Hacker News Reader

> ecause it can be significantly faster to check something for correctness than to produce it

Erm no There are many things that cant be easily checked especially if you dont know the topic well

Youre right but I think the point still stands. Many times it really is easier to verify than produce. Compilable code being a good example.

I dunno about you, but I spend a LOT of my time fixing code that was broken in some subtle way the compiler didn't catch

If we're talking about generating and integrating sample code, it's great at that

Anything more advanced and it's a footgun

I have very quickly picked up the habit of pasting snippets of my code into GPT-4 and simply asking "Why is this not working?" Almost every time, it succinctly explains the apparent purpose of the code, and how it is subtly wrong.

It's so good that I often do this preemptively to avoid a compile/deploy/test cycle.

Indeed, but I'm not claiming it's always faster to check than to produce. Simply that when it is the case, using GPT-4 can be worth it. It is to me - I use it daily.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com