Do you learn coding together with GPT-4 ?
Anil Matcha
11 replies
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André J@sentry_co
Nope. Gpt4 is like a really bad programmer. if you want to be a bad programmer go ahead and use it. It's all hype at this point. GitHub copilot 1.0 is a joke. 2.0 isn't looking much better. but eventually. There could be some use. Like some basic code-review stuff. as a CI service on GitHub etc.
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Reals by Hour One
its very basic and can surely be a good starting point. but it still lacks prefection
@gil_ariel it is indeed still not perfect for some languages but can be a great pair programmer for many projects. I personally use it to brainstorm some aspects of the architecture and to produce the boiler plat codes.
Mentor.AI
ChatGPT-4, like its predecessors, can help developers learn coding in multiple ways:
Explaining Concepts: It can help explain programming concepts, data structures, algorithms, etc. in an easy-to-understand way. It can also help with mathematics, logic, and other disciplines that often come up in programming.
Answering Queries: It can provide answers to specific coding queries, such as "What is recursion?" or "How do I use loops in Python?". It can also help clarify confusing aspects of a programming language, or explain the differences between languages.
Providing Code Examples: It can offer examples of code to illustrate particular concepts or methods. It can provide snippets or even larger blocks of code for more complex ideas.
Debugging Assistance: You can describe a bug in your code, and it might help identify potential solutions or ways to debug it.
Reviewing Code: It can review pieces of code and suggest improvements, whether they be related to efficiency, readability, or other best practices.
It can be a good rubber duck in many ways:
- Using it to debug problems when you are stuck.
- If you come across lines of code you don't understand, you can get GPT-4 to explain what the method or function is doing.
- Explain any coding concepts or jargon that you might come across.
- To give you a learning schedule for any programming language you might want to learn.
Yeah its been helping with SQL mainly for me. Sometimes its just tiny things I need checking
Or… You can prompt GPT to assume the persona of ‘Fabien Potencier’ and explain you how he created .symphony and use the process in your own dev…
Reals by Hour One
true ;)
As an experienced, senior-level iOS developer I tried GPT4 as a pair programming partner for my last project. What was most useful about it in my experience was that it could generate boilerplate classes, SwiftUI views, and structs based on a paragraph or two of text about some addition or feature you may be imagining. This is not insignificant as laziness happens and it encourages one to follow through and integrate this new idea. It's also useful for debugging and refactoring, though the small context size is a real and constant problem. It's also useful for quickly generating small functions (again, laziness). The main problems beyond context size: first, it's outdated. I'd often need to provide it documentation from after early 2021 to get it up to speed on new API. Second, it confidently suggests sometimes dumb ideas. And these ideas may even work, but remain suboptimal, and if you're not experienced you might be tempted to believe GPT4. Often all you need to do is suggest a simpler route and it will go, "Yes you're right here's that version..." and it will be fine. Overall, I wish it had a context size large enough to encompass my entire project, and direct access to Xcode, and the latest API docs. Overall, GPT4 is the best/fastest/smartest/most productive pair programming partner I've ever had, but it's quirky and you shouldn't blindly trust it.
So overall, I'd say yes, you can learn from GPT4, as I am a much better SwiftUI developer after building this latest app, but you have to maintain skepticism about its ideas at all times. If you don't you might pick up bad habits and adopt poor methods of doing common things.