6 ms·

Copilot and ChatGPT have taken a lot away from StackOverflow.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
This is true for me. I wanted good ways to deal with pointers to 2D arrays in C, which aren’t hard but you need to remember that [] has precedence over *, so (*pointer)[x][y] is needed to deference. It’s not the hard to mess it up. Ultimately GPT had an OK answer but… it had that immediately without searching and the didn’t have to craft some well written example, it picked up my dirty explanation no problem. I have the 2D array typedef’ed now, but it’s still confusing to read and hard to work with. I’ll search tomorrow on it.
- noduerme 3y ago
  Asking anything C or C++ on SO has become an invitation to a ritual hazing. If, after dealing with everyone's ego, you can successfully demonstrate that you already know enough and you're not asking to pass a CS test, the Wise Ones may - may - deign to bestow you with an answer. Which usually won't relate to your specific issue. Also, in C++, you can set your clock to someone commenting that you should just use smart pointers. It doesn't matter if the question is entirely unrelated. As someone who spent a decade helping people answering code questions on Flashkit and later SO, I find the SO community and moderation now to be so off-putting that I avoid asking anything there if I can. I still give answers sometimes, but I'm much less likely to be on the site at all.
- abdellah123 3y ago
  very good insight. Integrating AI into stackoverflow as a question refiner is a very good idea
  - andirk 3y ago
    And as of today, here it is: https://stackoverflow.co/labs/ https://stackoverflow.co/labs/
assimpleaspossi 3y ago
I have found that I cannot and do not trust either of those for anything.
- winrid 3y ago
  Really? For programming they are immensely helpful! ChatGPT 3.5 even rewrote Rust code for me that compiled with borrowing issues, replacing iter() with itermut() and other things. I also had a question about specific configuration w/ an old version of Chart.JS that I could not find an answer on Google, and ChatGPT figured it out.
  - pittmajp 3y ago
    I had it write an ansible job to enable a service with a specific name, and I got what I expected: something that looks correct a first glance, but with some subtle errors.
    - Closi 3y ago
      Much like half the answers on stack overflow. Rather than ask it to write a full ansible job, try asking it the question you would ask on Stack Overflow (i.e. you probably wouldn't ask Stack Overflow to write the full job for you).

This is true for me. I wanted good ways to deal with pointers to 2D arrays in C, which aren’t hard but you need to remember that [] has precedence over *, so (*pointer)[x][y] is needed to deference. It’s not the hard to mess it up. Ultimately GPT had an OK answer but… it had that immediately without searching and the didn’t have to craft some well written example, it picked up my dirty explanation no problem. I have the 2D array typedef’ed now, but it’s still confusing to read and hard to work with. I’ll search tomorrow on it.

noduerme 3y ago
Asking anything C or C++ on SO has become an invitation to a ritual hazing. If, after dealing with everyone's ego, you can successfully demonstrate that you already know enough and you're not asking to pass a CS test, the Wise Ones may - may - deign to bestow you with an answer. Which usually won't relate to your specific issue. Also, in C++, you can set your clock to someone commenting that you should just use smart pointers. It doesn't matter if the question is entirely unrelated. As someone who spent a decade helping people answering code questions on Flashkit and later SO, I find the SO community and moderation now to be so off-putting that I avoid asking anything there if I can. I still give answers sometimes, but I'm much less likely to be on the site at all.
abdellah123 3y ago
very good insight. Integrating AI into stackoverflow as a question refiner is a very good idea
- andirk 3y ago
  And as of today, here it is: https://stackoverflow.co/labs/ https://stackoverflow.co/labs/

assimpleaspossi 3y ago

I have found that I cannot and do not trust either of those for anything.

winrid 3y ago
Really? For programming they are immensely helpful! ChatGPT 3.5 even rewrote Rust code for me that compiled with borrowing issues, replacing iter() with itermut() and other things. I also had a question about specific configuration w/ an old version of Chart.JS that I could not find an answer on Google, and ChatGPT figured it out.
- pittmajp 3y ago
  I had it write an ansible job to enable a service with a specific name, and I got what I expected: something that looks correct a first glance, but with some subtle errors.
  - Closi 3y ago
    Much like half the answers on stack overflow. Rather than ask it to write a full ansible job, try asking it the question you would ask on Stack Overflow (i.e. you probably wouldn't ask Stack Overflow to write the full job for you).