Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#1

Post by tmaly » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

If you are going to ask ChatGPT to write code, which programming language would you ask it to use and why?

I had thought maybe rust, but I read some threads and people were stating the code it writes would not compile sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#2

Post by smt88 » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 4:39 AM UTC

Rust is a good idea because "does not compile" is better than "contains lots of errors, but compiles/runs anyway". No one should be running ChatGPT-produced code without carefully proofreading it anyway.

The training set likely contains more JavaScript than any other language, so the resulting code quality would probably be the best, but JavaScript is also the most tolerant mainstream language and would tolerate a lot of runtime errors.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#3

Post by darthrupert » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 6:20 AM UTC

It generates pretty good Typescript, if it doesn't select a deprecated library.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#4

Post by tmaly » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 12:29 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #2

Rust is a good idea because "does not compile" is better than "contains lots of errors, but compiles/runs anyway". No one should be running ChatGPT-produced code without carefully proofreading it anyway. The training set likely contains more JavaScript than any other language, so the resulting code quality would probably be the best, but JavaScript is also the most tolerant mainstream language and would tolerate a lo…

I thought the same thing about the compiler, but the threads I read said GPT would just make up imaginary crates to use in some cases.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#5

Post by tmaly » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 12:30 PM UTC

darthrupert wrote: post #3

It generates pretty good Typescript, if it doesn't select a deprecated library.

What have you tried to prevent it from selecting a deprecated library?

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#6

Post by muzani » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

The original was mostly trained on Python[1], but JS seems a close second. So I assume python has the highest quality. If you don't specify a language, it seems pick either of these.

[1] https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#7

Post by Princesscaraan » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

Chatgpt help me in a very nice way. though sometimes my needs not available. There's a trick how to proper ask chatgpt.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#8

Post by speedgoose » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

I think it works best in Python, but I don’t have numbers to bring. It’s just how I feel. Other languages have more wrong answers.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#9

Post by jawmes8 » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

I’ve been using it to learn SQL - it’s been helpful asking it to explain queries or joins that I want to perform.

Re: Ask HN: ChatGPT best programming language to use?

#10

Post by kypro » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

darthrupert wrote: post #3

It generates pretty good Typescript, if it doesn't select a deprecated library.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. Its code is generally alright, but it has a habit of picking outdated / deprecated / poorly maintained libraries.

I wonder if that's because it's not weighting by recency in it's training or something.