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I was discussing with a client how to integrate our software with his. He sent me a screenshot of the main form. I put the screenshot into ChatGPT and said “m

I was discussing with a client how to integrate our software with his. He sent me a screenshot of the main form. I put the screenshot into ChatGPT and said “make a react form like this in bootstrap”. Made some adjustments, added my software, a few hours later showed the client who was knocked out to see a proof of concept of our systems integrated so quickly. When doing web development I often take a screenshot of a problem with css layout, upload to ChatGPT and ask how to fix it. The demo shown in the tweet seems pretty similar.

nwoli 3y ago
It’s most likely using chatgpt in the backend
- OJFord 3y ago
  No need to guess, there's a thing at the bottom asking for an OpenAI API key at the bottom, and it can't function without that. (So actually technically I think that means no, it's not using ChatGPT, but I don't think that was the point.)
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    I think it's accurate enough to call the OpenAI API the ChatGPT API since it's using the same models. But yeah, technically not the same thing.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      Yeah I didn't mean to be pedantic about that, because actually I don't think there is a ChatGPT API, there's no reasonable way something like this even could use it I think? And the only reason to really would be to use the free one (not have to ask for a key) which would surely be against the terms, and doesn't do any computer vision or anything as presumably needed by this demo. In other contexts though I think it can be ambiguous and I can understand why people get irritated/pedantic about it - AIUI it's the same model but different training/parameters? And ChatGPT only gives you the 'user' prompt essentially, with the 'system' one already being 'you are a chatbot called ChatGPT [...]' or whatever.
- rob137 3y ago
  Yep: https://github.com/tldraw/draw-a-ui/blob/2ac633bbbd5fda39e59935872fba00d849fa4dbf/app/api/toHtml/route.ts https://github.com/tldraw/draw-a-ui/blob/2ac633bbbd5fda39e59...
toyg 3y ago
Yes, the customer will be impressed by your speed the first time. The second time, he will expect it. The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be beyond what ChatGPT can deal with, he'll be angry that timescales have exploded.
- code_runner 3y ago
  I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. Being worse at your job on purpose isn't typically a great strategy. It sounds to me like the commenter has found a subset of his work which can be sped up significantly with chatGPT and is using that to continue conversations with a potential client. Pretty cool if you ask me.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    > I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. It’s called Expectation Management. It’s how successful business is done. Marketing 101: Under promise, over deliver. P.S. Apple is quite good at this IMHO. I notice they often very quickly go from product announcement to product availability. My theory for why this is good is that there less time in between for people’s imagination to run wild and fill in the information gaps with their own ideas that the actual product might not satisfy. Expectations remain ground when their customers receive the product vs a product getting hyped to the moon such that it’s practically impossible for it to ever live up to the hype.
    - code_runner 3y ago
      i'm not replying about the concept of under promise, over deliver, but more like.... why would you avoid a tool that helps you do something quickly because you don't want to explain to your client that some steps aren't as fast to do as others.
      - toyg 3y ago
misja111 3y ago
But the thing is, creating a basic form page -is- simple. What is so amazing, is that after ~25 years of web development, we have continued to make it more complicated than it should be, by continuously coming up with new web frameworks that are brilliant for all kind of fancy use cases but overcomplicated for the more common and basic tasks. Yes, there have been exceptions every now and then, but most web devs don't like them. They don't look fancy on your cv and face it, who wants to stick to building web forms for the rest of their career?
- tootie 3y ago
  Not just simple, it's a thing I'd never even ask a coder to do anymore. I'd pay for Hubspot or some kind of form-management SaaS tool.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  The software world is much more flexible than the real world (yeah , I know, you're taking to Sherlock here). Go to a civil engineer and ask to create a building that tilts extremely on one side and requires concrete reinforcement with titanium whatever... they will laugh at you. Do the equivalent to a software engineer or product manager and they will hurry to invent yet another framework to satisfy your request, without giving a second thought about long-term consequences. My point is that the real world has the laws of physics keeping things in check. With software, we don't have such obvious hard limits and each situation is case-by-case with lots of variables... it gets messy.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Also programmers tend to think we’re very smart and clever. We tend to like complex problems and complicated systems and build them. Ironically it’s much harder to make simple software that covers complex use cases than it is to make complex software to do the same.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I don't think this is about flexibility. It's more about culture. Software engineering culture does not value simplicity, and actually seems to value complexity. Other engineering cultures place a lot more value on simplicity, and its associated values of reliability and risk mitigation. A civil engineer can build you that building, but they will think "what a ridiculous architect." With a software engineering mindset, they would happily build that building for you, and invent a new type of concrete mixed with titanium flakes to do it for you. And then they will go on a decades-long campaign about how titanium-flake-concrete is the Next Big Thing and that anyone using normal concrete is a simpleton.
jorvi 3y ago
If this was an e-mail or chat conversation with a client, imagine if your client was asking ChatGPT the best way to formulate his requirements to you. It’s turtles all the way down :+)
cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Yeah, but maybe the client didn't want you to expose his data to ChatGPT.
2-718-281-828 3y ago
how do you put a screenshot into chatgpt?
- j_bum 3y ago
  I believe it requires plus*, but I’m not sure. However, you can paste in an image, or you can click the paperclip on the bottom left of the prompt area to upload an image (or other files).
  - 2-718-281-828 3y ago
    you mean plus i assume
- ilaksh 3y ago
  They are probably using the new GPT Vision API that OpenAI just added this month.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Just snip it and paste it. If you're in Windows, I use the Snipping Tool Windows + Shift + S. Then just go to ChatGPT4 (Pro only) and hit paste.
- financltravsty 3y ago
  1. Take your screenshot 2. Switch model to ChatGPT 4 3. Click the attachment/paperclip button in the prompt bar 4. Send
rchaud 3y ago
Creating the front-end of a Bootstrap form with no backend logic isn't particularly impresssive, it's something that would be taught halfway through any bootcamp course. Source: me, a person who built BS sites for years until I finally got around to learning Flexbox and CSS Grid properly.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Hell, I can build that form WITH backend logic with like five minutes in django and I'm not even good with django! If it takes you a long time to build a form, you've done something very very wrong.
  - agvxov 3y ago
    i dont think you grasp the scale difference between seconds and minutes correctly. and it will add up quite fast.
seydor 3y ago
Shudder at the thought of every client expecting this for granted
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  They do that anyway. I've lost count of the number of times customers have asked me for something that "could be knocked out in an afternoon".
joshstrange 3y ago
> When doing web development I often take a screenshot of a problem with css layout, upload to ChatGPT and ask how to fix it. Oh wow, that’s a neat idea that I hadn’t thought of before. I’m decent enough at CSS that I can normally fix it in dev tools then port/copy the styles to the code but I’ll have to remember that trick. I haven’t used ChatGPT as much for code as I have CLI piping or bash scripts to munge data quickly. Things I wouldn’t have checked (like for debugging or proving a hypothesis) become almost easy when I can give ChatGPT the output of a command and ask it for bash to format/collate/sort/extract what I want out of it. I can do it manually but I’m slow at that process and have to google or use man pages to remember flags/args/etc. For code I mostly just use GH Copilot.

