Vibe Coding with ChatGPT

A year ago I decided my team could use more visualizations and tools for the data pipeline we manage.  We use HTCondor (cluster computing, high throughput computing).  Why check 15 different places when we can put all that information into one place? 

 We look at the output of a dozen scripts at different times, how about we run them every two minutes and show the output on the webpage?  We also run some command line SQL queries to get information.  How about we run those automatically every 5 minutes and put them on the webpage?

 We decipher some pretty ugly reports that look sort of like a log file.  How about we visualize the data and have it automatically turned into boxes and color them by status or size etc.   All our data is real time, but what happened the last few days?  How about we start recording some of this and make historical charts, put them on the page.  Can we make a unified log file of all up/down events and view them?  Yes.

 Now that it’s in one place, maybe we should just send an email if something is not working?  And add a big visual indicator like a Green Check or Red X to show status at a glance.  If its sending emails, maybe we should put a button next to it so we can turn email alerts on or off for that specific item.  Maybe we should also have a button to disable all the alerts on the page during downtime and then enable when done.  And we should add a banner, in case we want to announce something.

Great ideas, who’s going to do all this?  The answer was me, it was my idea.  I’m not a developer but I knew some Batch scripting and basic HTML.  So, I worked to learn Linux Bash scripting, basic Python, more advanced HTML, Node.js, JS files to show charts with D3, cron jobs, and some other things.  It was exciting to learn so many new things, and for a purpose.  After about 9 months, I enlisted my friend ChatGPT.   I already had it all up and working, but why spend another 3 hours adding that thing when I can ask GPT to write a script in 10 minutes.  I can proof and test the script, I know that much.  I already did this, to keep doing it over and over at a slow rate seemed silly.   3 Months later the content increased 4x.  I learned what ChatGPT is good at, and not so good at.    

If you already know it, you can architect it high level and you can fix if it breaks, ChatGPT is great option to help.   This wasn’t mission critical, it’s not production code, though it does help Operations monitor production systems.  I think they call this vibe coding.  It has enabled me to make things I want, without having to ask other people to do it.