Question: How are you using AI in your project (or another one)? What are some pros and cons? Has it made you a better programmer?
I have been using ChatGPT quite a bit since it got released and have found value in their premium membership in order to access GPT-4. Overall I find it to be the most useful AI tool that I’ve tried and have found it tremendously valuable to me as a software engineer. The main thing it provides is the ability to have a natural language conversation about technical topics which helps me understand things more deeply and efficiently. It’s basically like having the feeling where you find a stack overflow answer which feels like it was written just for you over and over again.
As part of this school project it has been most helpful in setting up the initial connections to the databases we are using. Naturally, there was A LOT of deep technical documentation on this topic but none of it was very tailored to “I just want to run a simple hello world check to ensure connectivity” before going into the deeper configuration options. ChatGPT was helpful in ingesting the documentation and prompting me (it took a few iterations) with the correct simple code to use in this area.
Overall I would say that it has made me a better programmer in certain areas as it cuts down on the amount of time needed to work through things. As a result, I can be more productive and work on even more areas allowing me to grow in my technical expertise. Drawbacks include being aware of its hallucinations and knowing its limitations. However, with any tool you just need to know how to use it. It’s taken a little while given how novel it is but now have a reasonable sense of how to get the most out of it given my personal learning style.
Another pro is that it’s incredibly good at generating images which can be helpful since I’m no good at photoshop. If I ever get tired of being a SWE and go ahead and make that outer space pizza startup looks like I’m covered logo wise!
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