nwoli 3y ago

It’s most likely using chatgpt in the backend

OJFord 3y ago
No need to guess, there's a thing at the bottom asking for an OpenAI API key at the bottom, and it can't function without that. (So actually technically I think that means no, it's not using ChatGPT, but I don't think that was the point.)
- ilaksh 3y ago
  I think it's accurate enough to call the OpenAI API the ChatGPT API since it's using the same models. But yeah, technically not the same thing.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Yeah I didn't mean to be pedantic about that, because actually I don't think there is a ChatGPT API, there's no reasonable way something like this even could use it I think? And the only reason to really would be to use the free one (not have to ask for a key) which would surely be against the terms, and doesn't do any computer vision or anything as presumably needed by this demo. In other contexts though I think it can be ambiguous and I can understand why people get irritated/pedantic about it - AIUI it's the same model but different training/parameters? And ChatGPT only gives you the 'user' prompt essentially, with the 'system' one already being 'you are a chatbot called ChatGPT [...]' or whatever.
rob137 3y ago
Yep: https://github.com/tldraw/draw-a-ui/blob/2ac633bbbd5fda39e59935872fba00d849fa4dbf/app/api/toHtml/route.ts https://github.com/tldraw/draw-a-ui/blob/2ac633bbbd5fda39e59...

toyg 3y ago

Yes, the customer will be impressed by your speed the first time. The second time, he will expect it. The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be beyond what ChatGPT can deal with, he'll be angry that timescales have exploded.

