply to untakenusername • • •