With code it doesn’t hallucinate all that much if you prompt well.
Ive created complex powershell scripts with it. I never used powershell before. Some actual developers checked my work and admitted that they where impressed, questioned why someone with my skill didn’t pursue the career of dev.
my prior Experience is failing at programming class (was never any good at writing my own code, just understand it reasonably well. ) and modding games.
The programming teacher i had hinted that i should find something else.
My work now offered.
I looked at the powershell classes, the stuff i am doing daily is covered by the advanced class which i can only do if i succeed the basic class. I don’t expect to learn much.
Chatgpt is the best teacher i ever had. Yes it makes mistakes but so did every other teacher i ever had. Chatgpt at least adapts if i call out its bullshit.
Sheesh, trying to get a PowerShell script to do something you can learn in a day or two (if you’re interested).
Actual programming is mostly grabbing a larger system (or micro services), interacting with other interfaces and databases, modifying and extending existing code (which is what I do 99% of the time, it’s really rare to write something new from the ground up in most companies). DevOps where you might also handle deployment pipelines. And so on.
You always work in bigger systems. Sure, sometimes you write helper scripts, but that’s the easy stuff.
So yes, I can obviously ask ChatGPT to set up a REST API for me with a handful of endpoints and it will do that reasonably well. If I also want it to connect to a database though it might try to set that up, but that will fail (as you have to actually do steps yourself to make it work). It’s good for boilerplate code, but nothing more than that.
“programming is mostly grabbing a larger system (or micro services), interacting with other interfaces and databases, modifying and extending existing code”
Yes, i just happen to use powershell to make the api calls to maken changes in the database because thats what my job said i should use. Then i extend the functionality of what the scripts can do by modifying the code. Chatgpt was a great help at providing a quality result, much more then i would on my own.
No it doesnt replace the job of a actual programmers, no one expects it to do that for the time being.
Its providing me with job security for a start. An issue i found exists is that while many parts of jobs can be automated not many people understand how. Full time developers have the missing knowledge but because they dont have that job there is a disconnect.
Everyone should know how to program to their personal needs and ai is the way to do it.
I had a concern about security/data safety beforehand we started any code, so i asked the people responsible for cyber security and did it like they told me to do.
We are a professional institution, I’ve told you, actual in house developers looked at my work and approved of it, i am not going rogue with this, theres a schedule and meetings about this project. If my work wasn’t good they wouldn’t have green lit it to expand on it months ago.
If you continue to be this condescending i won’t reply.
Ai ain’t replacing “reAl PrOgRamMers” yet. That doesn’t mean yall have exclusive rights on being able to write code. I am willing to bet in 15 years almost every job will require at least some coding affinity.
So the API you are connecting to is properly written then (and does all the database handling), you are basically just calling it from your scripts? That’s totally fine then, but those scripts are the easiest part. Usually done in something like a Python tool, but Powershell works too I guess (just more limited in what it can do).
I’m curious though how you managed to get ChatGPT to do this kind of work, did you throw the full API definition into it, then ask it to create a Powershell application to do x, y and z with helper functions?
My viewpoint is from the side of a backend developer (like the API you are using), I wouldn’t trust ChatGPT to get anything right there (especially with cross system communication, between Microservices and to the databases). We spend probably a third to half of the time on security, reliability and performance, just getting the code to do what you want is the easiest part of the job.
Yes i haven’t written the api itself, we (or at least most of my direct coworkers) also don’t have direct acces to the raw database in production.
All the documentation was intended for python and i was provided an jupyter notebook with some python demos. Giving chatgpt the documentation expecting it to understand it is not recommended.
Seems one of of my higher ups is biased againt python “They use that in school as a starter language” (as if that makes it inferior) But there seems to be more in house experience with powershell and others have to be able to continue my work if i quit or fall sick for long.
So the first thing i gave to chatgpt was a selected few snippets of the python notebook and asked to show how i would do the exact same thing in poweshell.
Then i asked what i would need to do more to make this a final working script. (With a very basic goal).
Once that is working i could easily provide a new instance of chatgpt with either full code or the function/part i was working on and provide it with information on what the next step is or what i am trying to do. If i get an error i provide it with that and ask what might cause it.
I have enough coding affinity to notice if it hallucinates, Most of my personal problems writing code is that i am very bad at syntax and not great at spelling.
Chatgpt very often provides long stretches of non functional code because it doesn’t fully understand the context of what i am trying to do but in the middle of that code i may find an excellent for loop function that does successfully implement the logic for that part. i then copy that part with minor changes.
I recognize that for you most of my code counts as boilerplate stuff. But id have a frustrating experience writing it my self.
I rather explain the logic i need in a prompt, and i find it very fun to then puzzle all the snippets together into a coherent script.
I estimate i am on average slower then a full dev but i have the massive benefit of being my own client. The things i am automating are things my team constantly have to do manually trough crapware. Therefor i fully understand what exactly needs to be done, as opposed to us asking the in house devs to check options to see if maybe x y z can be done easier.
Those in house devs are also at my disposal if i get stuck or have questions, some parts are code snippets directly provided by them.
Edit: thats gpt4, i started with 3.5 and its helpful but 4 is such a massive jump i cant take 3.5 seriously anymore.
With code it doesn’t hallucinate all that much if you prompt well.
