[sdiy] Best Web site AI code generation ?? CODEX ?

[Ben Stuyts]

Hi JP,

I did most of the new Yahoo archive site https://synth-diy.org/yg-archives2/ with Codex. I have a ChatGPT Plus (Codex) subscription. It worked well. The site is a Python application with lots of html templates, javascript, css. In total around 9 kloc of Python and 5 kloc other if I remember correctly. I prefer Python because I use it so much for other things already. And I dislike PHP, html, css and javascript. So it’s great that the AI can do the latter three also.

The problem is that you can generate a big heap of garbage if you do not have enough knowledge of the domain you want to use the AI for. But I have decent knowledge about what to do and what not to do regarding coding and websites. I mostly :-) know what to watch out for. So a few things I always make sure of:

0. Start with creating a full plan, and iterate on it until you are fully satisfied that it will do what you want. Let the AI create a file for future reference. (Sometimes they don’t, at least not easily accessible.)
1. Local testing on my Mac, this saves a lot of time. (You don’t need to run a full webserver with Python, it can run it locally.)
2. Instruct the AI to use testing frameworks, in my case mostly pytest. Unit testing, and coverage checks, etc. Tell the AI to keep it up to date and use it often / continuously.
3. Perform security audits on the code. I used both Codex for this, and also Claude via my Github CoPilot subscription. It’s interesting to see that they find different problems.
4. Instruct the AI to extensively comment everything: at file level, function level, and also generate project documentation files for future reference. (Both for me and the AI.) Also keep ideas for future enhancements in these files after discussing them with the AI.
5. Keep an eye out for excessive file growth. Instruct the AI to refactor when you think it gets out of hand.
6. I use Subversion (a version control system) extensively, so that I can verify every change/bugfix in small increments.

My dev. environment is Visual Studio Code with the Codex and Github CoPilot plugins. You don’t always need the best/newest models these companies have. You can switch between models if you need it, but in my experience the ‘previous’ models are usually good enough for this. They are cheaper, so this saves you on credit usage. (Although with the latest ChatGPT 5.6 Terra Medium, they sort of reversed this trend a bit.)

After that I built another website, again in Python, for a band I play in. The frontpage is nothing special, just single page, but it has a members area with 10+ years of rehearsal recordings and other info. Plus a calendar that can be synced with iDevices. This site was built using Claude on my Github CoPilot subscription.

Based on these two, I would recommend either of them. The Github CoPilot subscription has the advantage that you can choose the model: Codex (ChatGPT), Claude, Gemini, etc. I often ran out of daily/weekly/monthly credits with Github, and had to wait before continuing. Much less so with my Codex/ChatGPT subscription. And the situation with Github Gopilot has become worse recently. A regular Claude subscription is not affected by this, so I think currently it’s best to either get a ChatGPT or Claude subscription. Not Github.

I have also added a few subscriptions for my engineering colleagues at work. We use it for Python, C, C++, both for desktop apps and embedded firmware. And also as a sounding board for testing ideas, developing algorithms, etc. We all agree that we trust, but verify. Again we do not see big advantages of Codex vs Claude, either will do.

I can’t comment on Gemini, as I like to stay away from google.

I have to say it is amazing how these AI tools have improved in the last few years. When I first looked into ChatGPT it could not write an error-free 10 line Python script. And now? I can throw some odd undocumented yahoo archive format at it, let it analyse it, and it spits out a new Python file to decode it and ingest it…

Ben 

> On 26 Jul 2026, at 23:52, Jean-Pierre Desrochers via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> 
> Best Web site AI code generation ?? 
> 
> I heard about CODEX ?
> Is-it ?
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________
> This is the Synth-diy mailing list
> Submit email to: Synth-diy at synth-diy.org
> View archive at: https://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/
> Check your settings at: https://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
> Selling or trading? Use marketplace at synth-diy.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20260727/90d2b0da/attachment.htm>