Do chatgpt or other language models help you code more efficiently and faster? Is it worth spending your money for it?

  •  Elise   ( @xilliah@beehaw.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    3
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Hmm well for research it can give me good pointers, when I am going into a new field.

    For actual coding it’s mostly useless for the moment. It’s not trained to be productive, so it doesn’t know what to focus on and tends to be overly verbose. Its internal model of what’s going on is also quite shaky.

    It feels like working with clay, I have to somehow get the code the llm generates into the shape I need. But it’s like looking at a movie at super slow mo, and the clay is too wet and keeps falling apart.

    Furthermore, it cannot handle anything more than relatively low complexity code. Sure it can give you a function for drawing a circle. But architecture and code smell are things it doesn’t understand.

    So after using it for a year I must say that I don’t use it for actual coding. I use it mostly to get an overview of fields I’m not that much into. For example lately I’ve looked into quantum field theory again, and Rust for the first time. I know it spouts a lot of nonsense but I can still get the gist of it.

    Still relying on good ol Bessie 🧠