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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