Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems
In before all the comments about how “most code is trivial” or “most programming is stuff that already exists” or “you’re missing the point look how it’s getting better”.<p>I really am in awe of how much work people seem willing to do to justify this as revolutionary and programmers as infantile, and also why they do that. It’s fascinating.<p>Thinking back to my first job out of college as a solid entry level programmer. ChatGPT couldn’t have done what I was doing on day 2. Not because it’s so hard or I’m so special. Just because programming is <i>never just a snippet of code</i>. Programming is an iterative process that involves a CLI, shell, many runtimes, many files, a REPL, a debugger, a lot of time figuring out a big codebase and how it all links together, and a ton of time going back and forth between designers, managers, and other programmers on your team, iterating in problems that aren’t fully clear, getting feedback, testing it across devices, realizing it feels off for reasons, and then often doing it and redoing it after testing for performance, feel, and feedback.<p>Often it’s “spend a whole day just reading code and trying to replicate something very tricky to find” and you only produce a single tiny change deep in the code somewhere. GPT is absolutely terrible at stuff like this.<p>And yes, often it is finding new solutions that aren’t anywhere on the internet. That’s the most valuable programming work, and a significant % of it.<p>Feel like there’s 10 more points I could make here but I’m on my phone and don’t like wasting too much time on HN. But man, what a disappointment of critical thinking I’ve seen in this specific topic.