From 1 Month to 1 Hour: How AI Transformed my 2019 Project in 2024

This is a blog post about the creation of www.jerseyquiz.com.

My wife took the Jersey Citizenship exam in 2019, which is the local equivalent of the United Kingdom’s ‘Life in the UK’ test. This exam is a requirement for anyone applying for indefinite leave to remain or naturalisation as a British citizen.

The Jersey exam includes questions from the Jersey supplement, and she asked me to create an app, similar to the one for the UK test, to help her practice.

I reached out to Jersey Immigration to request a database of practice questions, but received the following response.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide examples or indeed specimen questions for the Jersey part of the test. The reason being is that there are only limited number of test papers in circulation which are used on a rotational basis and, we are sure you will appreciate, it is extremely important that we maintain the integrity of the questions to ensure a level playing field for all applicants.

To move forward, I would have needed to spend at least 7–8 hours creating my own set of questions, and about a week building an app or web app. Given that the entire project would likely take a month to complete, I decided to put the idea on hold.

2024

I recently took paternity leave and had some free time, whilst my daughter slept on me.

While revisiting my list of old project ideas, I came across the Jersey Quiz from 2019. A lot has changed in software development over the past five years.

With the advancements in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, I realised that this is now a project that could be completed much more quickly than before.

ChatGPT - 10 minutes

I uploaded the the Jersey supplement PDF into ChatGPT and asked it to generate 50 multiple-choice questions, formatted in JSON for easy use in programming. It quickly produced a complete set of questions and answers.

{
    "question": "When did Jersey and Guernsey become two separate political entities?",
    "options": [
      "1485 AD",
      "1066 AD",
      "1204 AD",
      "933 AD"
    ],
    "answer": "1204 AD"
  },
  {
    "question": "What religion did the island adopt during the Reformation?",
    "options": [
      "Calvinist Protestantism",
      "Presbyterian Protestantism",
      "Methodist Protestantism",
      "Anglican Protestantism"
    ],
    "answer": "Calvinist Protestantism"
  }

The questions turned out to be quite challenging, so I requested another set of 50 “easier” questions.

{
    "question": "What crop is Jersey most famous for?",
    "options": [
      "Jersey Royal potatoes",
      "Wheat",
      "Barley",
      "Sugar beets"
    ],
    "answer": "Jersey Royal potatoes"
  },
  {
    "question": "Who were the original builders of Mont Orgueil?",
    "options": [
      "The Normans",
      "The English",
      "The French",
      "The Vikings"
    ],
    "answer": "The English"
  },

These new questions were perfect. I now had 50 “easy” questions and 50 more challenging ones — 100 questions in just 10 minutes!

v0–5 mins

v0 is an AI model like ChatGPT, trained to allow developers (or anyone) create their version 0 of an app. You input a text prompt and it returns working code.

I entered the following prompt:

I am writing a simple quiz application that tests users on their knowledge of Jersey which can mainly be used as practice for the Jersey Citizenship test. The website is called Jerseycitizenshiptest.com, main brand color is red. The questions are multiple choice. Only show one question on the screen at a time. Near the top have a running total of the number of questions answered correctly, total questions answered and total questions. The questions are in the format below, make a clean and simple quiz UI for answering multiple choice questions. { “question”: “When is the first evidence of human activity in Jersey?”, “options”: [ “250,000 years ago”, “150,000 years ago”, “100,000 years ago”, “500,000 years ago” ], “answer”: “250,000 years ago” }, { “question”: “Which of the following are prehistoric sites in Jersey?”, “options”: [ “La Cotte de St Brelande”, “La Cotte de St Lawrence”, “La Cotte à la Mouton”, “Stonehenge”, “Skara Brae” ], “answer”: “La Cotte de St Brelande” }, { “question”: “When did Jersey become an island?”, “options”: [ “7,000 years ago”, “8,000 years ago”, “9,000 years ago”, “10,000 years ago” ], “answer”: “7,000 years ago” },

v0 is a powerful tool and returned a practically working website:

Cursor — 30 mins

Cursor is a powerful code editor designed to streamline coding, much like how Microsoft Word simplifies editing documents. With AI integration, Cursor enables rapid and efficient code modifications. Although only a few months old, it has already begun revolutionising the way we approach software development. I spent 30 mins tweaking the code, renamed the project to “Jersey Quiz”, changed the main website colour to blue so not to be confused with the official gov.je site and published to www.jerseyquiz.com.

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Conclusion

It’s surprising how quickly this site came together — I was able to build it in under an hour. Just a few years ago, something like this would have taken much longer. That said, this is a simple, single-page site without backend databases, and my 15 years of experience as a software developer certainly played a role in the speed. There are plenty of factors to consider, but it’s a great reminder of how much development tools and processes have evolved.