Earlier in the year I wanted to understand LLMs and GenAI so I tried to push their limits to see what broke and what didn't.
One of my projects was to build a blog/site from scratch. I had 0 web dev/design background.
My experience was starkly less optimistic, and am curious if any one else has tried something similar.
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First off, I must state a deep respect to people who build + design websites, while dealing with Clients.
I had assumed that ChatGPT would be very useful in helping me pick up and build things. However, I had to jettison ChatGPT fairly soon. I just couldn't trust the output of the model. It would suggest things that wouldnt work, then link to sites that didnt exist.
I switched to teaching myself. I had to watch hours of videos, learn CSS, Astro, and several other things from scratch. Definitely not the LLM experience I was expecting.
Code from Figma was great - but if I wanted an actual responsive site, I had to write the CSS myself, because boilerplate CSS had all sorts of odds and ends.
Getting an image to come out as I liked from Midjourney was fun - but it was also a massive time sink.
I had hoped to be able to get complex tasks done entirely with assistance from the LLM. In the end it helped maybe 20-30%. Its greatest use was to clarify concepts instead of me having to wade through specification docs.
When I went back to the videos of people using chatgpt to build a website in under 30 minutes - its always someone who knows the domain extensively.
I did get a site up and running after ~1-2 weeks of work including the necessary ritual sacrifices.
edit: writing in a rush, grammar and text are messed up.
edit: GPT 4, copilot and midjourney. AFAIK I had no half measures.
My experience was starkly less optimistic, and am curious if any one else has tried something similar.
-----
First off, I must state a deep respect to people who build + design websites, while dealing with Clients.
I had assumed that ChatGPT would be very useful in helping me pick up and build things. However, I had to jettison ChatGPT fairly soon. I just couldn't trust the output of the model. It would suggest things that wouldnt work, then link to sites that didnt exist.
I switched to teaching myself. I had to watch hours of videos, learn CSS, Astro, and several other things from scratch. Definitely not the LLM experience I was expecting.
Code from Figma was great - but if I wanted an actual responsive site, I had to write the CSS myself, because boilerplate CSS had all sorts of odds and ends.
Getting an image to come out as I liked from Midjourney was fun - but it was also a massive time sink.
I had hoped to be able to get complex tasks done entirely with assistance from the LLM. In the end it helped maybe 20-30%. Its greatest use was to clarify concepts instead of me having to wade through specification docs.
When I went back to the videos of people using chatgpt to build a website in under 30 minutes - its always someone who knows the domain extensively.
I did get a site up and running after ~1-2 weeks of work including the necessary ritual sacrifices.
edit: writing in a rush, grammar and text are messed up. edit: GPT 4, copilot and midjourney. AFAIK I had no half measures.