ChatGPT - The End of the Software Developer

Since ChatGPT has been released in the last 3 weeks, there's been a real buzz, not only in the software development community but in the wider tech community as well (check my content around it last week if you're interested ??). It is justified though, as this is a significant breakthrough in what I, and many others feel is functional AI, and for the first time there's multiple real-world use cases for it, all from the input of a simple prompt. This whilst helping my ability to write content, also offers a far more powerful solution of explaining complex functions as well as the ability to create simple solutions to problems, e.g. This example of Higher Order Components within React

For an AI to generate this with a practical example shows the advancement that AI has come with the release of ChatGPT. For those who've played around with it, you'd also know that as well as explaining concepts, the ability to generate simple websites, explain potential migrations and offer simple solutions to coding problems, offers an unparalleled benefit in both time-saving, in terms of code generation and the learning curve of those interested in coding, particularly when a solution is presented in front of you.

Given its high-level response at this stage, the question now goes from "will AI ever be able to write effective code?" to "How long will it be until the AI takes over from the software developer?". It's a tricky question to answer, given the significance and recency of this breakthrough, as simple code problems will be solved far quicker, essentially as a quick tutorial. Scaling these problems up to more complex websites, coding entire applications, or complex bug fixing is where the AI at this stage just isn't self-sufficient.

Take the above code for example, I, as a tech recruiter may think it looks correct, but to be honest I have no idea if it actually is or not. On a practical level, this became a problem to the point where StackOverflow banned the use of ChatGPT answers just because the AI was so consistently getting it wrong. Given this, it's just as likely that even with the time-saving benefit that ChatGPT offers, when trying to make complex code workable, you'd just be spending the same amount if not more fixing the original code. The average person simply wouldn't be able to do this, hence the need for a software engineer, and why whole applications couldn't be written like this. The same thing holds true with bug fixing, whilst it does a great job solving individual bugs (see below), writing a whole application and asking it to find all the bugs isn't going to be 100% successful.

As a result then rather than replace the software engineer, I think it's more of an enabler, cutting the learning curve of those trying to code, essentially producing the content from articles it was trained on. In terms of a one-stop shop for simple tutorials and learning, and solving individual isolated problems,ChatGPT definitely does its job and is an incredible step forward with AI. Regarding the long-term replacement of the software engineer, we're still far away from it (for now).

What are your thoughts on ChatGPT, I for one have been interested in playing around with it but if there's any use case I'm missing, or thoughts that you have, please let me know ??