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Generative AI chat is incredibly useful for learning, especially tasks that require a lot of inline learning such as software engineering. I use generative AI c
by NathanKP 2y ago
Generative AI chat is incredibly useful for learning, especially tasks that require a lot of inline learning such as software engineering. I use generative AI chat constantly, because it is basically a Stack Overflow that is near instant with it's answers and can debug error messages extremely well.
I don't even have to leave my code editor if I install the extension in my IDE. And with an IDE extension it can be aware of the actual context of my codebase to the point where it can write code samples that reference my own methods and variables.
It's incredibly helpful. I've seen and used a lot of different learning techniques over the years. I started out learning coding from physical books. Then it was online bulletin boards and forums, and Google. But AI agents and chat have replaced almost all of that now. I rarely waste my time on Google anymore when I can get more relevant answers, faster, right in my IDE.
Sure there is the occasional hallucination, but its not that much worse than terrible answers on Stack Overflow, or junk blogs and outdated docs that Google surfaces because someone SEOed the hell out of them.
- Slyfox33 2y ago"Occasional hallucination" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
- alan-hn 2y agoPerhaps if it was a research context sure, but for the most part I've found GPT4 to do a good job on small to medium size chunks of coding
- rusticpenn 2y agoLess hallucination than some of my students in their presentations
- JohnFen 2y agoHonestly, I have found LLMs to be much inferior to my usual methods for this sort of use case. So much so that I've stopped using them. I am fascinated by how different people have such different experiences with these systems. A study into what the difference between the "best thing since sliced bread" camp and the "meh" camp is would be very interesting.