It doesn't sound that much different than going through Google and Stackoverflow though, is it? In a few hours of googling you can probably get something working if you are an experienced dev.
Rather than going through Google and Stackoverflow it felt like working side-by-side with a moderately competent developer. Mind you, I have tried the google-and-stackoverflow method before for the exact same thing, and failed every time ;-)
That said - ChatGPT did make mistakes, there were inconsistencies in its instructions, it didn't recognize certain bugs (I had to find them myself). _But_ there was something about the chat-based interaction that to an extent helped me preserve flow (maybe a bit like pair programming?).
I do think that if I had set my mind to it, I would have been faster solving the task with Google, and to some extent I went through this exercise just to test ChatGPT.
I recommend ChatGPT to anyone who wants to close customers or save their marriage. Just say whatever ChatGPT is telling you… even if that means using one of the new “personal” beamed sound into your skull things. You’ll have superhuman ability to vibe with anyone and outcompete everyone who relies on just “their own experience”.
- Written by ChatGPT in response to a prompt.
In the end it added, “no one will ever believe you” in all lowercase.
That “it’s just a different search front end”… but I think after more experience with it I disagree.
At its worst, it’s “multiple searches” at once.
Example1… I wanted to find a CAGE for code a specific military mfg. I only had the last 3 digits. I asked for CAGE codes that match and got all the answers instantly. I could have searched this, but it would have been multiple searches.
I asked for the etymology for the Swahili word for trapezoid… again, multiple searches. If I could have found links to the Arabic root of some Swahili words at all.
That’s it’s worst case, convenient multiple searches. The better case is the UX of a conversation is powerful for the user, in a way we are just learning the words for.
But OP explicitly said they had little experience in this area. They also presumably have a technical career and are awash in the ways of Google. I'm in a similar situation to GP and have gone down that very path with React and whatnot. It's like you're starting a rodeo off the bull and have to figure out how to get back on. It's a terrible experience and you're left infuriated at a faceless collective that carelessly makes getting started so difficult.
But much like you need to cause some stress to a muscle to cause it to grow, junior developers historically needed to get experienced at finding some of the solutions to their own pain to become really experienced developers...
It seems like ChatGPT may cut that form of growth out of the cycle...
I wonder about the implications of this... Junior devs will progress more quickly, but they will also grow less of their own skills and be very reliant on ChatGPT - like an exoskeleton for their development skills.
I guess that will be great for OpenAI if they can charge a hefty monthly fee...
I'd still rather max out my own skills before relying on an exoskeleton (once I've maxed myself out sure, give me the exoskeleton, and let's see what it can do), but maybe I'm too old fashioned...
I typed this with text to speech, another thing we were confidently told would never work
Why is one abstraction more "true", "less creative" or more "strong muscle" than another?