Gamedev using D here, my main gripe with programming isn’t AI, but that I decided to go with my own engine, and now there’s barely any documentation on graphics API use that isn’t the OpenGL manual, as I’m encountering very interesting bugs recently (textures disappearing, texture glitches, etc.), while most article nowadays being about how I wasn’t supposed to learn any programming, but instead art, so I could create the next Undertale, Touhou, etc. all alone, and it would be truly my game with my true intentions.
Some people are often asking “but what about these other tools”, when I criticize AI. IMHO, some of the tools that made game development more accessible also made it more atomized, since you have less need for a programmer nowadays, with some tools not even requiring “classical” coding, but is visual in nature instead.
I mean, what I can say that chatgpt is it’s still a tool but cannot start solve advanced programming projects yet. Sure it knows syntax and programming structure but if you know programming concepts and critical thinking then you’re still programming, you just don’t have the in depth knowledge of the language.
Vibe coding gave me polio
When I used to do image and signal processing for embedded systems in C and C++, AI was useless. Now that I do backend web development in Python and Ruby, AI is better than me. It really depends on the problem area and how many sample code and answers are out there for it to steal from.
I do backend development in PHP and Ruby, and AI sometimes has a suggestion that helps me out but is often completely, utterly useless, especially at actually coding the thing from scratch.
Yeah lol, a lot of “I need to do X” and I often get “use functionThatDoesX then” and sometimes it’s a wonderful discovery, most often though it just doesn’t exist lol
Can confirm. AI is worse than useless for embedded systems.
I was working with Yocto on a very specialized xilinx chip. I had chatGPT makeup a chapter that didn’t exist (in a manual that did), reference non-existent paragraphs from said chapter, and then argue with me quite confidently that that chapter was real and the information it was giving me was accurate.
I do a ton of Powershell scripting, and AI is either a half competent programmer, or someone let grandpa respond with the syntax from nineteen dickety two
Really? I had an app that would autogenarate time sheets for work in Google Sheets. I decided to minimise API calls by doing a single call to Google Drive then parse the HTML and reupload. Not a big Python project but ChatGPT hit a wall pretty fast on that one. Though, tbf the documentation was suprisingly opaque so I suppose that goes back to your point.
That project also produced my finest pile of spaghetti code since I had to account for stretched cells in the HTML parsing. I still have a piece of paper with my innumerate math scribbles. The paper makes sense to me. The code does not.
When I needed to pick up on some basics, it actually did help but ultimately not as much as actual guides and tutorials written online. This image of a chimera certainly matches the kind of Frankenstein code I was getting.
That said, when I was having some very interesting ideas about making automated code in R, it did make for a good sounding board. You don’t need to Google when everything in R has documentation but you do when you’re combining libraries in unique ways to automate 98% of the stupid shit you do at your data researcher job (e.g. can you look up in our database how many students pick their nose during philosophy class on a Friday?)
ChatGPT is a better programmer than you
Unfortunately very true 😭
It’s great for getting off the ground in a language you’re unfamiliar with. But a recipe for technical debt when used long term. You’re inviting spaghetti code with some real hair pulling bugs.
Well sure, but it’s also good to give you a rundown on various patterns and options. Like any tool it’s only as good as the wielder
Most tools aren’t actively detrimental to use, though. It’s like a hammer where the handle is covered in spikes. Even if you’re a genius and know how to hold it without cutting your hand, most people would just use a different hammer. And I’m not going to let that toolsmith off the hook, either.
Unfortunately, the people pushing AI are the same ones selling recreational flamethrowers
