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ChatGPT - is using it cheating? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by rarkgrames@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Over the last year I've been learning Swift and starting to put together some iOS apps. I'd definitely class myself as a Swift beginner.

I'm currently building an app and today I used ChatGPT to help with a function I needed to write. I found myself wondering if somehow I was "cheating". In the past I would have used YouTube videos, online tutorials and Stack Overflow, and adapted what I found to work for my particular usage case.

Is using ChatGPT different? The fact that ChatGPT explains the code it writes and often the code still needs fettling to get it to work makes me think that it is a useful learning tool and that as long as I take the time to read the explanations given and ensure I understand what the code is doing then it's probably a good thing on balance.

I was just wondering what other people's thoughts are?

Also, as a side note, I found that chucking code I had written in to ChatGPT and asking it to comment every line was pretty successful and a. big time saver :D

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[–] axtualdave@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ChatGPT is, at least for the moment, just a really fancy snippet repository with an search function that works really well.

Is re-using code someone else wrote cheating? Nah.

But, no matter where you get the code from (cough Stackoverflow), if you use it without understanding what it's doing, you're not doing yourself any favors.

[–] Deely@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just want to add that ChatGPT is a "really fancy snippet repository" that sometimes, randomly lies to you.

[–] axtualdave@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

As a generative language model, I am incapable of lying, but sometimes, I am very, very wrong. /s