How can you use ChatGPT to write code as part of your daily coding practice? That’s what we’re going to explore here.
What types of coding can ChatGPT do well?
There are two important facts about ChatGPT and coding. The first is that it can, in fact, write useful code. The second is that it can get completely lost, fall down the rabbit hole, chase its own tail, and produce absolutely unusable garbage. Also: I’m using ChatGPT to help me fix code faster, but at what cost? I found this out the hard way. After I finished the WordPress plugin, I decided to see how far ChatGPT could go. I wrote out a very careful prompt for a Mac application, including detailed descriptions of user interface elements, interactions, what would be provided in settings, how they would work, and so on. Then I fed it to ChatGPT. Also: Okay, so ChatGPT just debugged my code. For real. ChatGPT responded with just a flood of text and code. Then it stopped mid-code. When I asked it to continue, it vomited out even more code and text. I requested continue after continue and it dumped out more and more code. But… none of it was usable. It didn’t identify where the code should go, how to construct the project, and – when I looked carefully at the code produced – it left out major operations I requested, leaving in simple text descriptions stating “program logic goes here.” Also: How to use ChatGPT: Everything you need to know After a bunch of repeated tests, it became clear to me that if you ask ChatGPT to deliver a complete application, it will fail. A corollary to this observation is that if you know nothing of coding and want ChatGPT to build you something, it will fail. Where ChatGPT succeeds, and does so very well, is helping someone who already knows how to code to build specific routines and get specific tasks done. Don’t ask for an app that runs on the menu bar. But if you ask ChatGPT for a routine to put a menu on the menu bar, and then paste that into your project, it will go quite well. Also: How to use ChatGPT to create an app Use ChatGPT to demo techniques, write small algorithms, and write subroutines. You can even get ChatGPT to help you break down a bigger project into chunks, and then you can ask it to help you code those chunks. Also: How does ChatGPT work? So, with that in mind, let’s look at some specific steps for how to use ChatGPT to write code.
How ChatGPT can help you write code
I started with a prompt that was designed to elicit information about what libraries would provide the functionality I wanted. A library (for those of you reading along who aren’t programmers) is a body of code a programmer can access that does a lot of the heavy lifting for a specific purpose. A big part of modern programming is finding and choosing the right libraries. So this is a good starting point. Also: How to use ChatGPT to summarize a book, article, or research paper Imagine you’re paying a human programmer to do this. Are you giving that person enough information to be able to work on your assignment? Or are you too vague and the person you’re paying is more likely to either ask questions or turn in something entirely unrelated to what you want? Here’s an example. Let’s say I want to be able to summarize any web page. I want to feed it something like this article and get back a short summary that’s well-considered and appropriate. As my input, I’ll specify a web page URL. As my output, it’s a block of text with a summary. But with the rise of AI tools, it makes more sense to use an AI library to do an intelligent extract and summary. One of the places ChatGPT excels (and it’s also an area you can easily verify to avoid its authoritative-but-wrong behavior pattern) is finding libraries and resources. Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations OpenAI (the maker of ChatGPT) sells API access to the GPT-3 and GPT-4 engines that will do exactly what we want. But in the case of this example, let’s assume we don’t want to pay transaction fees. So let’s look at interacting with ChatGPT to figure out how to use such a tool, for free, with a project that runs in PHP. Also: How to use ChatGPT to create an app In this case, I’m looking at blocks of code written by other people that will summarize text. Here’s my first prompt: This gave me exactly what I wanted, including a mention of OpenAI’s offerings. I think OpenAI would do great here, but for this hypothetical project, don’t want to budget for API fees. So I’ll narrow down the question. ChatGPT hedged its bets with its answer. Here’s what it said: “Yes, all ten of these AI libraries are open source and free to use. However, some of them may have usage limits or require payment for access to additional features or resources.” So, based on that, I clarified my query. Notice how this is very much a conversation. I don’t have to re-ask the originating question. I’m just drilling down in the same way I might if I had an expert at hand and was seeking clarification. In this case, ChatGPT gave me eight library choices, but none of them mentioned the PHP language that I was planning to code in. So, here’s the next prompt: It returned three libraries, but I wasn’t sure about what each did. So another question: I still wasn’t sure, so I clarified my use plan and then asked: The answer I got was clear and promising: “Sumy is specifically designed for text summarization, which is the task of creating a summary that captures the most important information from a piece of text.” So, now it was time to see what was involved in using it with PHP. I asked my last question for this part of the project: Feel free to play