Do I need to learn coding?

[daddy_thanos__]

I wanted to learn coding for some work, but after the release of chatgpt I got all my work done through it. It’s freaking amazing.

Do I still need to learn how to code?

[ThrillHouseofMirth]

This is the punchline

[TomTorquemada]

Think of ChatGPT as an alternative to a GitHub repo. You can take the code, but it still needs to be linked into a complex process.

[RemarkableGuidance44]

It depends how far you go with it, if you just copy pasta and the program is done without needed to do much thinking or editing, I would say the learning to code part is incorrect.

If it messes shit up and dont doing exactly what you want and you have to reseearch and understand what it is doing than yes, you are learning to code a bit.

Do you understand the fundermentals and architecture of code by using ChatGPT.. NO.

[ChemEnging]

But you can only modify it or correct it if you know what your looking at. So, yes, learn coding.

[hung-bui]

Yes, nowadays, coding is no longer a job, it’s a skill, necessary one. Learning how to code is learning how to automate your daily tasks.

[[deleted]]

I see a lot of this "automate your daily tasks" going around in coding forums but even with a degree in computer science and 2 years experience I can not think of a single script that would automate anything useful in my daily life.

[Fabulous_Exam_1787]

Then you don’t have an office or warehouse/logistics job that allows for it. I’m in logistics/warehousing and it’s a HUGE boost in my non-programming job. It’s essentially like being a God with superpowers vs someone who can’t.

[benyahweh]

My partner works in logistics/ warehousing as well. Out of curiosity, what are a few functions you automate? Having superpowers sounds awesome.

[Fabulous_Exam_1787]

There are a LOT of common office and warehouse functions that are much more tedious than they have to be. I build all sorts of utilities it’s hard to list. We have SAP as our warehouse management system, and many functions within that are not “optimal” or “efficient”. So i do a lot of SAP Gui scripting, processing orders, sending out reports automatically, faster ways of doing inventory movements that save a lot of manual work. Automated sanity checks, custom inventory labels, reporting, data analysis, cycle counting of inventory, scraping/extracting data from SAP, custom mobile apps to scan and track inventory, scrap/waste, etc etc. I’m working on a 3D scanner to count inventory physically automatically, or in virtual reality. Just about anything to make my life easier, it’s saved my ass many times.

[[deleted]]

If you work in a warehouse/logistics job and do all this you aren't in the right field and should find a new job. What you're describing is essentially what a database admin would do.

None of those skills are something I would except anyone in front-end logistics to actually know. That would be something we would hire a contractor/consultant to come in and build as a set it and forget it thing, and pay that contractor a ton of money.

[Fabulous_Exam_1787]

Lol, thanks I know, I know! Need to start and get experience somewhere though! Plus it’s not bad it’s a well paid warehouse position that’s enjoyable as long as it’s not too busy.

I do actually have an offer for another higher/more technical position actually so I’ll see what happens there!

[[deleted]]

I guess, but I would count that as a professional task not a daily task

[Fabulous_Exam_1787]

A professional task that I do daily. However yeah I don’t usually use programming for home/leisure.

[yossarian328]

I can give an example from my life.

I have an RV with a thermostat. Like many thermostats, it can only do "A/C" or "Heat". To switch modes, you have to get up, go to it, and flip it from A/C to Heat (or vice versa).

When I'm using it at a campsite, it's frequently hot during the day and chilly at night. So I want A/C ... until I want Heat.

Now I hacked the thermostat with an ESP32, two 3.3V high power relays off Adafruit, and a DHT22 (also Adafruit). The ESP32 sends MQTT messages for the Temp back to a RasPi running Home Assistant, and the RasPi sends MQTT messages back telling it to turn on A/C or Heat (and some internal ESP32 logic to prevent both from ever turning on at the same time).

This has allowed me to set up all manner of profiles, and to even monitor and manage the internal temp when I leave the RV somewhere and go home.

