Hi,

For a treasure hunt for a 5-year-old, I want to write a text. The text should be written by a pirate, describing a riddle where the pirate’s treasure is hidden. It should be hidden in a place where creepy trees are. Can you write the text for me and make it rhyme?

With this prompt, I fed ChatGPT. I had just returned from Berlin from the RabbitMQ Summit .

The next day was my child’s birthday party.

And there was still a need for a riddle for the treasure hunt.

The result was perfect. It was creative, funny, charming. And: It was quickly done.

I would have definitely spent an hour on Word to produce a similar result.

ChatGPT is powerful.

I’m probably not telling you anything new.

Use the Power of ChatGPT in Your Everyday Life

You shouldn’t, and can’t, have entire programs created by ChatGPT. For complex applications, it doesn’t generate code that is maintainable in the long term. You won’t save time that way.

But ChatGPT is strong when it comes to automation around your application.

I recently used it to simplify the setup of a project.

And I didn’t even have to think about it.

The following setup instructions were stated in the readme.md :

1. Create a .env file with create-env.sh

2. Place Z12842.zip file in /archives

3. Start docker compose with docker compose up --build and wait until containers have started

4. If you wish to include license server, follow the instructions in licenseserver/local-development-environment

5. Create default data including accounts, REST API key, and required licenses with ./init.sh. The script prompts whether to include the license server. Choose yes only if license server container was started in the previous step.

The example isn’t quite true to reality - the content has been changed for my client’s discretion. However, the steps are equivalent in substance.

So, copy and paste with the preceding instruction:

Create a bash script that does the following:

(step-by-step list from above)

Wait a moment.

Now I have a script that does 90% of the right thing.

A few more refinements with additional prompts, like:

How can I call docker-compose up –build and continue with the main script until all services are running in docker?

It would have taken me hours to create the resulting script otherwise.

Of course, one thing or another becomes apparent when you automate. ChatGPT doesn’t protect against that. But you would find and edit that by hand as well.

ChatGPT is powerful.

The next time you write a step-by-step instruction, write it into ChatGPT and let it create a script for you directly.

Rule the Backend,

~ Marcus