1. I get stumped and ask it “can I do thing X with technology Y?”
2. It always says “yes, here is how”
3. A majority of the time, it’s lying and you can’t actually do whatever I asked it.
It’s incredibly frustrating - it’s like it doesn’t know how to say “no”.
Granted, I am usually asking it pretty niche stuff about iOS development, but so far it’s proving to be a waste of time. I guess it does feel good to feel like you have a lead on some problem you’ve been beating your head against for hours, but then the harsh reality of actual reality comes quick.
chatGPT is basically a junior dev. Does grunt work, gets it wrong from time to time, and doesnt ever say no even when its appropriate
It came up with the following along with a verbal explanation of how it works:
def quick_sort(arr):
if len(arr) <= 1:
return arr
pivot = arr[len(arr) // 2]
left = [x for x in arr if x < pivot]
middle = [x for x in arr if x == pivot]
right = [x for x in arr if x > pivot]
return quick_sort(left) + middle + quick_sort(right)
# Example usage:
arr = [3, 6, 8, 10, 1, 2, 1]
print("Unsorted array:", arr)
sorted_arr = quick_sort(arr)
print("Sorted array:", sorted_arr)
Since ChatGPT said that "the Lomuto partition scheme is generally less efficient than the Hoare partition scheme, but it is easier to implement and understand", I asked it to show the code for the Hoare scheme.
The code was correct and was accompanied by an explanation that "this version of quick sort is more efficient because it performs fewer swaps on average compared to the Lomuto partition scheme."
I asked it about the average number of swaps for both schemes. It gave some answers. However, since I didn't know the correct answers off the top of my head and couldn't be bothered to work them out, I couldn't just take ChatGPT's at face value (but I suspect that one was the correct while the other wasn't).
Finally I asked "What's the worst-case input for these three implementations?"
Here things went completely off the rails. It repeated the same answer for all there snippets. The answer happened to be correct for the last two schemes but for the first it read:
<quote> Basic Quick Sort (with middle element as pivot): The worst-case input for this implementation is a sorted or reverse-sorted array. Since the pivot is chosen as the middle element, the partitioning will be unbalanced, and the algorithm will have a time complexity of O(n^2). </quote>
This is clearly nonsense.
But for generating templates or snippets or helping me with documentation for proof of concepts...or being an amazing search friend with great abilities to format data for me, absolutely an amazing friend to have onboard.
Shouldn’t that stuff be in a library or API call with examples a quick google search away?
This stuff will be amazing in coming years but I’m shocked people say they use it all day