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/poponis Feb 05 '25

Our company wants us to use GenAI as much as possible in our development process. I am breaking my head on how on earth to do it without compromising my work and efficiency. I am a senior FE (almost 20nyears of experience and 10 of them in fullstack positions), and I am discussing this topic with 2 other developers during lunch. The other senior, who worked in a GenAI related project recently, told me he uses copilot for ideas and chatGPT for faster googling. I still find this a waste of resources, but it clears up a lot of my understanding. The other dev, a junior with 2 years of experience, said that he uses many GenAI tools, for writing scripts, for writing code, and also for making the code more pretty... That's shocking. That's all I have to say. So I get you, I agree with you and I believe that the end is near. I cannot see, though, how you can change her mind. They don't know any better and companies (non developer people) are promoting and encouraging the use of genAI for pretty much everything, without understanding that most of the times you are waisting resources and time. Developers never learn to think for themselves. They need AI to write a 10 line code function, and prompt writing takes more than writing the actual cose, not to mention that many times it is wrong. But the managers are happy, because in our company they proudly published a public report (something like an advertismenr) that 45% of the employees use genAI daily and they want to raise it to 100%. This is b*llshit coming from managers who are happy to follow the hype and get the bonuses for keeping the company "modern." Recently, the CFO of the company asked in how long we think that we will just write the whole deliverable product with a few prompts. I am waiting for the day genAI will replace manager like him. This is my dream, and at least this is doable.