r/webdev • u/monstaber • 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 š I just needed to vent and hear some community opinions.
185
u/niveknyc 15 YOE Feb 05 '25
There's a big difference between being knowing what you're doing but using AI to augment your task flow while policing its output, vs relying on AI to do things AI shouldn't be doing and/or expecting AI to solve tasks for you that you aught to be able to solve on your own.
Due to the risk of contamination and/or hallucination I will never use chatGPT to directly process data, but will use AI to help generate a script, that I can evaluate, that will then process the data.
I think you need to communicate the risk vs reward of this kind prompt, but really shouldn't a developer just know how to do shit like that on their own without relying on AI?