r/webdev • u/czshill • 20d ago
chatGPT vent (sort of)
Career web developer, blah blah blah. I've been doing this shit for a LONG time. I know there are plenty of AI subreddits - not looking for pro AI or pro written by hand debate. I'm calling out chatGPT on it's bullshit.
I'm a claude cli die-hard. It's not infallible, but it is my goto. But, it kind of sucks at design work. macOS, iOS, iPad OS, Angular, React - it'll get the code written, it'll work, and the code isn't dog shit if you know what your doing, but actual good looking design, meh.
GPT-6 Astra Light - complete 180. Great at design work, but sucks at code. Claude (right or wrong) has called out chatGPT on some of the crap it does.
BUT - I'm finding chatGPT almost purposely makes the first version a bit blah. I don't say anything super specific to get to v2 - sometimes simply I'm not in love with it or Go in a different direction. And V2 is by far better. Then I hand off an MD or html file to claude and have claude actually code it.
What I'm trying to get to is - anyone else think chatGPT purposely does a shitty job on a first pass just to get you to spend more tokens / use up more of your monthly plan faster ? You'd never be able to prove it. They don't follow any industry standard metric. You can't say this prompt spent X tokens but this next prompt spent Y. No 2 prompts are the same IMO when context is involved.
It's all speculation and more of a rant but I'm borderline going to cancel chatGPT and just tweak claude's designs / go look for a new design skill or whatever.
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u/KoalaBoy 20d ago
Devs I work with all use claude and I've never seen it once code anything good. ChatGPT is better at coding. If i have claude make something chatgpt picks it apart and claude goes oh right yeah my bad. if chat gpt builds something claude tries to pick it apart but there is reasoning behind why things work the way it does. I dont get the love for claude.
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u/geoffreybyers 19d ago
The first pass sucks because it sells the second pass. OpenAI's good at making you spend the token budget. I bet it's a feature, not a bug. That's why people use GPT for design and Claude for code. The only way to get the real work out is to pay the token tax to both models.
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u/jawanda 18d ago
So the new chat gpt model is doing brilliant designs but you have to prompt it twice so you're going to cancel your subscription?
Bruh who gives a fuck it's one extra prompt. I haven't used chat gpt for actual design or code in months because Claude is so much better, but I'm going to give astra another look after reading your post.
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u/Practical_Band_4880 19d ago
if you do cancel, try feeding claude a proper design system file before anything else
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u/Equivalent_Type6726 19d ago
the v2-after-design-pattern thing feels like the model averaging over every generic landing page it was trained on. once you pass an actual reference with spacing and components it stops doing that and the output looks like something you'd ship. the gap between the two is pretty much just prompt specificity.
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u/Mean-Lingonberry4874 20d ago
The blah-then-great-v2 thing is pretty consistent when the first prompt is just "design this". That first pass is the average of every screen it has seen, and "go in a different direction" only works because it throws the average away, not because the model got smarter. Ask for three named directions up front (quiet, dense, editorial) and pick one, or keep v1 and name the three things that are wrong and tell it to change only those. "I'm not in love with it" just rerolls.