If chatbots aren't saving you time you need to refine what you choose to use them for. They're absolutely amazing at refactoring, producing documentation, adding comments, translating structured text files from one format to another, implementing well known algorithms in newer/niche languages where repository versions might not exist, etc. On the other hand, I've mostly stopped asking GPT4 to write quickstart code for libraries that don't have star counts in the high thousands at least, and while I'll let it convert css/style objects/etc into tailwind I it's pretty bad at styling in general, though it is good at suggesting potentially problematic styles when debugging layout.
> you need to refine what you choose to use them for
This is making assumptions about the work I do which don't happen to be valid.
For example:
> libraries that [...] have star counts in the high thousands at least
Play little to no role in my work, and
> I'll let it convert css/style objects/etc into tailwind
Is something I simply don't have a use for.
Clearly your mileage varies, and that's fine. What I've found is that for the sort of task I farm out to the chatbots, the time spent explaining myself clearly, showing it counterexamples when it gets things wrong, and otherwise verifying that the code is fit to purpose, is right around the time I would spend on the task to begin with.
But it's less effort, which is good. I find that at least as valuable if not more so.
I remember watching this really funny video where a writer, by trade, was talking about recent AI products they were exploring.
They saw a "Make longer" button which took some text and made it longer by fluffing it out.
He was saying that it was the antithesis of his entire career.
As a high schooler who really didn't care, I would've loved it, though.
I've heard one CEO been asked about gen-ai tools to be used in the company. The answer was vague, like they are evaluating the tooling. However one good example was made: chatgpt is really good in writing mails, and in summarizing text as well.
He said they don't want to have situation when sender is using chatgpt to write a fancy mail and recipient is using chatgpt to read it. However I think that it is the direction where we are going right now.
I was giving examples, in the hopes that you could see the trend I was pointing towards for your own benefit. You can take that and learn from it or get offended and learn nothing, up to you.
Not sure why you are scared of GPT assisted documentation. First drafts are universally garbage, honestly I expect GPT to produce a better and more accurate first draft in a fraction of the time, which should encourage a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have documented at all to produce passable documentation.
> Yikes. Not looking forward to that in the future.
Instead of documentation, I'm hoping more for "analysis". A helper that can take in a whole project (legacy or not) and tell you what it's supposed to be doing, and maybe point out areas for improvement.
