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

  • JokersPistol@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Yes and no. If your goal is to learn how to code manually, then you are “cheating” in that you may not learn as much.

    If your goal is to learn how to utilize AI to assist you in daily tasks, I would say you’re not.

    If your goal is to provide value for others through how much you can produce in a given amount of time, then you’re definitely not.