When I'm actually an expert at the thing I ask chatGPT for, yeah, like an
intern.  It'll say something that will prompt me to go down some road or
other, and I ignore the obviously wrong answers.  When I'm an amateur at
the thing, it sounds authoritative and I don't have the ability to know
better.  But then, we're not paying for it to be RIGHT.  It's still a
solution we're trying to find a problem for.

On Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 1:15 PM David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> My experience so far is … ChatGPT is great if treated like I’ve got access
> to an intern to help with grunt work.
>
> The quality is about the same, it’s a lot faster than an intern would
> take, and it doesn’t complain if you tell it to try a different approach.
>
> If you just hit the ‘regenerate’ button, it will usually produce different
> code using a different approach.
>
> It takes incremental suggestions, so you can say, “take the code from the
> inner loop and put it into a separate function” and it does it.
>
> I needed a bit of php code to put on my web host for something specific. I
> haven’t written any php code for a long time, so I told it what I wanted
> and it spat out some code. I nudged it in a few different directions to get
> closer to what I needed, then I tweaked it myself, and in less than an hour
> I had working code.
>
> It was faster than searching the internet for code samples, writing it
> from scratch and having to look up functions and stuff from the latest
> version of the language, and it didn’t require me to post requests here or
> anywhere for help.
>
> I tried getting help with another problem that needed 200-250 lines of
> code, and it was horrid.
>
> One thing it’s excellent for is having it write code to import and/or
> export data to/from another place. That’s something that’s very regular
> code, but it’s complicated enough that you can’t simply write a regex
> expression in vi to do it. The result needs to be informed by the fields,
> their types, and quirks on either and of the assignments.
>
> Like: Here’s an object in Python … now create the same object in php …
> write import and export routines in php to copy the data from the python
> object to the php object.
>
> You could write a macro for that in something and run it to translate any
> number of objects from one platform to another. THe code is really
> mechanical and there’s not much it can screw up.
>
> It can be a HUGE time-saver for the right kinds of things. Just think of
> it like an intern — you’d never give an intern a huge prolblem, right?
> You’d break it down into small chunks, or even ask the internt to try doing
> that first.
>
> It’s all in how you manage it as a resource.
>
> -David Schwartz
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2023, at 2:03 AM, trent shipley via PLUG-discuss <
> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
> *Pointy haired manager to programmer:*  We are thinking of replacing
> programming with AI.
>
> *Programmer:*  Don't you mean you plan to replace programmers with AI.
>
> *PHM:* No, replace programming itself.
>
> *P:*  How?  Why?
>
> *PHM: * Well, the Big, Poorly Understood AI produces really good results
> without actually writing code.
>
> *P:* Go on...
>
> *PHM:*  Plus it's cheap and really, really prolific and efficient.
>
> *P:* Sure, but its quality is awful!!
>
> *PHM:* So is the quality of your software, all software, really.
>
> *P.* Yeah, but the AI's quality is MUCH worse!
>
> *PHM:*  Yes, but the AI is so affordable, efficient, and prolific, that
> the wrongful death lawsuits will be just a cost of doing business, and
> we'll still come out ahead according to the actuaries.
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-- 
James McPhee
jmcphe@gmail.com