That’s because it doesn’t know what it’s saying. It’s just blathering out each word as what it estimates to be the likely next word given past examples in its training data. It’s a statistics calculator. It’s marginally better than just smashing the auto fill on your cell repeatedly. It’s literally dumber than a parrot.
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
ChatGPT has been, hands down, the worst AI coding assistant I’ve ever used.
It regularly suggests code that doesn’t compile or isn’t even for the language.
It generally suggests AC of code that is just a copy of the lines I just wrote.
Sometimes it likes to suggest setting the same property like 5 times.
It is absolute garbage and I do not recommend it to anyone.
Etterra@discuss.online 5 days ago
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Parrots are actually intelligent though.
Etterra@discuss.online 4 days ago
Yeah, but not when it comes to understanding human speech. There’s a reason that repeating words without really understanding them is called parroting. Gray parrots are the smartest and some can actually understand language a little bit, making them smarter than chat, which is just high tech guessing without comprehension
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
my favorite thing is to constantly be implementing libraries that don’t exist
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 days ago
You’re right. That library was removed in ToolName [PriorVersion]. Please try this instead.
*makes up entirely new fictitious library name*
jj4211@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Oh man, I feel this. A couple of times I’ve had to field questions about some REST API I support and they ask why they get errors when they supply a specific attribute. Now that attribute never existed, not in our code, not in our documentation, we never thought of it. So I say “Well, that attribute is invalid, I’m not sure where you saw to do that”. They get insistent that the code is generated by a very good LLM, so we must be missing something…
arc99@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It’s even worse when AI soaks up some project whose APIs are constantly changing. Try using AI to code against jetty for example and you’ll be weeping.
arc99@lemmy.world 5 days ago
All AIs are the same. They’re just scraping content from GitHub, stackoverflow etc with a bunch of guardrails slapped on to spew out sentences that conform to their training data but there is no intelligence. They’re super handy for basic code snippets but anyone using them anything remotely complex or nuanced will regret it.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 4 days ago
One of my mates generated an entire website using Gemini. It was a React web app that tracks inventory for trading card dealers. It actually did come out functional and well-polished. That being said, the AI really struggled with several aspects of the project that humans would not:
- It left database secrets in the code
- The design of the website meant that it was impossible to operate securely
- The quality of the code itself was hot garbage—unreadable and undocumented nonsense that somehow still worked
- It did not break the code into multiple files. It piled everything into a single file
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I’ve used agents for implementing entire APIs and front-ends from the ground up with my own customizations and nuances.
I will say that, for my pedantic needs, it typically only gets about 80-90% of the way there so I still have to put fingers to code, but it definitely saves a boat load of time in those instances.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
I’ve had success with splitting a function into 2 and planning out an overview, though that’s more like talking to myself
I wouldn’t use it to generate stuff though
Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I don’t use it for coding. I use it sparingly really, but want to learn to use it more efficiently. Are there any areas in which you think it excels? Are there others that you’d recommend instead?
uairhahs@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Use Gemini (2.5) or Claude (3.7 and up). OpenAI is a shitshow
j4yt33@feddit.org 5 days ago
I find it really hit and miss. Easy, standard operations are fine but if you have an issue with code you wrote and ask it to fix it, you can forget it
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I’ve found Claude 3.7 and 4.0 and sometimes Gemini variants still leagues better than ChatGPT/Copilot.
Still not perfect, but night and day difference.
I feel like ChatGPT didn’t focus on coding and instead focused on mainstream, but I am not an expert.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 5 days ago
Gemini will get basic C++, probably the best documented language for beginners out there, right about half of the time.
PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I like tab coding, writing small blocks of code that it thinks I need. Its On point almost all the time. This speeds me up.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Bingo. If anything what you’re finding is the people bitching are the same people that if given a bike wouldn’t know how to ride it, which is fair. Some people understand quicker how to use the tools they are given.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 days ago
It’s the ideal help for people who shouldn’t be employed as programmers to start with.
I had to explain hexadecimal to somebody the other day. It’s honestly depressing.