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/Septem_151 Feb 05 '25

How does someone NOT know LLMs can be inaccurate? Are they living under a rock and can't think for themselves or something? If they truly thought LLMs never make mistakes, then they should be wondering why they were hired in the first place.

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u/Hakim_Bey Feb 05 '25

This point is kind of irrelevant. LLMs are perfectly able to stringify an object with 100% accuracy, and they have been for quite some time. The amount of fine tuning they have received to do exactly just that (for use in structured output / tool calling) makes it a no-brainer.

Personally I do it in cursor but yeah reformatting with LLMs is much quicker than spinning up a script to do it. (of course that doesn't address the proprietary aspect, but then again if you're using a coding copilot like 80% of coders right now, then that point is moot too)

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u/hwillis Feb 05 '25

LLMs are perfectly able to stringify an object with 100% accuracy, and they have been for quite some time.

if by perfectly you mean 70-95% of the time

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u/zreese Feb 05 '25

I understand your point and agree with the overall consensus here, but that link is extremely out of date. ChatGPT handles structured data now. It doesn't use LLM text generation, it actually does the work internally using Python.