And then just started asking it questions about each task I was trying to complete. Often I say, "Here is my code in MyComponent.jsx: <paste code> I want to implement <describe feature>. How can I do that?" and GPT will usually respond with tutorial-like steps to take, or sometimes just with the code for a function it thinks I should implement. I read what it suggests, paste it, modify it if necessary, try it out, adjust and repeat.
chat gpt build me a pong program using Ruby2D. It built one but it had some problems
The ball goes through the paddle, please fix that. Then it wrote a collision detection routine for the paddle.
The game has no way to restart. Write code that restarts the game with the space bar. It then did that
Have the game keep score and have the game end at 11 points.
etc
For marketing I did something like
tell me the top problems that CIOs of companies that lease equipment run into with their leasing automation software.
It gave me a relatively generic list.
Which ones of these do CIOs report is the most important.
Integrations
Can you elaborate on the top software that that leasing automation software needs to integrate with. It gave specific software.
etc
This is really cool to hear about.
It took me a while to figure out why it kept forgetting things from earlier in the thread.
I’m looking forward to when you can have a bigger context or explicitly set some sort of context that is persistent.
4k _tokens_, 1 token is approx. 3/4 a word. So it's roughly 3k words
I gave it a summary when I started using it: "I am building an app using Expo, React Native, React Navigation, React Query, Nativebase, Google Maps and lodash. Expo exports the app for web, iOS and Android. The purpose of the app is to view data related to <specific domain> on a map. The data comes from an internal API."
Then I started copying and pasting code or asking questions about using the libraries I had mentioned.
After all, why bother dealing with so many external libraries to get it done when you can just relay the core ones you must use and ask chatgpt to flesh out the rest in a way that suits your needs? Need a component to be gamepad accessible written in Vue? Ask and you'll receive. No more bothering with that library that hasn't been updated in years or wasting time figuring out if x package is stable enough.
Same with endpoints, no having to sort through 30 different sites and navigating horrible menus to potentially see a comment where someone says "oh the endpoint changed it's actually x". Even if chatgpt gets it wrong, it's so much faster to just tell it that the endpoint is wrong or whatever the error you're actually getting.
Like you mentioned though the big caveat is to know what you're working with. Without that you're going to waste a lot of time not knowing where chatgpt is going wrong. That will probably improve eventually, but if you're trying to learn a new programming language through it, you will likely be holding yourself back or learning very odd patterns.
You maintain the code the same way those other people maintain their code, testing. They aren't doing anything special here, you still have to write tests (well, you can get GPT to write some of them for you). The upside here is you are the one in control of this and you can change and test to your specific needs. You are not relying on external library who has to appeal to a general huge variety of use cases. You also don't have to deal with a lot of external time-wasters, as you're only working internally so you aren't at the whims of whether or not that group can even work on implementing your change. Plus, no more random changes that catch you by surprise when you're reading the change log.
>Keep asking ChatGPT to fix it when things break?
Hah, maybe some day we will get to that point. Until then we still need to know what is happening, however, you might be surprised to find out how infrequently things require that much input seeing as you aren't at the whims of random other parties constantly.
I suggest code obfuscation and other acts of tribal knowledge hoarding for job security. ;)
A self contained bundle of software with no external dependencies cannot break, because it has no externally changing parts, that should be obvious.
In my case, the app is just a toy simulation that simulates creatures with simple neural network brains. I knew very little about neural networks going into it, but knew a few terms to ask ChatGPT about. I initially asked ChatGPT to help me figure out which configuration to use for the neural networks, and to explain what some of the terms mean. I also asked it to provide some code samples and give advice for using some of the libraries involved.
The difference compared to Googling things is that ChatGPT can give you succinct answers to your specific questions. With Google, I'd say half the time Google just ignores half your search terms, or if it decides your search is worthy, the answer to your question is buried somewhere in a long, technical article. ChatGPT will respond to your specific question, and then you can ask follow-up questions.
I do worry about ChatGPT's famous propensity for lying, but I guess it's a bit like getting information from Wikipedia. If something is really important, you better find a better source, but if you're okay with muddling through and taking your learnings with a grain of salt, it's probably fine.
For example, anything with MacOS predates Ventura, so it will think the Mac is on Python 2 and has no awareness of a host of new APIs/SDKs for hardening.
On the other hand, if you're doing it regularly, you are also learning how to frame your interaction to keep it on point rather than hallucinating positivity. Once you hit that stride, it's indeed a handy little rubber duck!