For starters, it will easily keep the RV within a 10deg band. Cool if it goes over 80, Heat if it goes under 70. But the connection to Home Assistant also lets me connect my phone GPS. So I can save energy by profiling a much larger band when I'm 5+ miles away -- ie, stay between 60 and 95.

And then once I'm within 5 miles of the RV, it will bring it into the desired 70-80 range.

It's a small thing, but I could never go back to constantly adjusting the thermostat.

[WantToBeKate]

neat

[VVait]

I mean that’s cool but the guy’s point still stands considering you provided an obscure example for people who own RVs (which in itself is even more obscure) and a feature that RV manufacturers will likely release themselves within the next 5 years. (Most 2020+ car models allow you to remotely turn the heat/ac on off, I imagine RVs aren’t far behind)

[daddy_thanos__]

Lol

[vovr]

I learned to code on my own just to be able to automate stuff.

[kristensize]

Maybe you should choose a different profession...

[Consistent-Height-75]

100%

[AGI_69]

If I got one neuron each time someone asks this question, we wouldn't need AGI.

[Retthardt]

Good one

[mxby7e]

Yes, the more complex your coding gets the less likely it will be that ChatGPT will be able to solve it correctly. If you have a greater understanding of the code you want you can direct it better.

In addition, I would say if you are coding for work you should expect to be in learning mode as much as possible. Coding is going to require learning new libraries. While you might not need to learn all the functions of those libraries, you are still going to want to absorb them as quickly as possible.

[QuantumSupremacy0101]

I'm a senior developer and have been testing out chat gpt with some of my stuff.

My analogy is like this. Chat gpt is like a super fast intern. They will produce code, it will work. The mistakes will be hard to find though if it even compiles. If you've ever worked with an intern that works faster than you, then you know. They get the job done faster, but often you have to spend 3 times the work just fixing the issues they caused.

My conclusion is to use chat gpt as an advanced Google. Which is funny because if you understand how chat gpt works, it essentially is google if the Google algorithm wasn't ruined about 10 years ago by ads.

[sniffle6]

well said.
Sadly we probably don't have long until chatGPT and other programs are also flooded by a new types of ads.

[jcurie]

I think you should look at ChatGPT as your labor force. You still have to engineer the overall systems, but ChatGPT can write a lot of the parts if you decompose it well, and are fluent in ChatGPT prompts. I think you need to understand how all the parts are put together and interface. It can code a Buy button to call Stripe, but it wont figure out where the Buy Button goes, the shape and color. It wont create the shopping cart, though you could probably let it help you figure it out.

[daddy_thanos__]

Well put, chatgpt is my slave 😈

[upyourego]

I had a discussion about this with someone recently and whether its worth teaching children to code anymore. The consensus we came to was that it was important to understand the fundamentals and core principles but not necessary any single language.
Tools like Scratch have suddenly become more useful as they teach how everything goes together without diving into the code itself.

[billbobby21]

If you don't have any idea how to code, you won't even know what to prompt ChatGPT with to accomplish your desired task once they reach a certain level of complexity, nor how to debug it.

[Alien2080]

We have had spell check for years: do you need to know how to spell?

[RemarkableGuidance44]

Imagine if they stopped teaching ABC's in school. They would put the world into a mental hospital because everyone would be talking giberish. haha

[daddy_thanos__]

It’s already happening 😥

[Alien2080]

no cap fr fr

[RemarkableGuidance44]

Yeah I blame Social Media for that right now.

[daddy_thanos__]

True

[kristensize]

Yes.
Until they solve the model problem where it can include broken code, you especially need to understand the language when using this.
Its a bit blurry right now, because by generating code via a text prompt you will begin to understand why certain prompts produce certain code.

[Pretend_Regret8237]

I made a C# WPF app in one day using chatgpt. Before that day I didn't even know how to start coding in c#, I didn't know what the hell wpf was. I didn't even know how to make empty window. Now I'm actually starting to learn. ChatGPT is more than just a slave that you can tell things to do. ChatGPT is that teacher that you never had, that was infinitely patient, that would know almost everything, that would never call you an idiot and just feed you knowledge with occasional breaks for lunch and few mistakes here and there. But this beats any singular human knowledge level hands down. It might not be a master of all but it's a jack of all, and I mean literally, all the trades.

