If it actually works.

I’d guess training a model on nothing but C and the resulting ASM would be much better.

It straight made up a powershell module, and method call. Completely made up, non existent.

Counterpoint 1:

I gave Copilot a couple of XML files that described a map and a route, and told it to make a program in C# that could create artificial maps and routes using those as a guideline.

After about 20 minutes of back and forth, mainly me describing what I wanted in the map (eg walls that were +/- 3m from the routes, points in the routes should be 1m apart, etc) it spat out a program that could successfully build xml files that worked in the real-world device that needed them.

Counterpoint 2: I gave Copilot a python program that I’d written about 8 years ago that connected to a Mikrotik router using its vendor specific API and compiled some data to push out to websocket clients that connected. I told it to make a C# equivalent that could be installed and run as a windows service, and it created something that worked on the very first pass using third party .NET libraries for Mikrotik API access.

Counterpoint 3: I had a SQL query in a PowerShell script that took some reporting data from a database and mangled it heavily to get shift-by-shift reports. Again I asked it to take the query and business logic from the script and create a command line C# application that could populate a new table with the shift report data. It created something that worked immediately and fixed a corner case in the query that was causing me some grumbles as well.

These were things that I’ve done in the past month. Each one would have taken a week for me to do myself, and with some general discussion with this particular LLM each one took about an hour instead, with it giving me a complete zipped up project folder with multiple source files that I could just open in Visual Studio and press “build” to get what I want.

In all these cases however, I was well versed in the area it was working in, and I knew how to phrase things precisely enough that it could generate something useful. It did try and tack on a lot of not-particularly-useful things, particularly options for the command line reporting program.

And I HATE the oh-so-agreeable tone it takes with everything. I’m not “absolutely right” when I correct it or steer it along a different path. I don’t really want all this extra stuff that it’s so happy to tack on, “it won’t take a minute”.

I want the LLM to tell me that’s an awful idea, or that it can’t do it. A constant yes-man agreeing with everything I say doesn’t help me get shit done.

It straight made up a powershell module, and method call. Completely made up, non existent.

It was just imagining the best way to accomplish the task: instead of complaining, you should have just asked it to give you the source code of that new module.

Your lack of faith in AI is hindering your coding ability.

(do I need to add the /s? no, right?)

It straight made up a powershell module, and method call. Completely made up, non existent.

is it wrong, or is it just ahead of it’s time?

Maybe it gave you a perfectly functioning code that will work flawlessly, on windows 18.

LLMs are good at language processing tasks. Asking it to write code or solve complex maths it will make things up. Plus, it takes large amounts of energy to run them. Not to mention the data needed to train them.

Code written by them always has security holes. Use it to find facts, correct grammer or maybe generate a small paragraph or essay. But, don’t use it to generate code, medical device, etc.

As a recent example Chatgpt cannot answer if there is a seahorse emoji. It will get infinitely stuck in trying to be funny and finding an answer. Changing the answer mid token.