this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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@Vilian @FaceDeer I agree. I’m no programmer but do a fair bit of Linux/powershell/bash scripting. Virtually all the code that ChatGPT gives me is wrong. You tell it the errors, and it gives you a modified script with errors, point out those errors and it’s go back to its first answer. The only thing it is useful for is writing lots of basic code, really quickly. I can just copy/paste then start debugging.
I am a programmer and I've found ChatGPT to be able to produce plenty of good, useful code. I haven't encountered the problems you're describing in correcting its errors, perhaps you're not prompting it well.
@FaceDeer @floofloof @henfredemars @PoisonedPrisonPanda @sab @Vilian nah, it was trained in 2021 and parrots 10 year old stack overflow pages. That may have worked a decade ago, but stuff has moved on since then. It still spits out code using AzureAD cmdlets as it doesn’t know MSGraph replace a lot of it in last couple of years. I guess it could be ok if you’re on a legacy tech stack though.
So you're telling me that the code it generated for me wasn't good and useful, and that when I told it to correct errors it actually did introduce new errors and restore old ones, contrary to what I just said? Guess all that stuff I got done using its help didn't actually get done after all and I'm descending ever deeper into a world of delusion, thinking my projects are finished and working when in fact they aren't.
Obviously if you're trying to get it to use APIs from after 2021 that's not going to work. It also won't bake you a cake if you ask it to. Use tools for the tasks they're good for, don't use them for things you know they can't do.
@FaceDeer @floofloof @henfredemars @PoisonedPrisonPanda @sab @Vilian the 500 char limit made me pick the first failure that spring to mind. Maybe you forget, but AI wasn’t trained on “good” data. It was trained “all” data and large amounts of that is plain wrong. People with problems pasting blocks of code and responses correcting a single line. ChatGPT isn’t smart enough to merge those into a single block of working code.
You have to tell ChatGPT that you want good code, then.
I'm actually serious. If you just ask for something generic, it'll assume you want something generic. If you ask it for something that's "high efficiency, well commented and maintainable" then it's going to know you wanted that and give you something more along those lines. Just like if you asked it for something "that looks crappy and sloppy, like an amateur wrote it."
Very often when people complain about ChatGPT's "style" or say they can immediately spot something that "sounds like" ChatGPT it's because they're not giving it good directions. It can't read your mind. Yet.
@FaceDeer @floofloof @henfredemars @PoisonedPrisonPanda @sab @Vilian nope. I ask for highly precise stuff. When I say, “I’m no coder,” it’s coz I use interpreters and don’t compile “real” code, plus it only accounts for 10% of my day job. ChatGPT maybe useful for Hello World, Towers of Babel or other stuff it scraped from udemy, but when you ask it to assist in automating complex production systems, it really falls down.
Maybe ChatGPT just hates you personally, then.
You're saying "it can't work for anyone because it doesn't work for me!" And I'm saying "well, it worked for me, so maybe you're using it wrong."
You can't insist it's not working for me because it did. I'm not disputing that it didn't work for you, all I can suggest is reading up a bit on prompt engineering to see if you can find out what you're doing differently.
@FaceDeer @floofloof @henfredemars @PoisonedPrisonPanda @sab @Vilian I’m not saying it didn’t work for you. I’m saying it’s only good for entry level stuff… It’s not coming for my job yet, but I can seriously see it stealing work from the overseas, underpaid, code shops in China/India.
I am not an "entry level" coder.
I also am not concerned with it "coming for my job." It's a collaborator with humans, not a replacement for them.