This is what I’ve used it for and it’s helped me learn, especially because it makes mistakes and I have to get them to work. In my case it was with Terraform and Ansible.
Comment on Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants
ggppjj@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It introduced me to the basics of C# in a way that traditional googling at my previous level of knowledge would’ve made difficult.
I knew what I wanted to do and I didn’t know what was possible or how to ask without my question being closed as a duplicate with a link to an unhelpful post.
In that regard, it’s very helpful. If I had already known the language well enough, I can see it being less helpful.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
ggppjj@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Haha, yeah. It really loves to refactor my code to “fix” bracket list initialization (e.g.
List<string> stringList = []) because it keeps not remembering that the syntax has been valid for a while.It’s newest favorite hangup is to incessantly suggest null checks without asking if it’s a nullable property that it’s checking first. I think I’m almost at the point where it’s becoming less useful to me.
Asetru@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
What about just reading the documentation?
turmacar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Even with amazing documentation, it can be hard to find the thing you’re looking for if you don’t know the right phrasing or terminology yet. It’s easily the most usable thing I’ve seen come out of “AI”, which makes sense. A Language Model being able to parse language a very literal application.
Asetru@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
The person I replied to was talking about learning the basics of a language… This isn’t about searching for something specific, this is about reading the very basic introduction to a language before trying to Google your way through it. Avoiding the basic documentation is always a bad idea. Replacing it with the LLMed version of the original documentation probably even more so.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I learned bash thanks to AI!
For years, all I did was copy and paste bash commands. And I didn’t understand arguments, how to chain things, or how it connects.
HighlyRegardedArtist@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You do realize that a very thorough manual is but a
man bashaway? Perhaps it’s not the most accessible source available, but it makes up for that in completeness.ggppjj@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I believe accessibility is the part that makes LLMs helpful, when they are given an easy enough task to verify. Being able to ask a thing that resembles a human what you need instead of reading through possibly documentation to figure out what is available and making it fit what you need is fairly powerful.
If it were actually capable of reasoning, I’d compare it to asking a linguist the origin of a word vs looking it up in a dictionary. I don’t think anyone disagrees that the dictionary would be more likely to be fully accurate, and also I personally would just prefer to ask the person who seemingly knows and, if I have reason to doubt, then go back and double-check.
Here’s the manpage for bash’s statistics from wordcounter.net: Image
HighlyRegardedArtist@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Perhaps LLMs can be used to gain some working vocabulary in a subject you aren’t familiar with. I’d say anything more than that is a gamble, since there’s no guarantee that hallucinations have not taken place. Remember, that to spot incorrect info, you need to already be well acquainted with the matter at hand, which is at the polar opposite of just starting to learn the basics.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Great for Coding 101 in a language I’m rusty with or otherwise unfamiliar.
Absolutely useless when it comes time to optimize a complex series of functions or upgrade to a new version of the .NET library. All the “AI” you need is typically baked into Intellisense or some equivalent anyway. We’ve had code-assist/advice features for over a decade and its always been mid.