ChatGPT continues to impress. I’ve started asking it programming questions just to save a few minutes here or there. For example, this question returned a detailed answer that was exactly correct:

I’m using Ruby and DataMapper with MySQL. How to get a list of unique years used in a database table “pages” with date field “posted_at”?

🤯

Cody Bromley

@manton I’ve used it to quickly write a haversine formula for calculating the distance between two lat/lng points. What it did in 5 seconds would have taken me much longer!

It’s also a BEAST at regex. I will never again try to do those mental gymnastics.

Martin Hähnel

Same. It is incredible what these things can do. I also have to say that I over estimated how difficult it would be to verify that the code works. (I maybe wouldn’t say that if my code would handle more crucial parts of a business, where you simply cannot get it wrong).

Erwin

@manton yep, saving time from slogging through tasks that have been solved many times over is it’s strong suit.

For more obscure tasks it can help with “how do I even go about this” but the answers turn out to be more signposts and arrows than gps turn-by-turn.

It seems to ~95% understand what you mean even when it can only produce 50% correct output, which is pretty amazing in itself.

Colin Devroe

it has sped up many projects for me.

James Manes

I’m certain it would save me time at work, but my employer sent out a company-wide email stating AI was not to be used in any way, shape or form. I assume they are just covering their ass from potential data leaks or something.

Manton Reece @manton
Lightbox Image