I Use ChatGPT as a Developer

I've been waiting for an article like this. As a software developer I completely agree with them.

Often when I mention I use ChatGPT I get strange looks. Its like people automatically assume I am going to ChatGPT and saying "Build me a software that does x". I personally see no value in asking it something like that. Its the simple questions that save me 10-15 minutes of reading through google results. For example I often time ask it to rewrite statements into linq or to compare two ways of doing something. Its not correct 100% of the time but it is correct often enough to save me 10 minutes multiple times a day.

I've been using it for exploratory docs reading. Jumping back into an unfamiliar language, I try to sketch out a broad outline of what I want to do. Ask ChatGPT to fill in some of the specifics ("a function which takes x and produces y, using recursion" as a dumb example), then check what it spits out and read up on bits of libraries that otherwise would have taken an annoying amount of searching.

With the decline of Google search usefulness at least in my own experience, ChatGPT has been a big timesaver as I don't have to search until I know exactly what I'm looking for and how to phrase it.

XMLHttpRequest is really not the way to make a request with modern JS, surprised this is what ChatGPT has to say.

And the author, of course, can't know better, because ChatGPT didn't tell them about modern alternatives.

I've copy and pasted project requirements into it and gotten completely working projects, out the box. But modifying them was a pain in the ass and I had to scrap those solutions. I was amazed it did that but its not how I use it now.

Alternatively, I use it as a faster Stackoverflow without the community building hazing, snark and bullshit. I'm able to ask it far more abstract questions and get accurate answers. I'm able to ask followup questions and it knows that it is related to the same project I was working on. It is very fast at explaining why as well, or explaining the difference and interrelatedness of concepts, which documentation doesn't do well. It can provide examples that mix multiple concepts, which can be difficult to find. It can generate more complex examples, like, sure you know how to do a REST call in X language with Y framework, but do you know how to do it with this state management system on top of it with this typing system wrapped on top of it? What this unexpected error message means? ChatGPT will give you all of that if you tell it.

I still look at existing answers on Stackoverflow, and I still look at framework documentation. But as far as actually asking questions, I'll unlikely be using Stackoverflow or question and answer sites for that.

> What's a better way to write this class? <insert code here>

What a great way to plaster your code all over the web potentially! No wonder the banks are banning this already.

A lot of "here's the version X code, how do I translate this to version Y?" over here at the moment. It's right more often than it's wrong.

I was able to tease out a graph traversal function that suited a few atypical usecases yesterday. Definitely a handy tool.

did you write this with chatgpt?