I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened
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So… I was feeling adventurous (or just really tired) and decided to let an AI help me design a GUI for a small tool I’m building with Qt.
I described the layout in plain English—“a main window with a file picker on the left, a preview panel on the right, and a cute little status bar that doesn’t judge me”—and asked the AI to generate the .ui structure and some logic to go with it.
Surprisingly, it gave me a decent starting point. Buttons were there. Layouts kinda made sense. It even remembered to add a spacer (which I always forget). But…
The widget names were things like pushButton_MagicGo and label_ImportantThing,
It stacked layouts inside other layouts inside more layouts like a matryoshka doll,
And it made the window so large it could only be appreciated on a 4K monitor… sideways.
Still, once I stopped laughing and cleaned it up, I realized: it actually saved me time. It wasn’t perfect, but it got me past the blank-canvas phase.
Anyone else tried letting AI mess with your Qt UI flow? Did it help? Horrify you? Or both?
Let’s compare war stories 😄
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Haha this sounds way too familiar 😄
I actually tried something similar using Deepseekai.free, just to see how far I could push it. Gave it a rough idea like “clean layout with sidebar and responsive preview” and… let’s just say it had opinions about nested grids 😂Still, once I cleaned up the mess (and renamed about 12 widgets), it gave me a decent structure to build on. Definitely faster than starting from scratch when you're out of coffee and motivation.
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I'm confused. Where is the VPN service ad?
Asking a question about code? http://eel.is/iso-c++/testcase/
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@jeremy_k said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I'm confused. Where is the VPN service ad?
Haha nope, no VPN ads here 😄 Just sharing a tool I tried out with Qt GUI stuff. Maybe the name sounds suspiciously techy 😅
@cbum63 said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
@jeremy_k said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I'm confused. Where is the VPN service ad?
Haha nope, no VPN ads here 😄 Just sharing a tool I tried out with Qt GUI stuff. Maybe the name sounds suspiciously techy 😅
Just good clean fun. I'll be more concerned when the AI orders its own upgrade hardware.
Asking a question about code? http://eel.is/iso-c++/testcase/
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So… I was feeling adventurous (or just really tired) and decided to let an AI help me design a GUI for a small tool I’m building with Qt.
I described the layout in plain English—“a main window with a file picker on the left, a preview panel on the right, and a cute little status bar that doesn’t judge me”—and asked the AI to generate the .ui structure and some logic to go with it.
Surprisingly, it gave me a decent starting point. Buttons were there. Layouts kinda made sense. It even remembered to add a spacer (which I always forget). But…
The widget names were things like pushButton_MagicGo and label_ImportantThing,
It stacked layouts inside other layouts inside more layouts like a matryoshka doll,
And it made the window so large it could only be appreciated on a 4K monitor… sideways.
Still, once I stopped laughing and cleaned it up, I realized: it actually saved me time. It wasn’t perfect, but it got me past the blank-canvas phase.
Anyone else tried letting AI mess with your Qt UI flow? Did it help? Horrify you? Or both?
Let’s compare war stories 😄
@cbum63 said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I realized: it actually saved me time.
I don't have a war story to share, but only an opinion. I'm not entirely sure if it actually saved you time. It certainly might seem that way in your own perception. I don't find it particularly hard to create something with Qt Designer. If you are proficient in a tool it can be quite fast. If the AI makes lots of stupid mistakes you have to clean up it only might feel faster. It might actually be faster if you don't know the tool well. But, if you never use the tool instead of prompting AI you'll never learn it and never get proficient at it. My claim is that you should invest the time to learn the tool and then eventually save time when you are faster than the AI-approach. There will be a break-even point in the future. If you only occasionally use a tool (and thus you don't gain real proficiency in it), AI will surely be faster for yourself.
And: Relying on AI too much will actually make you dumb. You need to hone your critical thinking skills to stay smart. Otherwise the brain will quickly adapt to the use of AI. Please, train your brain muscle!
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@cbum63 said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
@jeremy_k said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I'm confused. Where is the VPN service ad?
Haha nope, no VPN ads here 😄 Just sharing a tool I tried out with Qt GUI stuff. Maybe the name sounds suspiciously techy 😅
Just good clean fun. I'll be more concerned when the AI orders its own upgrade hardware.
@jeremy_k said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I'll be more concerned when the AI orders its own upgrade hardware.
Very amusing :) And doubtless true at some point in the future, hopefully making the news. Like that item we were talking about here(?) recently, where in the RW an AI admitted it "made a mistake" and "panicked" so it deleted record files. Amazing!
@SimonSchroeder said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
And: Relying on AI too much will actually make you dumb. You need to hone your critical thinking skills to stay smart. Otherwise the brain will quickly adapt to the use of AI. Please, train your brain muscle!
Too late, it's happening, it's the future.
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@cbum63 said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
I realized: it actually saved me time.
I don't have a war story to share, but only an opinion. I'm not entirely sure if it actually saved you time. It certainly might seem that way in your own perception. I don't find it particularly hard to create something with Qt Designer. If you are proficient in a tool it can be quite fast. If the AI makes lots of stupid mistakes you have to clean up it only might feel faster. It might actually be faster if you don't know the tool well. But, if you never use the tool instead of prompting AI you'll never learn it and never get proficient at it. My claim is that you should invest the time to learn the tool and then eventually save time when you are faster than the AI-approach. There will be a break-even point in the future. If you only occasionally use a tool (and thus you don't gain real proficiency in it), AI will surely be faster for yourself.
And: Relying on AI too much will actually make you dumb. You need to hone your critical thinking skills to stay smart. Otherwise the brain will quickly adapt to the use of AI. Please, train your brain muscle!
@SimonSchroeder said in I let an AI design my GUI with Qt Designer… here's what happened:
Relying on AI too much will actually make you dumb
I don't need AI's help for that.
