I am a Developer and This is My AI Story

I've been working with AI - using it for productivity and developing apps with it. I started using AI when ChatGPT was released in November 2022. I was really amazed on how it can answer questions and produce code. I am someone who would try out a new technology and I continued using ChatGPT. I started with just asking questions about anything. It was fun and enjoyed it.

After a while, I realised that this thing -- ChatGPT was really smart and can be useful for helping out with some tasks as a developer. So I tried asking it to help out with code. During that time, its knowledge was not yet up to date and it didn't know the latest version of Go. But that didn't stop me from using it for coding because with its stock knowledge, it was able to help me with some trivial coding tasks. It also helped me understand concepts which I don't understand.

On June 21, 2022, Github Copilot was launched. Wow, I realised this was huge. I felt that this product was really a game-changer. Since Github Copilot is integrated with Visual Studio Code and Jetbrains IDEs as a plugin, using AI in coding would be seamless. You guessed it right, I tried it out. Since Github Copilot just had a free trial, I eventually paid for it. I used it for my coding and I got really good help from its auto-complete feature.

So this was the point when Github Copilot and ChatGPT were my go-to AI tools for coding.

After using Github Copilot for a few months, I realized that its auto-complete feature somewhat broke for me. I didn't really understand what happened. So I just used the chat feature that came with it. After a while, I realised I was not getting my money's worth with Github Copilot and just used ChatGPT for coding. So I just copy pasted code to and from ChatGPT. It was not convenient but it saved me some money from the Copilot subscription.

Github Copilot was exciting but it was not really a game-changer. Bummer!

I moved on and continued with ChatGPT.

Along the way, someone suggested to me to use Codeium. Codeium has the same exact functionality as Github Copilot. It works with Visual Studio Code, Jetbrains and even neovim! The free tier was really generous and I never hit the limit. I was happy!

Back at work, I was assigned to help our founder for a technical demo in Tech Week Singapore last year. That was around Oct 2023. Deadline was tight so I had to use AI to build it. Coding an AI product using AI was indeed an interesting use case. So the product was called HomerGPT, the idea was to build an AI chat application which is knowledgeable about Singapore real estate, our domain knowledge. Our tech stack was NextJS for the frontend and Go for our backend APIs. Luckily, I found a Vercel template which does exactly what we needed in the UI and backend part. The only catch is that the example was in TypeScript. Sheesh, I don't even know TypeScript!

I needed APIs for the backend and the examples OpenAI integration which I've tried out were in Python. Python is not even in our backend tech stack. Luckily, I found a great library, Vercel's AI SDK. So I decided to do the app in one language, TypeScript. I also deployed the APIs in NextJS, together with the frontend code which was not ideal. But, it was the best option due to the limited time.

After days of hard work, we were able to do the demo of HomerGPT in TechWeek Singapore successfully.

Job's not done yet! Remember I deployed the backend APIs in NextJS? I had to move that out. I thought of moving it to Go but thinking forward, it would not be a good decision. AI is mostly delivered with Python so I migrated the TypeScript code to Python. I asked ChatGPT to migrate the code from TypeScript to Python for me. Voila, it took me only a a week to migrate all the code from TypeScript to Python. Yes, that's from code migration to production.

I was impressed with the iterations and relationship I had with these AI tools. AI was a real assistant. AI even did the more difficult work, imagine that!

A few months passed, I left my job and started my learning journey. I left my previous role since I wanted to take a career break and accelerate my learning and experience with AI. Frontend was my weakest skill so I learned the basics of React and NextJS, a fullstack framework since I wanted to build AI apps. I learned NextJS to the point that I can start a project and deploy it to production. I thought that was good enough to go live with an app.

While I was learning and engaging with the community on X, previously known as Twitter, I came to know about very good tools to produce new user interfaces and components and even a new IDE.

I'm not a frontend developer! How can I make UI?!

Fret not, here are some AI tools I discovered.

Vercel v0

v0.dev and is developed by Vercel. These web based tools were designed to allow you to generate user interface components fast. Generated components uses Tailwind CSS and shadcn. v0 also has a, v0.dev/chat chat feature which allows developers to interate while generating the components. Adding the UI components to your project is also a breeze. It's just one command you need to execute and the UI component gets added to your project.

I created a website with just a single prompt using v0. Check it out.

Claude AI

Claude AI also released their artifact feature with its most powerful model for coding Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This killed ChatGPT for me. I don't use ChatGPT anymore and even canceled my subscription. You can learn more about it here.

Hold your breath!

When ChatGPT was launched, everyone was amazed. As a developer, I had the same feeling of excitement when I used Cursor the first time. I said to myself "Sh*t! this is the real game-changer!"

Cursor AI

Cursor has inline code editing which makes it really seamless to work with code. It's not perfect but most of the time gets the job done. It also has a Composer feature which allows you to generate multiple files. The user experience is great and the Cursor team just nailed it!

Check out this compilation of Cursor applications

Walk the talk will you?!

Yes, of course!

Here's a list of apps I've built with AI.

1. AI Dream Photo - Unleash your dreams with AI Dream Photo! Transform into a successful businessman, an explorer on Mars, a tourist in Paris, or a rockstar on stage. Create stunning photos for your social media profiles, professional headshots, or just for fun to share with friends.

2. HomerGPT - HomerGPT is an AI-powered chat application designed specifically for the Singapore real estate market. It provides users with personalized property recommendations and insights, making the home-buying process more efficient and informed.

3. CondosPH - This is my website for my real estate side jobs. It is showcases properties for resale and a home loan calculator.

4. AI Prompt Creator - This tool assists users in creating and editing prompts for ChatGPT. It has more than 300 pre-defined prompts.

5. AI Prompt Library - This Chrome extension allows you to save and reuse prompts you frequently use in ChatGPT.

6. PDF to Images - This web application allows users to convert PDF documents into image formats quickly. It is particularly useful for extracting visual content from PDFs, making it easier to share and utilize in other projects.

7. Curated v0.dev Generations - I made this tool so we can easily discover and reuse really good v0.dev generations.

8. React Native Chat App using OpenAI - This is a React Native project starter for a mobile application built with Expo. It includes OpenAI integration.

So that's it. This is my AI journey. I hope you get to learn a few things out of it.

You can reach me at my website donvitocodes.com if you'd like me to share my story with your team.

Cheers and let's enjoy our AI journey!