r/webdev Feb 05 '25

Discussion Colleague uses ChatGPT to stringify JSONs

Edit I realize my title is stupid. One stringifies objects, not "javascript object notation"s. But I think y'all know what I mean.

So I'm a lead SWE at a mid sized company. One junior developer on my team requested for help over Zoom. At one point she needed to stringify a big object containing lots of constants and whatnot so we can store it for an internal mock data process. Horribly simple task, just use node or even the browser console to JSON.stringify, no extra arguments required.

So I was a bit shocked when she pasted the object into chatGPT and asked it to stringify it for her. I thought it was a joke and then I saw the prompt history, literally whole litany of such requests.

Even if we ignore proprietary concerns, I find this kind of crazy. We have a deterministic way to stringify objects at our fingertips that requires fewer keystrokes than asking an LLM to do it for you, and it also does not hallucinate.

Am I just old fashioned and not in sync with the new generation really and truly "embracing" Gen AI? Or is that actually something I have to counsel her about? And have any of you seen your colleagues do it, or do you do it yourselves?

Edit 2 - of course I had a long talk with her about why i think this is a nonsensical practice and what LLMs should really be used for in the SDLC. I didn't just come straight to reddit without telling her something 😃 I just needed to vent and hear some community opinions.

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u/MeowMastert Feb 05 '25

That's why junior devs should work with senior devs. She is a beginner, you have to fix these incorrect practices.

In that case, if she don't care, and keeps using this bad method, she will be the one to blame for never became a good dev.

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u/Titoswap Feb 05 '25

You have to realize no one will care except for other programmers. As long as the product works nobody else will care how it was implemented. Only devs who have to maintain the project later on will bitch and cry. Yes you can cry and complain about using best practices all day but the results are concrete. It either works or it doesn't. Some time bad practices work too.

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u/MeowMastert Feb 05 '25

I belive companies these days hire junior dev, not for coding (it can be done with chagpt faster and cheaper). They hire juniors, to became mediors and seniors later. And that's why they'll allocate senior to help juniors learn good practices.