Incantations 88 - No Code Coding

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Hello there, [NICKNAME GOES HERE],

So only just over a week and I'll be getting back the UK and finally starting a new chapter without feeling like I was bureaucratically torn between two countries. Despite trying to treat my temporary relocation as a vacation I've pretty much been working every day as well as organising my move back (also what to do with all our possessions we left here, whatever decision we need to do something with them).

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Anyway lots of logistics and crazy times that hopefully will settle down. This is all a long way to say that the following will be a shorter email than usual, although maybe I will keep it that way who has time to read an entire essay every week from just one subscription right? Let me know!

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No Code Coding

I've been programming in some form for better part of 30+ years yet I still don't consider myself a programmer, probably because I've just done what I can for what's needed and I never got into real "software engineering" in any depth. But although I think of myself as capable I do prefer the visual programming tools and what's now become "no code". That's what I began to really focus on in terms of automation with tools such as Zapier and IFTTT along with others. Also many of these "no code" tools also have the option of working with scripts anyway so you could always expand into that if needed, the best of both worlds.

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ChatGPT and AI has actually brought something back in terms of coding/programming that made me lean into the no code space. It can take care of the more mundane aspects of coding and help with specific solutions.

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I did that this week by creating a couple of widgets to keep an eye on when I had to fly back. The best way I could do it was using an app on iPhone called Scriptable, which basically uses Javascript. Instead of hunting down all the documentation for getting an idea of all the different pieces I needed I simply was able to ask ChatGPT to write it for me, although I gave it a sample script that was close to what I wanted first. The important thing is there was a little back and forth and I had to have some kind of understanding of what was happening and able to describe what the changes needed were.

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In the end it felt like no code development but the end result was a script to copy into the app and it took only a few minutes versus possibly hours messing around for what was just a temporary info widget. ChatGPT recently added a code interpreter option for GPT-4 (in lieu of the missing Bing search option that was there) allowing you to add entire script/code files for ChatGPT to look at and work with you on. I think this is great not only for coders but non-coders wanting to take advantage of the power of coding.

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Until next week,

Andrew

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