There are so many potential coding uses for ChatGPT, there are probably many that haven't even been thought of yet. Find out what some have.
Since OpenAI announced ChatGPT, the remarkable AI chatbot has found its place in many fields, including the complex, fast-moving field of programming.
But what exactly can you do with ChatGPT as a programmer? Hype aside, what are some practical ways you, as a programmer, can use AI chatbots in your daily workflow? We've put together nine practical ways to integrate ChatGPT into your workflow as a programmer.
1. Generate efficient algorithms
While some programmers are rapidly outsourcing the entire software development process to ChatGPT, this could lead to disaster. ChatGPT can generate some impressive code. But it's best used as a secondary tool, while human programmers control most of the development process.
A great way to do this is to have a chatbot help you design an efficient algorithm while you handle the rest of the hard work to create a robust program. You can ask ChatGPT to generate algorithms in plain text, using ASCII art, in tree format, using boxes, or any other creative visualization technique you can think of.
2. Generate placeholders and fill content
As a programmer, you may sometimes need placeholder data to work with. Whether it's database data for testing APIs or long-form text for populating web pages, ChatGPT can generate different types of dummy data to suit your needs.
ChatGPT can generate filled content in SQL, JSON, CSV and many other formats. It can even create native data structures such as arrays and lists using any popular programming language.
While you can find plenty of dummy data generators online, few, if any, offer the level of data customization you can get from ChatGPT. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to generate a 2,000-record CSV file containing English names, Chinese second names in English, and US phone numbers:
You can be as specific as possible about the type of dummy data you want. You may not be able to do this easily with free dummy data generation tools that can be found online.
3. Format data
Sometimes, you need to format large amounts of plain text into compatible data types. Maybe you need some plain text formatted as a CSV or JavaScript object like an array. Or you may need to convert or format a data structure in one language into a similar data structure in another language.
You can spend the time and effort writing a regex function to handle it, or you can provide instructions in English and let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting.
The screenshot below shows a piece of unlabeled and unordered data for ChatGPT.
When asked to parse this data and present it in a table, ChatGPT responded as follows:
ChatGPT is able to accurately label and format data in a tabular format. It's worth noting that this is relatively difficult to achieve with regex-driven formatting functions.
4. Translate the code into another language
Do you often need solutions to programming problems in one specific language, but can only find code in other languages? ChatGPT can help you port any code snippet to the language of your choice.
The screenshot above contains a PHP encryption and decryption function using AES-256 in CBC mode with a randomly generated initialization vector. We asked ChatGPT to port the code to JavaScript and here are the results:
AI chatbots are trained in multiple programming languages and can port code between many of them with a high degree of accuracy. You can also port deprecated or legacy code to newer, more stable code in the same language. All you have to do is give ChatGPT the correct hint
.
5. Optimize a piece of code
Whether you're building a large resource-intensive application or a smaller project, your code could always use some optimizations for better performance
. ChatGPT can be very resourceful with code optimization. You can prompt the AI chatbot to suggest ways to optimize blocks of code, or ask it to generate an optimized version of your code.
In the screenshot above, we have a JavaScript function that takes an array of numbers and returns the sum of all even numbers in the array. The code works, but it could use some optimization. We asked ChatGPT to optimize the code and the results are as follows.
ChatGPT will usually tell you what was wrong with the original code and the optimizations made. For our code snippet above, below is a screenshot of the optimizations made by ChatGPT.
Perhaps one of the most exciting things about optimizing code with ChatGPT is that the chatbot will poke holes in bits of code that you thought were already perfect. You can also ask the chatbot to optimize specific parts of the code to meet your unique needs.
6. Write tests for your code
One of the best ways to ensure that your code is bug-free, satisfies a range of exceptions, and can handle edge cases is to write unit tests for it. Of course, writing tests can sometimes be a time-consuming and even mind-bending task. But why stress about ChatGPT when it can help?
Just copy paste the code you wish to write unit tests for and provide ChatGPT with detailed instructions on how to write the tests. Of course, we do not recommend outsourcing the entire test writing job to ChatGPT.
7. Document your code
Code documentation can be challenging, but it's an important part of software development that you shouldn't ignore. ChatGPT can generate impressively detailed documentation for code in various programming languages. You can even ask it to create HTML-formatted documentation if you want to put it online.
In addition to standalone documentation, you can also have chatbots comment on your code to make future work easier for you or others. We prompted ChatGPT to comment a simple encryption function using a Caesar cipher in Python, and it was correct every line.
8. Fix any bugs
From misplaced brackets and commas to logic errors, ChatGPT can spot errors in seconds that might take you days to identify. Just copy paste the code in question and let ChatGPT identify the mistakes in the code.
You may be concerned that you're dealing with logic errors, which are often harder to spot. If so, just paste the code in question and describe to ChatGPT what you're trying to achieve with it and the current output you're getting.
A good practice for finding bugs with ChatGPT is to provide as many bug details as possible. Relevant details might include the languages, frameworks, and libraries your code uses, or details of the server you're running it on.
For example, to fix a piece of code in PHP, you may need to provide the type of database involved, PHP version, server details, and the package or library used.
9. Generate code from scratch
One of the prominent uses of ChatGPT is to generate computer code. You always have the option of writing every part of the program yourself, which is both tedious and decent. But you won't be a programmer if you outsource even a fraction of that to ChatGPT.
However, you should be careful with AI-generated code, even if it has no syntax errors. If you're deploying AI-generated code on a mission-critical software system, logic errors can be very costly.
ChatGPT: A good helper for programmers
Programming is a complex activity that requires many moving parts to do it correctly. ChatGPT can be a powerful ally, allowing you to leverage vast amounts of knowledge and expertise in seconds, simplifying the process of building these complex parts.
While you shouldn't think of an AI chatbot as a magical tool for writing all your code, it offers a very powerful way to dramatically speed up your work without reinventing the wheel.