this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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I will resort to ChatGPT for coding help every so often. I'm a fairly experienced programmer, so my questions usually tend to be somewhat complex. I've found that's it's extremely useful for those problems that fall into the category of "I could solve this myself in 2 hours, or I could ask AI to solve it for me in seconds." Usually, I'll get a working solution, but almost every single time, it's not a good solution. It provides a great starting-off point to write my own code.
Some of the issues I've found (speaking as a C++ developer) are: Variables not declared "const," extremely inefficient use of data structures, ignoring modern language features, ignoring parallelism, using an improper data type, etc.
ChatGPT is great for generating ideas, but it's going to be a while before it can actually replace a human developer. Producing code that works isn't hard; producing code that's good requires experience.
This has been my experience as well. If you already know what you are doing, LLMs can be a great tool. If you are inexperienced, you cannot assess the quality nor the accuracy of the answers, and are using the LLM to replace your own learning.
I like to draw the parallel to people that have learnt to paint only using digital tools. They often show a particular colouring that shows a lack of understanding of colour theory. Because pipette tools mean that you never have to mix colours, you never have to learn to do so. Painting with physical paint isn't superior, but it presents a hurdle (mixing paint) that is crucial to learn to overcome. Many digital-only artists will still have learnt on traditional media. Once you have the knowledge, the pipette and colour pickers are just a tool, no longer inhibiting anything.