[Go Make Things] AI Myth: It lets me write code I can't on my own

By rahmat hidayat

Thursday, September 5, 2024

​ My last two articles on AI myths (it's better than Google and it lets me move faster) have been getting a lot of responses. One of the more common ones is something along the lines of… It lets me write code I otherwise couldn't/don't know how to. At the risk of being old and out-of-touch: if you don't know how to write some code, you probably shouldn't use code that Chat GPT et al write for you. Why? As I wrote a few days ago… if GPT can't find an answer, it literally just makes shit up. That code you got that runs and seems like it works OK? It could have bugs. It could have security holes. It could have deliberate vulnerabilities and prompt injections. Couldn't that also happen if you just copy/paste code off StackOverflow? Yep! You shouldn't do that, either. What makes StackOverflow different, in my opinion, is that the answers are surrounded by comments and context. You can see what the code is in response to. You can see the comments from other users, including the ones that point out bugs and security issues and provide fixes. It's not bulletproof, but StackOverflow provides opportunities to learn and understand the code in a way that AI-generated code does not. Cheers, Chris ​ Want to share this with others or read it later? View it in a browser.​ ​

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