One of the higher ups at work has suggested quite an interest in ChatGPT as a code
documentarian. I'm wary to let that thing near my code bases, but I'm a
stickler for style as much as function, so a bit you could also tell to make pretty,
readable code would be interesting.
I see most effective applications in documentation and cleanup, as a bot could probably be
made to spit out pretty consistent documentation of functions to the tune of "always
describe an if else option with this verbiage" or "add a mention of the stack
depth added by every routine", and then cleanup like enforcing/removing braces on one
liners, resorting procedures to group more relevant operations (when not order-dependent),
and perhaps better intelligent editors that don't need as much configuration to
smartly support many programming languages. I'd love an editor that allows for rich
editing of assembly alongside C.
Hopefully the direction the improvements on productivity go are "Gee my workers can
work so efficiently now they deserve the time this frees up for them." although my
fear is "Gee my workers can work so efficiently now I only need half of them."
I only support automation that makes workers' lives easier, not automation that makes
executives bottom lines better at the cost of jobs.
- Matt G.
------- Original Message -------
On Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 7:40 AM, Stuff Received <stuff(a)riddermarkfarm.ca>
wrote:
On 2023-01-22 00:23, David Arnold wrote (in part):
I’ve played with ChatGPT, and the first 10
minutes were a bit
confronting. But the remainder of the hour or so
I played
overcame my initial concerns.
It’s amazing what can be done, especially with
Javascript or
Python, when you ask for something that’s fairly
simple to
define, and in a common application area. You can
get reasonable
code, refine it, ask for an altered approach,
etc. It’s probably
quicker than writing it yourself, especially if
you’re not
intimately familiar with the library being used
(or even the
language).
But … it pretty quickly becomes clear that
there’s no semantic
understanding of what’s being done behind it. And
unless you
specify what you want in pretty minute detail,
the output is
unlikely to be what you want.
The comment by Derek Jones
(
https://shape-of-code.com/2023/01/15/coding-mistakes-made-by-chatgtp/)
may be of interest here.
N.