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1. josef (jk@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 16-Feb-2023 15:41:16 JST josef

   trying to get chatGPT to write a very basic GUI CRUD app that saves and loads data to a json file and displays it in a table. currently on the ~20th iteration cycle of compiling its code, sending it back the errors in the compiler output, followed by the same "remember, the program is supposed to..." specification paragraph (which seems to be required otherwise it gradually goes through a game-of-telephone where it removes more and more features until the code compiles but does nothing)

   • josef (jk@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 16-Feb-2023 15:41:15 JST josef

     in reply to

     my verdict on this after fucking around with it for about a day: it's just really not ready. there's a huge gulf between "can impressively do some stuff" and "can actually be used at all in any capacity" and it's firmly on the useless side currently. i've seen a lot of discussion about how it "sometimes" hallucinates stuff or "occasionally" makes mistakes that catch you out. but it isn't occasional, it's constant! e.g. every non-trivial bit of code tries to use an API call that doesn't exist etc

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • josef (jk@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 16-Feb-2023 15:41:15 JST josef

     in reply to

     i was extremely surprised at how practically useless it was, actually, given the tone of the conversation i've been hearing for the last couple of months. there was a kind of precision and mastery that people keep trying to get across, like the machine was some kind of wizard. and the thing is, it IS very good at explaining code you give it. very impressive at inferring meaning, summarization. but when it comes to building stuff itself, its knowledge is just too lossily-compressed to succeed