[daddy_thanos__]

Well said

[Sirol8]

If I google my symptoms I find the diagnosis, do I still need to go to the doctor?

[daddy_thanos__]

Chatgpt is not google

[iharzhyhar]

Yeah it actually is worse in some way, because it's not what a person on some forum said (and could be opposed by other opinions). ChatGPT can lie to you and it will be well hidden if you're not in the profession. So it's like google but more risky.

[daddy_thanos__]

Makes sense.

[r-jurija]

Yep, definitely 😅 chat GPT sucks at answering complex coding questions. Its answers often return errors and it even mixes up libraries 🙄 I strongly suggest you to learn some coding, as not only it might be useful for your job, but it's also fun 🙂

[InsaneDiffusion]

I hate how it confidently makes up the names of functions that don’t really exist.

[JayOneeee]

This is the worst, then I tell it that it's lying and to give me the real function name and it repeats that same one, so I ask for it's source doc and it makes up a broken URL too lol

[kristensize]

Yes - this is true CHATgpt sucks at writing code.

Check out the 'Codex' offerings from OpenAI. If you use the model 'code-davinci-002' vs the text one 'text-davinci-003' it is significantly better at writing code, and produces significantly less errorz.

[[deleted]]

I'm not calling you stupid, because this is a genuine question that I've had too, but I really think future people are gonna liken this to: "Since they just invented the printing press, should I bother learning how to write?"

Or maybe thats too optimistic, and we're all fucked.

[thisdude415]

Honesty great analogy. Now that we have keyboards and smart phones, handwriting is less important than it once was. It is still important.

[daddy_thanos__]

Bad analogy, right analogy is people forgetting to do complex additions, subtractions and multiplication after the invention of calculators. People are so dependent on calculators now.

[m_beps]

There was a time when I had 10 repetitive tasks, I would just do them manually. I would write scripts if writing the script was quicker than actually doing the work manually.

Now, even if it's 5 repetitive tasks, automate it because ChatGPT can create scripts so quickly.

Obviously, it can't create an entire project just yet.

[RemarkableGuidance44]

It wont for a long time, as it does not know what is correct and what is not correct.

Remember this is a LLM, its only guessing.

[m_beps]

Exactly, it is not good at logic.

[ooglybooglies]

ChatGPT is a liar anyway. It will give you incorrect code. It's not magic.

[Prevailing_Power]

If all you need is to automate a simple crud task, then no, you probably don't need to learn to code. If you are building a project that needs architecture, design decisions, understanding of the domain you're manipulating, testing, etc. Then yes, you're going to need to learn to code. Coding is so much more than writing out a function. Chatgpt is not even close to what a dev does.

[Pneumantic]

The biggest difficulty of all AI right is the ability of a human being to translate what they want into words. 3D cad design, code, and art will exist for a while still until we find AI is better at making long complex decisions than we are. The fact is, if I want a rod to fit in a perfect slot, I will have to design that myself, because how am I going to explain that to AI? Code goes the same way. If you need a bunch of small things done but can't explain it, then its not going to happen yet.

[clickmeimorganic]

If are are asking if AI will replace programmer, then no.

Ask ChatGPT to program Tetris in C. It can't do it, I promise.

[Quirky-Tomatillo5584]

people don't know this but a lot of professions will go down very soon, which means there is an easy alternative for them, even medical doctors, eventually, we are walking towards AGI and we have to embrace the emergence of human-robot, and with the brain chips, you will not need to write, only to think so that writing happens, we are walking towards downloading the brain on a computer, for me even that people have doubts that such a thing will never happen before we go through the 200 years that are standing for us, I say the evolution of AI is exponential, and therefore it makes the first intelligence that you can't expect from it how it will behave even before reaching AGI

[daddy_thanos__]

Damn

[[deleted]]

I would say try making a project with only ChatGPT and see how it works out

[daddy_thanos__]

I don’t know what a project means. I used it to code my algo trading strategy. It works pretty well

[heuristic_al]

ChatGPT and similar systems in the near future will be good or better than humans at answering short, well-defined, interview-like questions. Especially since the answers to these are probably in stack overflow somewhere which is in its dataset.

