Genuine question: can it write larger codebases yet such as: “write a pac-man clone in JavaScript, html, and css”

It can't write pacman. But if you describe a scenario to it, it writes pretty accurate code and can drill down. Very impressive

Yes, but you'll have to chop the project up into different parts and describe each sufficiently well.

For example, start with "write a level generator in JavaScript which outputs pacman like levels encoded in ASCII which could be used as the basis for a pacman clone."

Then you'd say "Great, now write a pacman clone in JavaScript which takes the input of the previously generated level generator and takes interactive input on the console."

Then you'd have to ask it to generate the HTML and CSS. It won't do it all at once. But it will do it piece by piece.

Yes, it's absolutely feasible. I did exactly that with a simpler version of this (Tic Tac Toe, and console only, no actual visual interface) but it worked pretty well.

The main thing is having a good idea of what the overall program structure will look like. If you have that, I think you can go pretty far with it.

Btw, in case anyone wants to see what working like this may look like, I recorded myself while doing that little experiment: https://youtu.be/TBMQIDMwI5E

I'm trying that right now. It can probably do it, the big issue right now is that it won't give really long answers and just stop in the middle, which can be avoided by asking him to finish it, but it doesn't always works.

If you can break down what you want into smaller functions, instead of just asking for the whole thing at once, you can actually do a lot with it, including telling it to out it all together at the end.

Won't link it again so as to not get too spammy, but I posted a recording of an experiment I did playing around with ChatGPT in that way on a sibling comment if you want to check that out.