The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - GitHub Copilot X, Chatbot UI, ChatGPT plugins, defining juice for software dev, Logto, Basaran & llama-cli (News)

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

GitHub announces Copilot X, Mckay Wrigley created an open source ChatGPT UI buit with Next.js, TypeScripe & Tailwind CSS, OpenAI is also launching a ChatGPT plugin initiative, Brad Woods writes about juice in software development, Logto is an open source alternative to Auth0, Basaran is an open source alternative to the OpenAI text completion API & llama-cli is a straightforward Go CLI interface for llama.cpp.

What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, March 27th, 2023. Have you heard? Our brain science podcast is back after a two-year hiatus. On that show, Adam and Muriel explore the inner workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and what it means to be human. Here's a few fun facts about brain science. It's one of the top 10 most popular tech podcasts on Spotify. It's currently featured by Pocket Casts with the best podcasts about the brain. And its newest episode is called Develop a High-Performance Mindset. Brain Science is a podcast for the curious, so if you're curious, check it out at brainscience.fm.

Okay, let's get into the news. The biggest developer news last week was GitHub's announcement of Copilot X, their vision for the future of AI-powered software development. Copilot X, of course, adopts OpenAI's new GPT-4 model, but also puts chat and voice in the Copilot, brings Copilot to pull requests, the command line, and docs. Gosh, there is a lot to say about this. In fact, we spent 40 or so minutes discussing it on JS Party's live show last Thursday, so I won't say any more here. That episode drops in the JS Party feed, the Master Feed, and the ad-free Changelog++ feed on Friday. The AI revolution continues apace. I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so scared!

And there's so much fervor right now that it's difficult to decide what's worth covering, hence last week's boycott. Here's a cool project with utility that might outlast the current hype cycle. McKay Wrigley created an open source chat GPT UI built with Next, TypeScript, and Tailwind. Why is that cool? Because it lets you bypass OpenAI's chat GPT UI and directly interact with their API instead. This is great for portability, but even more promising is the ability to hack it with custom themes, prompt templates, plugins, and more. Prompt templating might be especially valuable

let's say you craft or steal a great prompt for chat GPT to provide you with recipes and then save that as a template now you have a recipe bot do the same for yard work advice yard bot template out a prompt for writing ideas blog bot you see where I'm going with this. Are you getting it? McKay says he's dedicated to updating chatbot UI over time and to expect frequent improvements. Speaking of chat, GBT, and plugins, OpenAI is also launching a plugin initiative

starting with a small set of users. The first plugins have been created by Expedia, Fiscal Note, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier. What? Zapier? What?

Zapier? You decide. What? Pick your poison. What? Pick your favorite. This is a big step in the direction of keeping ChatGPT relevant

since its training data is large but limited in timeliness. While not a perfect analogy, OpenAI is calling plugins the quote eyes and ears for language models, giving them access to information that is too recent, too personal, or too specific to be included in the training data. Do you know what juice is? We got some soda, OJ, purple stuff, sun, July. What's in this?

Tastes like orange and tangerine. Yeah, wine. Some healthy junk too. No, not that kind of juice. Juice in software development. Brad Woods writes about it in his notes about web design and engineering. You probably know about juice from your favorite video games, even if you don't realize it. It's the non-essential visual, audio, and haptic effects that enhance the player's experience. The example Brad gives is the delightful chime sounds that plays whenever Mario collects a

mushroom. Yeah, that one. That's the juice. In Brad's design notes, he provides an example of progressively cranking up the juice in web development using a delete button with a slider to increase the juice. He finishes by saying, quote, Juice is about the tiny details. It's about squeezing more out of everything. It's about serving the user's emotional needs, not just the functional. It originated in games, but can be used in other types of software. End quote.

Did you know we even try to juice up our podcasts? The best example is this sound right here. That's called You Found a Secret Coin, and it plays at the front of every Changelog++ episode. It's completely inessential, but we want our Plus Plus members to know that we appreciate them by creating a sense of reward and hopefully increasing their enjoyment by a smidge. So as you're going about your work this week, maybe ask yourself, how can I put some juice in this? Ah, tasty! Because sweating the details is so rewarding in small and sometimes big ways.

Okay, let's finish up with a quick lightning round, shall we? These projects were all submitted for coverage at changelog.com slash submit. They look cool, but I don't know. Do your own research. Here we go. It's showtime. First up, Log2 is an open source alternative to Auth0. It offers a seamless developer experience

and is well suited for individuals and growing companies. Basaran is an open source alternative to the OpenAI text completion API. According to its creators, the open source community will eventually witness the stable diffusion moment for LLMs. And BASARAN allows you to replace OpenAI's service with the latest open source model to power your app without modifying a single line of code. Last one, LAMA CLI is a straightforward Go command line interface for Llama.cpp, providing a simple API and a command line interface that allows text generation using a GPT-based model like Llama directly from the terminal.

That's the news for now. On Wednesday's interview show, I'm joined by Filippo Valsorda, who quit Google's Go team last year to experiment with more sustainable paths for open source maintainers. Good news. It worked. Good news, everyone. Filippo is now a full-time open source maintainer, and he wants to tell everyone exactly how he's making the equivalent to his total compensation package at Google in open source. Have a great week. Share ChangeLog with a friend if you dig it.

And we'll talk to you again real soon.