How ChatGPT Made Me a Programmer
Build WordPress Plugins and Software using ChatGPT
If you try using ChatGPT as a full AI software developer — you will be extremely disappointed.
ChatGPT is amazingly helpful as a coding assistant — but you need to know how to use it.
You can even build full small software applications if you learn its limitations and issues.
Understanding the limitations is valuable for any coding — even if you don’t have dumb ideas (like me) and attempt to build full applications.
ChatGPT can save you a lot of time when building extensions for platforms and using API’s in software.
Once you understand the sticking points — you can find workarounds.
Here is my real experience building software with ChatGPT.
I’ll start with the good news — I made a full WordPress plugin — Published on the WordPress plugin store below using only ChatGPT.
AI Content Copilot — Auto Social Media Posting
The plugin connects to your Facebook page — you can create posts from your WordPress admin using the Facebook API. It also uses the OpenAI API and helps you create posts with AI and edit them before posting to Facebook.
Sounds amazing right?…
The bad news is that it took many different versions that often broke my WordPress site.
The process of building a full WordPress plugin with ChatGPT — forced me to learn a lot about ChatGPT when used as a coder.
I learned how to prompt ChatGPT to get better code — and make workarounds.
I wanted to share my findings if anyone has any dumb ideas to attempt this — like I did.
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Issues and Workarounds When Using ChatGPT as a Full Software Developer
ChatGPT Forgets Quickly
If you are building software with multiple files — ChatGPT forgets the files and changes information in them quickly. This is very frustrating when you tell it to keep everything the same but add a few new features to the code.
A workaround is to ask it to give you the new code and tell you where to insert it. If you attempt to get full files with updates — it often hallucinates and somehow removes part of your existing code. Multiple times I tried this and broke my almost working plugin.
Backups and Documentation
This isn’t an issue as much as a suggestion. Every time you make changes to your code — make a new version of your entire plugin and document the changes. You can then always revert to a working version that you tested.
Long Threads in ChatGPT
If you build software with ChatGPT, your thread will get very long. It becomes difficult to load the thread and eventually becomes too long.
You will have to save the main points and start a new thread. ChatGPT won’t remember your previous thread so this is frustrating. So prepare for this and learn to make a summarized version of your thread with the main points — because you will probably have to start an entirely new thread in ChatGPT at some point.
Length of Code
I found that ChatGPT handles around 200 lines of code easily.
Much more than this limit — ChatGPT started making a lot of mistakes. So try limiting their answer lengths and splitting them up into multiple parts. If you get it doing too much at once, you will find a new (and surprisingly different) piece of software.
Multiple Files
This is a huge sticking point when building software with ChatGPT. Most software requires multiple files. As soon as ChatGPT has to work with multiple files, it tends to make things up.
So if you are working with multiple files you need to make very clear functions and define them first. It is also better to understand what the functions do and understand how the changes you make in one file could impact other files.
Then tell ChatGPT to give you the specific lines of code you want to change and ask them where you should change them and why. When your software gets larger, you’ll find a lot less headaches to do some manual changes.
Debugging
This is one of the most important tips I learned when coding with ChatGPT. Learn to use an error log and console tools.
Here is a screenshot of an actual error log from my WordPress website when I was building the plugin using ChatGPT
ChatGPT often makes mistakes and you will find that even though your plugin seemed to install and run correctly, it still may not work.
This is when the debug log is super important. If your software isn’t working, you can ask ChatGPT to include debug logs into your code at various places and then you can find out the exact issue.
You can then give ChatGPT the results of the debug log and it will fix it for you.
Check the error log after you test a new version of the plugin.
You might see an error like:
[24-Mar-2024 04:13:40 UTC] PHP Warning: Undefined array key "facebook_access_toke
" in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/ai-content-to-facebook-open1/includes/openai-integration.php on line 34You can paste this error back into ChatGPT and say the code didn’t work.
Usually, ChatGPT will solve the problem based on your code and error log.
API’s and Documentation
Another important thing to consider is giving ChatGPT access to the latest code from API’s and platforms such as WordPress. Give ChatGPT exact code snippets that seem relevant to your code.
ChatGPT can often update and fix bugs based on this.
Even if you give it a link to the latest code documentation, ChatGPT doesn’t seem to read it.
So if you are having issues, it is often better to cut and paste an entire code block and API explanation.
Security Fixes and Compliance
For production-ready software, you will often be given a list of security and compliance issues to fix after an initial review of your plugin.
This part is important if you hope to publish your code on an app or plugin store.
It is best to give your full source code to ChatGPT and get it to analyze it — if possible.
Then go through each item on your list and ask exactly what changes are needed and where each one needs to be implemented.
Again, it is better to do this manually because ChatGPT often changes your existing code if you don’t watch out.
This happened to me when I published my plugin. ChatGPT “fixed” the errors but the plugin didn’t work anymore. lol
I hope you enjoyed this troubleshooting guide when using ChatGPT as a full software developer. It could save you hours of headaches.
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