Over the last year I’ve been learning Swift and starting to put together some iOS apps. I’d definitely class myself as a Swift beginner.
I’m currently building an app and today I used ChatGPT to help with a function I needed to write. I found myself wondering if somehow I was “cheating”. In the past I would have used YouTube videos, online tutorials and Stack Overflow, and adapted what I found to work for my particular usage case.
Is using ChatGPT different? The fact that ChatGPT explains the code it writes and often the code still needs fettling to get it to work makes me think that it is a useful learning tool and that as long as I take the time to read the explanations given and ensure I understand what the code is doing then it’s probably a good thing on balance.
I was just wondering what other people’s thoughts are?
Also, as a side note, I found that chucking code I had written in to ChatGPT and asking it to comment every line was pretty successful and a. big time saver :D
Programming pays well because it’s hard. Just keep in mind that if AI is making it easy for you, it’s making it easy for a lot of people who could easily replace you.
Use it as a tool, but know what it’s doing, and be able to do it yourself after you learn from it.
Personally, I generally struggle through on my own first and then ask it to critique. Great teachers don’t just give you the code to copy.
By analogy, you need to be able to hand fly this plane when the autopilot dies; those are the pilots who get the jobs.