AI tools for coding

[John F Sowa]

The following article shows an important use of GPT-style tools.  But note that they are not doing any reasoning or evaluation.  The most valuable parts are error correction (simple mistakes) and finding code snippets from a vast range of software that can be found on the WWW.

I recommend clicking on the link below for more information.

But caveat emptor:  it can also insert bugs, especially for larger snippets that do almost what you want, but for a slightly different representation than what you're using.

These are the same issues as writing aids in English and other languages.  They are good for correcting spelling, inserting useful phrases, reducing the amount of typing, etc.  But when they insert larger amounts of text, you have to check the details -- because they can insert stuff that is not what you meant.   The worst cases are sections that look good at first glance, but you (or somebody else) discovers misleading or just false passages.

Treat every passage they insert as if  written by a clever assistant who does a lot of good stuff, but sometimes makes disastrous errors.

John

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From ACM technews.  Information for computer professionals three times a week.

GitHub Survey Finds Nearly All Developers Use AI Coding Tools Nearly all (97%) of the 2,000 developers, engineers, and programmers polled by GitHub across the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and India said they have used AI coding tools at work. Most respondents said they perceived a boost in code quality when using AI tools, and 60% to 71% of those polled said adopting a new programming language or understanding an existing codebase was "easy" with AI coding tools. [https://www.infoworld.com/article/3489925/github-survey-finds-nearly-all-developers-using-ai-coding-tools.html    ] InfoWorld (August 21, 2024)

[deddy]

John -

>
> GitHub Survey Finds Nearly All Developers Use AI Coding Tools
>

That piece is certainly well up the scale of "content free information."

WHICH languages were being used?

______________________
David Eddy

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> GITHUB SURVEY FINDS NEARLY ALL DEVELOPERS USE AI CODING TOOLS Nearly

> all (97%) of the 2,000 developers, engineers, and programmers polled
> by GitHub across the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and India said they have
> used AI coding tools at work. Most respondents said they perceived a
> boost in code quality when using AI tools, and 60% to 71% of those
> polled said adopting a new programming language or understanding an
> existing codebase was "easy" with AI coding tools.
> [https://www.infoworld.com/article/3489925/github-survey-finds-nearly-all-developers-using-ai-coding-tools.html
> ]

> _InfoWorld (August 21, 2024)_
>
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[John F Sowa]

David,

The interesting point of that survey was the percentage of professional programmers who were using any AI coding tools.   The complete article mentions some of them  -- I included the link.  Google "AI coding tools" if you want to see more.

 

John

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From: "deddy" <de...@davideddy.com>

[David Eddy]

John -

On Aug 28, 2024, at 4:21 PM, John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net> wrote:

using any AI coding tools.

Did I miss a link?  

I saw nothing about what langauges are being used here.

EasyTrieve?  Focus?  Model 204?  Fortran?  Natural?  Mantis?  IDMS?

I’ll assume COBOL… but then how many dialects of COBOL are there?

Are there statistics on what languages are IN GitHub & ones that are NOT?

- David

[John F Sowa]

David,

I  would also like to see a list of all the tools that were being used and how many people are using each for what purposes.

But it is interesting to know that a significant number of programmers are using whatever AI tools are available.  The article did mention a few, but did not say how many were using which.

If anybody can find more information, please send a note to the list.

John

 

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From: "David Eddy" <de...@davideddy.com>

[James Davenport]

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3489925/github-survey-finds-nearly-all-developers-using-ai-coding-tools.html which is based on https://github.blog/news-insights/research/survey-ai-wave-grows/

 

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2024 11:30 PM
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] AI tools for coding

 

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[John F Sowa]

James,

Thanks for that link.  It provides important insights into the kinds of jobs that can benefit from current versions of AI.  People classified as "developer" use AI tools far more than people classified as "programmer" or "data scientist".

The percentages for the last two are 7% and 8%.  They need absolute precision, and an occasional bug takes far more time to correct than the time they gain by using AI tools,

As I keep repeating, precise evaluation is absolutely essential for a wide range of critical applications.  For such tasks, any gain in speed is lost in the delays and even disasters caused by AI systems that have a "high percentage" of being correct.

As one programmer said, AI systems let me write a program in 5 minutes that would usually take an hour.  But then I have to spend a week in debugging it.

People called developers are probably looking for suggestions that they can pass along to a programmer.  And those suggestions may be good.  But the programmer has the responsibility for mapping a broad suggestion to a precise solution that is designed for the exact situation.

John

 

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From: "James Davenport' via ontolog-forum" <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>