I run a course platform with the popular WordPress Learning management system called LearnPress. Before making this plugin, I could only accept payments via paypal, but this was costing me sales.
LearnPress has a Stripe integration as a plugin, but I wanted to make it myself, and I specifically wanted to use Stripe Checkout
I asked chatGPT to “make a LearnPress Add-on to allow stripe checkout payments”
You can see the full chat history here:
Long story short, it successfully helped me create a fully working WordPress plugin that integrated with LearnPress, which is quite impressive!
Things I learned
I no longer need a developer to create quick POCs or small apps
I’m technical. And I know what to ask to get great results. But being able to ask chatGPT and get immediate feedback makes this faster than interacting with a human developer.
Things chatGPT is really good at:
Using popular APIs
This is something I noticed when using github copilot. You can nearly skip doc-reading if the use-case is a very common one (wouldn’t recommend not reading docs, though!)
Eg: Stripe API; WordPress APIs
Finding bugs
If something doesn’t work the way it should, and you can’t figure it out, ChatGPT usually can find it very quickly. Sometimes it does what a linter would catch anyway, so be sure to use the right tool for the job.
Things ChatGPT is bad at:
Keeping track of a lot of logic in a large program
You can be more productive with it if you ask for targeted changes in specific functions.
For example, instead of feeding it your whole program and asking for a change, ask for a change within a single function and feed it that single function and nothing else. Reduces the amount of things it can screw up.
Thanks for reading!
You can see the fully working plugin here: github
You can read more about programming with ChatGPT here.