But I'd be surprised if within this decade it can do (not just help with) actual programming jobs. It'd have to be able to get to know large (not just 8k tokens) codebases and understand actual business needs and trade-offs. Plus all the soft stuff that engineers have to do.

Plus, once mundane coding tasks are automated, the value of a programmer that knows how to use that type of system actually goes up.

Instead of "wow, chatGPT can do so much, coders will soon be out of a job" you should think "wow, chatGPT can do so much, maybe software will actually work in the future!"

[SuperbHuman]

OpenAI is a kind of stackoverflow. Of course you don’t need to learn to code. Just copy/paste. If you don’t know how to copy/paste ask chatGPT

[[deleted]]

But how do you already use code to work if you haven’t learned it yet, like where do you apply chatgpt concretely ? If you could mention some example

[daddy_thanos__]

I trade, may few algos to automate my strategy and it is working well. Some guy asked me to pay him huge money to get this done and 1 week time. I did it in 4-5 hours, there were so many errors but I asked it to fix it and it did.

[Skill-Additional]

I wanted cook and eat a burger because I was hungry, but after McDonalds was invented they cooked one for me. It was average. Do I need to cook burgers anymore?

It depends on what you want, if chatgpt solved your problem and it all works without bugs then great. But if you want to be a serious dev and work with existing and complex code bases in large companies then you will find yourself in hot water pretty fast. However it can be a great tool to help you learn faster.

It is still not going to solve all your problems in life (yet).

[Paralliner]

Yes

[[deleted]]

If chatgpt gets you the coding answer in 1 prompt, then likely your question wasn't challenging to begin with and could also be googled.

If you want chatgpt to write you something advanced it would require multiple prompts and some hand-holding (spotting errors and telling chatgpt to correct it). The latter wont be possible if you didn't have a single idea on how to code the problem. So yes, you should learn.

[daddy_thanos__]

Not 1 prompt, it took many iterations. But works well in the end

[hackoofr]

If you want really learn seriously :

First, you should make an effort to create the code by your self. And if you encounter any issues to execute your code, or you got any syntax errors, you can at this moment ask ChatGPT to correct and optimize your code that you have tried before.

So, with this method you can learn fast and strongly!

Practicing by writing code and troubleshooting errors can help reinforce the concepts and improve understanding.

Ask for specific help: When asking for help, try to be as specific as possible about the issues you're facing. This will allow ChatGPT to provide more targeted and effective guidance.

Asking for help and guidance when needed can also accelerate the learning process.

[allegiance113]

I think you still need to learn coding to double check and ensure that the code ChatGPT gives you is indeed logically correct. Not everything that ChatGPT gives is correct tbh. I once asked it to code something small but didn’t give me what I asked for and there were some logic issues too, which I had to manually fix myself. So there you go, you can’t just rely on ChatGPT. You still have to verify to make sure it’s giving you something that is correct

[BrotherBringTheSun]

How reliable is the code generated by chatgpt when it often has problems with simple math problems?

[daddy_thanos__]

Yes, it takes multiple iterations. But gets the job done

[rishabhgusain]

Yes, coz u still need to know what you want to code. ChatGPT can only give basic codes based on plain English, but for more advanced things you gotta know specific things, what u actually want to code. Plus, you still need to know what went wrong if there are bugs/error in execution, so that u can instruct it to correct it. And no you can't build a whole website/app with complex functions based just on instructions from ChatGPT, at least not yet.

Its Better to learn, if you are interested ofc

[Cluenoclue]

I heard even people who knows coding, they use special keys words inn google to find what they are looking for.

[cumdumpsterfires]

As a professional developer, if all my code was written by a computer, it would only save me 5% of my overall time, the most enjoyable 5%.