along on your computer and paste these prompts into your instance of ChatGPT. Notice that, in step 1, I decided what program module I was going to get help on. Then, in this step, I had a conversation with ChatGPT to decide what library to use and how to integrate it into my project. Also: The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT and other interesting alternatives to try That may not seem like programming, but I assure you it is. Programming isn’t just blasting lines of code onto a page. Programming is figuring out how to integrate all the various resources and systems together, and how to talk to all the various components of your solution. Here, ChatGPT helped me do that integration analysis. By the way, I was curious whether Google’s Bard could help in the same way. Bard can’t actually write code, but it did give some extra insights into the planning aspect of programming over ChatGPT’s responses. So don’t hesitate to use multiple tools to triangulate on answers you want. Here’s that story: Bard vs. ChatGPT: Can Bard help you code? Coding is next. That means you have to do it yourself. As we know, the first draft of a piece of code is rarely the final code. So even if you were to expect ChatGPT to generate final code, it would really be a starting point, one where you need to take it to completion, integrate it into your bigger project, test it, refine it, debug it, and so on. Also: What is GPT-4? Here’s everything you need to know Let’s be clear. Unless you’re writing a very small function (like the line sorter/randomizer ChatGPT wrote for my wife), ChatGPT isn’t going to be able to write your final code. First, you’re going to have to maintain it. ChatGPT is terrible at modifying already-written code. Terrible, as in, it doesn’t do it. So to get new code, you have to ask ChatGPT to generate something new. As I found previously, even if your prompt is virtually identical, ChatGPT may change what it gives you in very unexpected way. So, bottom line: ChatGPT can’t maintain your code, or even tweak it. Also: I asked ChatGPT to write a short Star Trek episode. It actually succeeded But that doesn’t mean the example code is worthless. Far from it. Let’s take a look at a prompt I wrote based on the project I described earlier. Here’s the first part: I’m telling ChatGPT the programming language it should use. I’m also telling it the input but, while doing so, providing two sites as samples to help ChatGPT understand the style of article. Honestly, I’m not sure ChatGPT didn’t ignore that bit of guidance. Next, I’ll tell it how to do the bulk of the work: As input, summarize_article will be passed a URL to an article on a news-related site like ZDNET.com or Reuters.com. This is very similar to how I’d instruct an employee. I’d want that person to know that they weren’t only restricted to Sumy. If they needed another tool, I wanted them to use it. I also specified an approximate number of words to create bounds for what I wanted as a summary. A later version of the routine might take that number as a parameter. I then ended by saying what I wanted as a result: The resulting code is pretty simple. ChatGPT did call on another library (Goose) to retrieve the article contents. It then passed that to Summy with a 50-word limit, and then returned the result. That’s it. But once the basics are written, it’s a mere matter of programming to go back in and add tweaks, customize what’s passed to the two libraries, and deliver the results. One interesting point of note. ChatGPT created a sample call to the routine it wrote, using a URL from after 2021 (when ChatGPT’s dataset ends). I checked that URL against both Reuters’ site and the Wayback Machine, and it doesn’t exist. ChatGPT just made it up.
Does ChatGPT replace programmers?
Not now, or at least not yet. ChatGPT programs at the level of a talented first-year programming student, but it’s lazy (like that first-year student). It might reduce the need for very entry-level programmers, but at its current level, I think it will just make life easier for entry-level programmers (and even programmers with more experience) to write code and look up information. It’s definitely a time-saver, but there are few programming projects it can do on its own – at least now. In 2030? Who knows.
How do I get coding answers in ChatGPT?
Just ask it. You saw above how I used an interactive discussion dialog to narrow down the answers I wanted. When you’re working with ChatGPT, don’t expect one question to magically do all your work for you. But use ChatGPT as a helper and resource, and it will give you a lot of very helpful information. Of course, test that information – because, as John Schulman, a cofounder of OpenAI, says, “Our biggest concern was around factuality, because the model likes to fabricate things.”
What programming languages does ChatGPT know?
Most of them. I got very side-tracked trying this. I tested common modern languages, like PHP, Python, Java, Kotlin, Swift, C#, and more. But then I had it write code in obscure dark-ages languages like COBOL, Fortran, Forth, LISP, ALGOL, RPG (the report program generator, not the role-playing game), and even IBM/360 assembly language. As the icing on the cake, I gave it this prompt: The PDP 8/e was my very first computer, and ChatGPT actually gave me instructions for toggling in a program using front panel switches. I was impressed, gleeful, and ever so slightly afraid. So what’s the bottom line? Honestly, it’s that ChatGPT can be a very helpful tool. Just don’t ascribe superpowers to it. Yet. You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
