As of late 2025:
- it's a great tool for searching for information.
- It can be wrong, but it will provide references for its information if asked.
- as with all information sources, caveat usor.
- I have used it for drawing figures, giving me the steps for changing the batteries in my car FOB, doing family history research, creating a YouTube movie …. and technical coding.
- Coding with it has been mostly efficient with periods of unbelievable frustration.
- It has taken the burden of knowing the coding language away. That leaves me with the domain knowledge and knowing what the results should be. And in most cases the preferred solution method.
- I have used Fortran, C, Java, HTML, CSS, Visual Basic and others over the years. But I had never used any of them enough to be anywhere near an expert. That’s where Chat comes in. I don’t need to worry about code syntax or structure. It does all that for me. Does it do it in the most efficient way? Quite honestly, I don’t know or even care. For the modules that I generally build the solution takes fractions of a second.
- I have learned that the prompts need to be concise and clear. I sometimes will ask for ideas and, in a few cases, I learned of a technique I had not been aware of.
- I have learned that when the code module gets to 1000 lines or more, we can run into trouble. Sometimes we end up going down a “rabbit hole”
. Chat will get locked into an idea and not be able to step back to see the bigger issue. I have learned to spot this and redirect. In some cases, I have restarted from scratch.
- I have learned that bite sized snippets that can be tested before moving on works best.
- I have learned that rather than asking for the full code to be updated with a change, ask for the snippet to be added or changed and where to paste it in.
- Asking for a 1000 line of more code to be updated will many times run into the dreaded “network connection lost.”
- I have learned if frequent use of “do not change anything” other than a particular feature Chat will sometimes make assumptions and change things that should not be changed.
- Chat does learn your “style”. I have certain preferences for user interfaces. It has learned those and will automatically implement those if my prompt is a bit fuzzy.
- I have learned that I can use Chat to give me test cases for testing a module. I have a paid version I do the coding with. But I also have a free version on my phone. I use the phone version for the developing a test case so there is no cross talk between them.
In summary, Chat has been extremely useful. In the tools of the engineering trade this is near the top for engineering. I’m old enough where my computer in early engineering school was a bamboo slide rule. The computer put that stick in a museum. The desktop computer was another leap. CAD/CAM another leap. Multi-physics software, another leap. Materials technology. Digital everything. The internet. All were important leaps, with more and improved tools. Chat and others like it are the latest leap. More will assuredly come.
But as with all tools use it wisely with just enough skepticism to keep it honest.
