How it started...

Intro - why this blog?

This blog is mostly for people who know software development and would like to understand how ChatGPT can and will change the way we are developing software. 

Warning: this is about real (Javascript, Java) code.

Back then, in the old days, 

 I had developed an Android RPG I and a few hundred users found fun. In retrospective it was probably way too complicated for an app.

The idea of the game was: turn any web page into a dungeon: words are turned into monsters and weapons - the longer the word the more powerful the monster or weapon. Vowels determine the elements of the monster and weapon, consonants define the behavior of the monster.

I also used the web page to dynamically generate the dungeon - nothing you saw was random or pre-thought, all came from the web page. 

That was the mighty home page of the game I did: web raid mobile.

Reboot, simplified, in Javascript

I still like the core idea of fighting complicated words like "butyrylcholinesterase" turned into monsters. With a different (simple) level design, this could be a nice roguelike. 

And instead of an Android or iOS app, I want to do it as a web app, as client-only as possible, in Javascript. The thing is: I have no clue about Javascript. Okay, I have a clue but I'm far from a Javascript developer. I know Java, and C, and C++, and ..., but not JS. But I can read Javascript well enough to understand what it's doing; I'm a CS major, and I have an AI that I can talk to in order to develop stuff for me - ChatGPT.

Let's see how far I can get.

About me…

Maybe you want to know a bit about me; maybe this helps to set the context of what I’m writing. I’m a fairly experienced software developer, have a Ph.D. (actually a German Dr.) in computer science, love writing code, seeing software that I have envisioned run on a computer (or tablet or phone or …). Some day in the 2000s I had to decide whether I want more conceptual responsibility or more hands-on coding. I went for the former, and spend private time now writing code because in my work life I don’t, and I miss it. I’m really good at Java, and was good at C, C++, Prolog, and ancient languages called Modula-2 and Pascal long long ago, have done a tiny bit of a few other languages. Never JavaScript. I own a JavaScript book which I glanced through without much motivation. I’m a procedural and object-oriented guy, so JS’ functional bits surprised me in a positive way.






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ChatGPT as a teacher

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