code_runner 3y ago
I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. Being worse at your job on purpose isn't typically a great strategy. It sounds to me like the commenter has found a subset of his work which can be sped up significantly with chatGPT and is using that to continue conversations with a potential client. Pretty cool if you ask me.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  > I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. It’s called Expectation Management. It’s how successful business is done. Marketing 101: Under promise, over deliver. P.S. Apple is quite good at this IMHO. I notice they often very quickly go from product announcement to product availability. My theory for why this is good is that there less time in between for people’s imagination to run wild and fill in the information gaps with their own ideas that the actual product might not satisfy. Expectations remain ground when their customers receive the product vs a product getting hyped to the moon such that it’s practically impossible for it to ever live up to the hype.
  - code_runner 3y ago
    i'm not replying about the concept of under promise, over deliver, but more like.... why would you avoid a tool that helps you do something quickly because you don't want to explain to your client that some steps aren't as fast to do as others.
    - toyg 3y ago

misja111 3y ago

But the thing is, creating a basic form page -is- simple. What is so amazing, is that after ~25 years of web development, we have continued to make it more complicated than it should be, by continuously coming up with new web frameworks that are brilliant for all kind of fancy use cases but overcomplicated for the more common and basic tasks. Yes, there have been exceptions every now and then, but most web devs don't like them. They don't look fancy on your cv and face it, who wants to stick to building web forms for the rest of their career?

tootie 3y ago
Not just simple, it's a thing I'd never even ask a coder to do anymore. I'd pay for Hubspot or some kind of form-management SaaS tool.
gtirloni 3y ago
The software world is much more flexible than the real world (yeah , I know, you're taking to Sherlock here). Go to a civil engineer and ask to create a building that tilts extremely on one side and requires concrete reinforcement with titanium whatever... they will laugh at you. Do the equivalent to a software engineer or product manager and they will hurry to invent yet another framework to satisfy your request, without giving a second thought about long-term consequences. My point is that the real world has the laws of physics keeping things in check. With software, we don't have such obvious hard limits and each situation is case-by-case with lots of variables... it gets messy.
- dartos 3y ago
  Also programmers tend to think we’re very smart and clever. We tend to like complex problems and complicated systems and build them. Ironically it’s much harder to make simple software that covers complex use cases than it is to make complex software to do the same.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I don't think this is about flexibility. It's more about culture. Software engineering culture does not value simplicity, and actually seems to value complexity. Other engineering cultures place a lot more value on simplicity, and its associated values of reliability and risk mitigation. A civil engineer can build you that building, but they will think "what a ridiculous architect." With a software engineering mindset, they would happily build that building for you, and invent a new type of concrete mixed with titanium flakes to do it for you. And then they will go on a decades-long campaign about how titanium-flake-concrete is the Next Big Thing and that anyone using normal concrete is a simpleton.

jorvi 3y ago

If this was an e-mail or chat conversation with a client, imagine if your client was asking ChatGPT the best way to formulate his requirements to you. It’s turtles all the way down :+)

cynicalsecurity 3y ago

Yeah, but maybe the client didn't want you to expose his data to ChatGPT.

2-718-281-828 3y ago

how do you put a screenshot into chatgpt?

j_bum 3y ago
I believe it requires plus*, but I’m not sure. However, you can paste in an image, or you can click the paperclip on the bottom left of the prompt area to upload an image (or other files).
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  you mean plus i assume
ilaksh 3y ago
They are probably using the new GPT Vision API that OpenAI just added this month.
qingcharles 3y ago
Just snip it and paste it. If you're in Windows, I use the Snipping Tool Windows + Shift + S. Then just go to ChatGPT4 (Pro only) and hit paste.
financltravsty 3y ago
1. Take your screenshot 2. Switch model to ChatGPT 4 3. Click the attachment/paperclip button in the prompt bar 4. Send

rchaud 3y ago

Creating the front-end of a Bootstrap form with no backend logic isn't particularly impresssive, it's something that would be taught halfway through any bootcamp course. Source: me, a person who built BS sites for years until I finally got around to learning Flexbox and CSS Grid properly.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Hell, I can build that form WITH backend logic with like five minutes in django and I'm not even good with django! If it takes you a long time to build a form, you've done something very very wrong.
- agvxov 3y ago
  i dont think you grasp the scale difference between seconds and minutes correctly. and it will add up quite fast.

seydor 3y ago

Shudder at the thought of every client expecting this for granted

tonyedgecombe 3y ago
They do that anyway. I've lost count of the number of times customers have asked me for something that "could be knocked out in an afternoon".

joshstrange 3y ago

> When doing web development I often take a screenshot of a problem with css layout, upload to ChatGPT and ask how to fix it. Oh wow, that’s a neat idea that I hadn’t thought of before. I’m decent enough at CSS that I can normally fix it in dev tools then port/copy the styles to the code but I’ll have to remember that trick. I haven’t used ChatGPT as much for code as I have CLI piping or bash scripts to munge data quickly. Things I wouldn’t have checked (like for debugging or proving a hypothesis) become almost easy when I can give ChatGPT the output of a command and ask it for bash to format/collate/sort/extract what I want out of it. I can do it manually but I’m slow at that process and have to google or use man pages to remember flags/args/etc. For code I mostly just use GH Copilot.