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Based on the majority of web sites on the Internet: Do we really care if the code is copy-pasted out of ChatGPT or out of Stack Overflow? A lot of folks do not
by groby_b 2y ago
Based on the majority of web sites on the Internet: Do we really care if the code is copy-pasted out of ChatGPT or out of Stack Overflow?
A lot of folks do not have the necessary knowledge to deeply understand the code they're writing - and I don't mean that as a diss. There's a lot of things they understand that better SWEs might not.
ChatGPT and StackOverflow both allow them to build things they otherwise couldn't, the same way e.g. cars are tools that allow people to travel faster even if they can't fix the cars or make smarter choices about where they go. At some point, that lack of knowledge will cause them harm, but that's not specific to any given tool, and the harm from ChatGPT advice isn't worse than the harm from SO advice.
- 101008 2y agoIt depends what is your wbesite. Just a blog to post your thoughts? Yeah, no harm at all. It's a crypto trading tool? An ecommerce plugin? It's your bussiness? Then it may be harmful, yes.
- redleggedfrog 2y agoYeah, I'll second this. Our company has an aggressive push to use LLMs for development, and it has quite certainly been the the source of a lot of obscure problems that made it into production. Definitely going a bit too fast for their own good.
- someoneiam 2y agoI think (based on observations from my admittedly flawed in many different ways workplace) the difference with Stackoverflow assisted development is scale. ChatGPT seems to have massively boosted the productivity of mediocre developers. Obviously not saying that LLMs aren't empowering competent developers and spawning useful projects. But their ubiquity seems to have coincided with an avalanche of terrible code, at least at the fairly disorganized organization I work at.