The “bullshit” problem turns up in code, too
Photo by Joshua Reddekopp on UnsplashLately I’ve been seeing people using ChatGPT to write code. One guy posted on Twitter about how he used it to make a simple version of Pong “in under 60 seconds”, while another had it write a Python script to rename files.
I wanted to get in on the action, so I asked ChatGPT — the March 14 version — to make a simple to-do list web app. I started off with this request …
I’d like to make a simple to-do web app. Show me the code that would do the following: Display the text “My To-Do List” at the top, with a field beneath where I can type in to-do items. When I type in a new item and hit “enter”, the new item would appear in a list below the input field. When I click on any list in the item, it disappears.
Presto — it cranked out some simple HTML and Javascript, which did exactly what I asked for.
Over the next few minutes, I added a bunch more requests: I told it to add a button called “Save List” that, when you clicked it, would save the list locally on your browser. I told it a couple of Google fonts to use, and asked it for CSS styling to use those fonts. Then I had it add a bit more styling: To change the font size for smaller screens vs. bigger screens, to add bullet points before each item on…