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Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

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Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#31

Post by krupan »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30
furyofantares wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the type of thing where it's extremely unlikely to bullshit. And ALSO the type of thing where I think you can work out if it's bullshitting you on your own; if it works, it's not bullshitting.

That's why LLMs are best suited to programming. You know pretty quickly if it's lied to you.

I’m sorry, but these arguments are terrible. I see them boiling down to this:

“Use GPT to do this thing!”

“But GPT is notorious for confidently getting things wrong”

“That’s ok! Because you’ll know it’s wrong!”

Maybe I’m a little sore right now because I literally just finished trying to have GPT write code for me and it gave me code with all kinds of syntax errors and mistakes. Yes, I know not to trust it because the compiler flagged the problems, but what now? I go write the code myself I guess. Yay GPT?

What problem is GPT solving here then?

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#32

Post by teaearlgraycold »

krupan wrote: post #31
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why LLMs are best suited to programming. You know pretty quickly if it's lied to you.

I’m sorry, but these arguments are terrible. I see them boiling down to this: “Use GPT to do this thing!” “But GPT is notorious for confidently getting things wrong” “That’s ok! Because you’ll know it’s wrong!” Maybe I’m a little sore right now because I literally just finished trying to have GPT write code for me and it gave me code with all kinds of syntax errors and mistakes. Yes, I know not to trust it because th…

You can paste the compiler errors in and it’ll revise. But I think it helps to get a sense for what it can do well and what it can’t. It struggles with stuff that involves gnarly type level shenanigans, for example. But every time I’ve struggled with it I ended up realizing I was asking the wrong question. It’s not a magical device that solves all problems for you. It accelerates you when you know very well where you are and have the right idea of where you want to go. Try using it for boring refactoring tasks.

It’s also not bad with explaining code, so it can help with the “where you are” bit, too.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#33

Post by furyofantares »

krupan wrote: post #31
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why LLMs are best suited to programming. You know pretty quickly if it's lied to you.

I’m sorry, but these arguments are terrible. I see them boiling down to this: “Use GPT to do this thing!” “But GPT is notorious for confidently getting things wrong” “That’s ok! Because you’ll know it’s wrong!” Maybe I’m a little sore right now because I literally just finished trying to have GPT write code for me and it gave me code with all kinds of syntax errors and mistakes. Yes, I know not to trust it because th…

It gets it wrong maybe as often as I do on my first shot, but it does it much faster -- MUCH MUCH faster if any of the tech involved is something I'm not familiar with. And no matter who writes the code, me or the machine, I still quickly read it right after it's written.

Look, I've been doing this for 25 years, both as a career and continuously on the side for fun, and I am definitely an expert in a lot of things at this point. I'm allergic to saying crap like that about myself but feel it's necessary in this case, because it has transformed how I use a computer in a few short weeks.

My very first attempt with this stuff was actually a distinctly miserable experience and then something clicked. Wish I could articulate exactly what, but it's now one of the most joyous experience I've had in my career.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#35

Post by saagarjha »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30
furyofantares wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the type of thing where it's extremely unlikely to bullshit. And ALSO the type of thing where I think you can work out if it's bullshitting you on your own; if it works, it's not bullshitting.

That's why LLMs are best suited to programming. You know pretty quickly if it's lied to you.

I have bad news to tell you about our ability to verify if a program matches a description of what it does on all inputs.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#36

Post by furyofantares »

saagarjha wrote: post #35
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why LLMs are best suited to programming. You know pretty quickly if it's lied to you.

I have bad news to tell you about our ability to verify if a program matches a description of what it does on all inputs.

Regardless of whether you wrote it or an LLM did, yeah.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#37

Post by girvo »

eloff wrote: post #12
great_psy wrote: post #8

Did anyone use this for an actual project. I am wondering how those chatX applications actually help. When I had to use a dissasembler the issue was not commands, because those become muscle memory after a few hours of use. (LLM solutions are anti muscle memory because for the same prompt you can get diff results) The issue I had was wrapping my brain around what is actually going on, keeping track of pointers, addre…

I use gbd so rarely that I often forget the commands between sessions. Then I use print debugging when it’s not the best tool just because I don’t want to lookup the commands. I could see the use for this kind of thing. Same problem when coding shell scripts. It’s like they tried to invent the hardest to remember language. I often use python instead of bash just because I can remember it and read it.

I use GDB all the time… but never directly, always through an IDE’s debugging abilities. So I can’t see any use to tools like this one? Dunno maybe I’m missing something and lots use it directly, but IDE integration is what makes it super useful for JTAG debugging of firmware at work for me.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#38

Post by jakeinspace »

girvo wrote: post #37
eloff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use gbd so rarely that I often forget the commands between sessions. Then I use print debugging when it’s not the best tool just because I don’t want to lookup the commands. I could see the use for this kind of thing. Same problem when coding shell scripts. It’s like they tried to invent the hardest to remember language. I often use python instead of bash just because I can remember it and read it.

I use GDB all the time… but never directly, always through an IDE’s debugging abilities. So I can’t see any use to tools like this one? Dunno maybe I’m missing something and lots use it directly, but IDE integration is what makes it super useful for JTAG debugging of firmware at work for me.

I do embedded development, so I’m usually attaching a gdb session to the server spawned by this esoteric chip’s programmer/debugger. I could possibly make use of this I suppose.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#39

Post by smusamashah »

eloff wrote: post #15

Is there something like this for the command line in general? I'd love to have a ? command that takes an optional prompt and feeds my current shell history to chat gpt and gets a recommendation for the last command that failed. Something like https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck but with some intelligence instead of hard-coded rules. That's somewhat problematic if you have secrets in there, but you could just not use it i…

A simpler and probably better idea is to create an alias to send request to ChatGPT api via curl. Can create multiple aliases, one to explain a command, another to fix a command.

Re: Show HN: ChatGDB – GPT-Powered GDB Assistant

#40

Post by gumballindie »

ArenaSource wrote: post #25
eloff wrote: post #15

Is there something like this for the command line in general? I'd love to have a ? command that takes an optional prompt and feeds my current shell history to chat gpt and gets a recommendation for the last command that failed. Something like https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck but with some intelligence instead of hard-coded rules. That's somewhat problematic if you have secrets in there, but you could just not use it i…

If you feel brave and have credits to burn https://github.com/jla/gpt-shell (shameless auto-promotion) Nah, seriously don't use it, is just a small experiment, curious thing is that half of the code is the GPT prompts..

This is hilarious - it’s actions are either outright wrong or already supported by the native shell itself.
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