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:
- Creates that little script I mentioned earlier
- 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)
- Copies the appimage into a “appimages” folder in the home directory
- Adds an icon of your choosing to the app
- 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
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 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 there are out of scope variables from a thread the AI found on stack overflow circa 2008 which lead to a disaster.
If you want honest opinions from people, then this is mine. That little shame you feel is probably larger than you think.
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 :)