The future of programming

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I am following the Advent of Code 2022 programming event. I was about to say contest, but I wonder if that would be the correct name. Anyway, AoC presents different programming challenges to the users to be solved daily from December 1st to 25th. 

The humorous problem statements and quite doable problems make it a fun programming experience that does not use much of your time. But what shocked me this year was that GPT-3 was being used to solve problems at lightning speed. 

Once I opened an OpenAI account, I could try how good this thing is at solving programming exercises. I see the system is powerful enough to solve many programming quizzes I wrote for my students. It even handles them if written in Spanish. 

And it is not only that you get some code as a result, but you can keep asking for refinements in case the first version does not have all the required features. Of course, to provide such a level of guidance, you need to be knowledgeable about programming, but now I will be paying closer attention to the code my students turn in. Did I say the generated code is commented in the language of your request too?


It is no longer clear that programming will require humans. And while the current state of the technology might not be perfect, it definitely shows a precision level of understanding of the natural language that seems good enough for many small tasks like the test exercises. 

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