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ChatGPT is not built for responding to programming questions, and it shows. Aspects like lack of context understanding, privacy issues, and a lack of peer review make using it for building software a possibly dangerous choice.
Considering ChatGPT for your programming project makes sense, but the AI is not ready for coding.
StackOverflow proved to be a more helpful tool than ChatGPT, considering the quality and depth of the solutions provided.
As with many popular services and products, marketing and false advertising might make the AI tool seem better than tools we already have, but you should make sure that the tools you choose are verified and have stood the test of time.
First of all, you should use any tool at your disposal to help you finish your tasks faster and improve the quality of your work. But is ChatGPT helping you when it comes to code?
I don’t think so, and the main reason is that ChatGPT shines when it comes to text-based tasks, while it might not be so able to code your next app for several reasons:
There are no apps written fully by ChatGPT 3.5 or 4, or whatever else. I always look for results. And there are no results there.
If you ask ChatGPT if you should use it for programming, it will tell you the same thing. When answering your prompt, ChatGPT will treat code like it would be text. That is not how coding works. It will not consider your project requirements or best practices when responding.
You don’t want to share your company’s code with ChatGPT. It’s not fair to your company and its customers.
I need to mention the new study from Purdue University, which concluded that asking ChatGPT programming questions will be worse than a coin flip in terms of correctness.
The study is not peer-reviewed, which is detrimental. Until others repeat the study and get similar results, we will not go in-depth with the subject.
You do not need to do your research when professionals are on it.
There are two popular versions of ChatGPT: 3.5 and 4.
From what I gathered, ChatGPT4 seems to be ChatGPT3.5 running on better hardware. Software like language models require lots of processing power and memory to do their job. It is not the case only when training the AI, but also when it responds to prompts.
There are, obviously, other differences between the two, with some features added in ChatGPT4, which also takes a data-to-text approach to respond to prompts, as opposed to the text-to-text method of ChatGPT3.
Many users have blamed publishers for misleading their audience by using the ChatGPT3.5 version in their assessment. I agree we should consider both versions and at least specify the version used, but I also know that very few people use ChatGPT4 compared to users of the free version, ChatGPT3.5.
It depends on your current level of expertise. You can say someone could build a website with help from Google Search only, which, unlike ChatGPT, actually did it before.
If you are more experienced and can fully understand whatever ChatGPT spews out, I guess it could help you code faster with responses that match your prompts exactly. I only recommend you use ChatGPT for programming if you can do it yourself. If you don’t understand its output, don’t use it.
There are no fully ChatGPT-built apps out there. And, before you rush to disagree, just because someone prompts ChatGPT for information easily accessible online from other sources, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way or even the best way.
I went online and searched for projects built only with ChatGPT, and the only thing I found was lots of articles/videos that camouflage some advertisements as the actual content.
There is more to building an app than code. You need to know how to test, optimize, and integrate your app, whatever kind it might be.
Having the code for a seemingly functional app is just 20% of the way to building a proper app. Empowering people with tools that accelerate their programming workflow might cause them to overlook important aspects of software development, which will cause more harm than good in time.
StackOverflow has experienced a dip a bit in popularity since ChatGPT got more users, suggesting that people successfully used the AI bot as an alternative.
StackOverflow has had its share of criticism, mostly around personality issues displayed by its users, but not on the correctness of the code. And there’s a simple reason for that: peer review.
Every time someone posts a solution on StackOverflow, people check its correctness.
So, if I go and ask a question on StackOverflow, others will be able to see it. If the person answering is incorrect, someone will point it out. ChatGPT will always make its output look correct, possibly tricking some users.
This question is an easy one. Let me give you an analogy:
The way I see it, ChatGPT automates your workflow at the same level a self-driving car will drive you around. For the last ten years or so, we kept hearing that in just a few months or the next version of the software, human interaction will not be needed anymore. It did not happen.
I do not think ChatGPT will fully write software for us anytime soon. Just like lane assist for modern cars, it could help you keep on track, but you should not give it the wheel.
ChatGPT is good with tasks that involve knowing lots of stuff, and that’s great. Having it edit your content or even write some for you will produce good enough results. But when it comes to code, I recommend using the classics.
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