this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why are you actively trying to avoid learning how to write the loop? Are you planning to have ChatGPT fill in your loop templates for the rest of your life?

First, how is this different from having your IDE fill in your loop templates?

Second, no, of course I learn how to do it and then copy/paste from my existing code like a normal person.

Third, this is much more customizable. The example I gave is pretty simple, but you can explain algorithms to ChatGPT and have it figure it out.

Finally, I'm usually doing this for a customer in a language I'll never use again. Last week it was LabView. My role has me writing proofs-of-concept for customers frequently so I'm not going to learn something I'll never use again.

It’s going to be slower overall than just using the reference and learning how to do it.

Not when you're not familiar with the syntax and don't have an IDE set up for it.

other than people who are just impressed when you can do anything with a computer.

This happens in my job a lot more than I'm comfortable with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

First, how is this different from having your IDE fill in your loop templates?

I don't do that actually, but I think there are some differences.

  1. One is if there's a loop template in your IDE, you know it's going to work. With LLMs you have to double check stuff (or just have it be wrong some of the time).
  2. You don't have to type in a bunch of instructions to use a loop template. You also don't really have to wait for the filled in template to get generated.
  3. People don't usually use that because they just don't know how to write the loop themselves, it's a convenience feature.

That said:

I’m usually doing this for a customer in a language I’ll never use again.

Maybe you're the one in a million exception where this approach is a benefit. Most of the time when you talk to people on the internet, they're going to assume you're a reasonably typical case and not the extremely rare exception.