Ive created complex powershell scripts with it. I never used powershell before. Some actual developers checked my work and admitted that they where impressed, questioned why someone with my skill didn’t pursue the career of dev. my prior Experience is failing at programming class (was never any good at writing my own code, just understand it reasonably well. ) and modding games. The programming teacher i had hinted that i should find something else.
My work now offered. I looked at the powershell classes, the stuff i am doing daily is covered by the advanced class which i can only do if i succeed the basic class. I don’t expect to learn much.
Chatgpt is the best teacher i ever had. Yes it makes mistakes but so did every other teacher i ever had. Chatgpt at least adapts if i call out its bullshit.
Sheesh, trying to get a PowerShell script to do something you can learn in a day or two (if you’re interested).
Actual programming is mostly grabbing a larger system (or micro services), interacting with other interfaces and databases, modifying and extending existing code (which is what I do 99% of the time, it’s really rare to write something new from the ground up in most companies). DevOps where you might also handle deployment pipelines. And so on.
You always work in bigger systems. Sure, sometimes you write helper scripts, but that’s the easy stuff.
So yes, I can obviously ask ChatGPT to set up a REST API for me with a handful of endpoints and it will do that reasonably well. If I also want it to connect to a database though it might try to set that up, but that will fail (as you have to actually do steps yourself to make it work). It’s good for boilerplate code, but nothing more than that.
“programming is mostly grabbing a larger system (or micro services), interacting with other interfaces and databases, modifying and extending existing code”
Yes, i just happen to use powershell to make the api calls to maken changes in the database because thats what my job said i should use. Then i extend the functionality of what the scripts can do by modifying the code. Chatgpt was a great help at providing a quality result, much more then i would on my own.
No it doesnt replace the job of a actual programmers, no one expects it to do that for the time being.
This does sound like you’re providing plenty of future work for developers to clean up that mess :)
Though I don’t envy them, at least it’s job security.
Its providing me with job security for a start. An issue i found exists is that while many parts of jobs can be automated not many people understand how. Full time developers have the missing knowledge but because they dont have that job there is a disconnect.
Everyone should know how to program to their personal needs and ai is the way to do it.
If you want to nuke your job and kill your company, yes.
Let me ask: How are you authenticating with the API (or directly with the database) in your scripts?
I had a concern about security/data safety beforehand we started any code, so i asked the people responsible for cyber security and did it like they told me to do.
We are a professional institution, I’ve told you, actual in house developers looked at my work and approved of it, i am not going rogue with this, theres a schedule and meetings about this project. If my work wasn’t good they wouldn’t have green lit it to expand on it months ago.
If you continue to be this condescending i won’t reply. Ai ain’t replacing “reAl PrOgRamMers” yet. That doesn’t mean yall have exclusive rights on being able to write code. I am willing to bet in 15 years almost every job will require at least some coding affinity.
So the API you are connecting to is properly written then (and does all the database handling), you are basically just calling it from your scripts? That’s totally fine then, but those scripts are the easiest part. Usually done in something like a Python tool, but Powershell works too I guess (just more limited in what it can do).
I’m curious though how you managed to get ChatGPT to do this kind of work, did you throw the full API definition into it, then ask it to create a Powershell application to do x, y and z with helper functions?
My viewpoint is from the side of a backend developer (like the API you are using), I wouldn’t trust ChatGPT to get anything right there (especially with cross system communication, between Microservices and to the databases). We spend probably a third to half of the time on security, reliability and performance, just getting the code to do what you want is the easiest part of the job.
Yes i haven’t written the api itself, we (or at least most of my direct coworkers) also don’t have direct acces to the raw database in production.
All the documentation was intended for python and i was provided an jupyter notebook with some python demos. Giving chatgpt the documentation expecting it to understand it is not recommended.
Seems one of of my higher ups is biased againt python “They use that in school as a starter language” (as if that makes it inferior) But there seems to be more in house experience with powershell and others have to be able to continue my work if i quit or fall sick for long.
So the first thing i gave to chatgpt was a selected few snippets of the python notebook and asked to show how i would do the exact same thing in poweshell.
Then i asked what i would need to do more to make this a final working script. (With a very basic goal).
Once that is working i could easily provide a new instance of chatgpt with either full code or the function/part i was working on and provide it with information on what the next step is or what i am trying to do. If i get an error i provide it with that and ask what might cause it.
I have enough coding affinity to notice if it hallucinates, Most of my personal problems writing code is that i am very bad at syntax and not great at spelling.
Chatgpt very often provides long stretches of non functional code because it doesn’t fully understand the context of what i am trying to do but in the middle of that code i may find an excellent for loop function that does successfully implement the logic for that part. i then copy that part with minor changes.
I recognize that for you most of my code counts as boilerplate stuff. But id have a frustrating experience writing it my self.
I rather explain the logic i need in a prompt, and i find it very fun to then puzzle all the snippets together into a coherent script.
I estimate i am on average slower then a full dev but i have the massive benefit of being my own client. The things i am automating are things my team constantly have to do manually trough crapware. Therefor i fully understand what exactly needs to be done, as opposed to us asking the in house devs to check options to see if maybe x y z can be done easier.
Those in house devs are also at my disposal if i get stuck or have questions, some parts are code snippets directly provided by them.
Edit: thats gpt4, i started with 3.5 and its helpful but 4 is such a massive jump i cant take 3.5 seriously anymore.