Can ChatGPT Accelerate Your Software Development?

ChatGPT has gained immense popularity in the recent times in the conversational AI space providing for most part accurate and pertinent information almost instantaneously. While majority of the 100 million+ users tend use ChatGPT for the novelty or informational value, it is far more capable in terms of increasing business productivity, especially software development.

I asked ChatGPT to generate a python code for an API, a unit test script in python for that API Code and lastly test data required for unit test script. I got the result in roughly less than 1 minute for all three. To be fair the ask for a simple straightforward API code nothing fancy or complex, but the churn was fast and complete. I could have taken the code repurposed it in a fairly short period of time to suit my need. The point here is that it is a significant step in direction of generating code autonomously that can be embellished or repurposed to suit.

Low Code Generation

ChatGPT generation capabilities can used to cut down time immensely in a low code situation especially generating code snippets or modular code examples that can be copied into your IDE. Lot of times the search capability within IDE is brings up results of low value to be honest. Now with ChatGPT API capability, integrating it in your CI/CD environment can help tremendously in reducing time searching or coding from scratch. while still low code this requires lot more investigation on the possibilities.

Test Script Generation

ChatGPT can generate more contextual data especially for generating automated test script especially like unit testing scripts, when parameters like expected results or request response pairs for example have been defined. These can quickly be aggregated into an automated test suite and integrated into the CI/CD pipeline.

Data Generation

Data is a key component in the application development lifecycle, whether it is for setting up lower environments or for test data. ChatGPT can generate variety of synthetic contextual data that can easily be consumed from all fronts. I was able to easily generate?1000 rows of ?first names, last names, zip codes, addresses and random number sequences some qualified some unqualified.

ChatGPT API Integration

ChatGPT API integration is straightforward and simple. While still in its infancy it is great to be able to leverage?GPT-3.5 turbo or the 3.0 versions along with postman or powershell. The responses are returned in JSON format that can be written to file or integrated directly into the code depending on the situation.

In conclusion ChatGPT opens a new era in AI driven software development at least as demonstrated in the experiment I did. While there are lots of room for improvement, this is a great starting point to investigate the possibilities to bring efficiency in the software development process.