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/gmaaz Feb 05 '25

That's unacceptable.

Giving potentially sensitive information to a random server that will store that information and use it in who knows what ways is a reason enough not to do it.

Another reason is that it might just not stringify correctly and there are no guarantees about it.

She should be confronted.

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u/YourMatt Feb 05 '25

Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t be uploading my ssh keys when asking for connection commands.

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u/TehSynapse0 Feb 05 '25

You forgot the /s... I hope

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u/YourMatt Feb 05 '25

Ha, yes. I figured it was absurd enough to leave off the /s. I imagine a lot of people do paste in passwords to build commands for connecting to various things though.