I like ChatGPT. A lot. It's the best digital writing assistant I've ever used.
If my time using ChatGPT has taught me anything, though, it's that ChatGPT isn't a brilliant writer. I'm not worried about my job. And if my experience using ChatGPT to write a Python program from scratch is any indication, programmers don't need to worry either.
But you should be paying attention.
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I've been thinking about building a terminal app to practice typing for a while, so I decided to give ChatGPT a shot at building it.
This was my prompt:
ChatGPT's program is surprisingly close to what I want:
"well-commented"
It's impressive how much ChatGPT gets right here. The code runs error-free. It gets the accuracy calculation correct and computes raw speed in words per minute. It is, for all practical purposes, a functional typing analysis app.
But it doesn't color the user input as I requested:
Again, the code runs. Here's a sample execution:
That's not quite what I want, but it's getting closer. I tell ChatGPT that the program doesn't work as expected and reiterate that the colors should be applied to the text as the user types it.
Things begin to derail:
It looks reasonable, but it doesn't work:
I spent a good half an hour trying to get ChatGPT to fix its code, but things just kept getting weirder and weirder. I let it know how I felt before I closed the chat: