[COFF] The era of general purpose computing (Re: AIX moved into maintainance mode (COFFed)

[segaloco via COFF]

One of the higher ups at work has suggested quite an interest in ChatGPT as a code documentarian.  I'm wary to let that thing near my code bases, but I'm a stickler for style as much as function, so a bit you could also tell to make pretty, readable code would be interesting.

I see most effective applications in documentation and cleanup, as a bot could probably be made to spit out pretty consistent documentation of functions to the tune of "always describe an if else option with this verbiage" or "add a mention of the stack depth added by every routine", and then cleanup like enforcing/removing braces on one liners, resorting procedures to group more relevant operations (when not order-dependent), and perhaps better intelligent editors that don't need as much configuration to smartly support many programming languages.  I'd love an editor that allows for rich editing of assembly alongside C.

Hopefully the direction the improvements on productivity go are "Gee my workers can work so efficiently now they deserve the time this frees up for them." although my fear is "Gee my workers can work so efficiently now I only need half of them."  I only support automation that makes workers' lives easier, not automation that makes executives bottom lines better at the cost of jobs.

- Matt G.

------- Original Message -------
On Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 7:40 AM, Stuff Received <stuff at riddermarkfarm.ca> wrote:


> On 2023-01-22 00:23, David Arnold wrote (in part):
> 
> > I’ve played with ChatGPT, and the first 10 minutes were a bit
> 
> > confronting. But the remainder of the hour or so I played
> 
> > overcame my initial concerns.
> 
> > It’s amazing what can be done, especially with Javascript or
> 
> > Python, when you ask for something that’s fairly simple to
> 
> > define, and in a common application area. You can get reasonable
> 
> > code, refine it, ask for an altered approach, etc. It’s probably
> 
> > quicker than writing it yourself, especially if you’re not
> 
> > intimately familiar with the library being used (or even the
> 
> > language).
> 
> > But … it pretty quickly becomes clear that there’s no semantic
> 
> > understanding of what’s being done behind it. And unless you
> 
> > specify what you want in pretty minute detail, the output is
> 
> > unlikely to be what you want.
> 
> 
> The comment by Derek Jones
> (https://shape-of-code.com/2023/01/15/coding-mistakes-made-by-chatgtp/)
> may be of interest here.
> 
> N.