I find it amazing that it can actually sort of run code "in its head", all the code output it does is not actually run through an interpreter but it's still pretty close if not perfect each time. But trying to run code with it is mostly for kicks, rather I asked it to produce a simple API for me and then produce a python script that tests it. it had no bugs and I could check it myself fairly fast; certainly faster than it would've taken me to write all that code without any bugs. I'd have had to check my own code for bugs anyway.
So if you accept that chatGPT is sort of like a guy that looked over millions of programmers shoulders but never actually communicated with any of them to understand the code, it has a perfect memory while not being able to compute much in its head then it can still be a great tool. Just understand its limitations and its advantages. Just because it can't reverse a string in its head doesn't mean it's "dumb" or not useful for everyday tasks.