Just ask it to rewrite the shitty code you wrote in a language you barely understand to “follow standard best practices in <language>” or something like that and it will add advanced typing features, functional programming for iterables, advanced exception handling, proper concurrency handling, optimize control flows, use better equivalent functions, etc.
As long as you understand the foundations of these concepts in at least one language anybody can become pretty close to an expert in most languages instantly. Especially since most of them are C based and pretty similar
The output will sometimes change the logic but I mean that’s pretty easy to catch and fix
Rip C++ nerds that memorize the entirety of each releases manual to shave off 3ms in every single function
In my experience, LLMs can often pump out perfectly fine starting code for very basic problems. If you’re coding up some tiny blog it’ll probably be good enough that someone with some coding experience can unfuck the places where it screwed up.
That’s not what professional software engineering
is about though. You want a codebase built in a coherent, consistent, repeatable way that can be independently worked on by dozens of people often at the same time, and LLMs cannot do that in any real capacity. It might serve as a decent tool for spinning up quick proof-of-concepts (I’ve poked it to figure out a new framework before, mostly due to terrible documentation making it difficult to figure out how to use specific features) but none of it was production-worthy and never would be.
Furthermore, if you’re using it to figure out entire languages/frameworks for you, you’re quickly finding yourself in a position where you don’t see where it’s fucking up, which is going to hit you down the line when you’re playing whack-a-mole with a bug or severe performance issue in a giant codebase.
I still think you are talking about an architect and principal engineering level - which AI is not going to replace for a long while. It’s a productivity multiplier and maybe will replace junior developers at most. But that still seems another year or so away if not longer
I’m not advocating for using it to attempt and write a new feature end to end. Use it to help with your code function by function
It’s great for syntax, not good for the where