How to use ChatGPT to boost your developer productivity
Tags: ai, machinelearning, productivity, tutorial
Published: 2023-01-14 11:35:19

## Table of contents

- [Introduction](#introduction)
- [What is ChatGPT](#what-is-chatgpt)
- [How to use it to increase your productivity](#how-to-use-it-to-increase-your-productivity)
  - [Code generation](#code-generation)
  - [Code translation](#code-translation)
  - [Bug detection and fixing](#bug-detection-and-fixing)
  - [Guidance](#guidance)
  - [Dummy data generation](#dummy-data-generation)
- [Will it replace developers?!](#will-it-replace-developers)
- [Conclusion](#conclusion)

## Introduction 

Hey, everyone, 👋. Hope you all are doing great. I recently came across ChatGPT and explored many amazing ways to use it to boost my development productivity. I'm going to show you exactly that in this article today. So, if it tickles your interest, please keep reading.

## What is ChatGPT 🤔

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a large language model developed by OpenAI that can understand and generate text like a human. It is trained on a large amount of text from the internet, so it can understand the context and generate text that makes sense. It can be used for many tasks such as answering questions, translating languages, summarizing text, and even writing text like a human, and even in the field of software development to help developers with tasks such as code generation and bug detection.

Using ChatGPT will make you feel like you are chatting with a human. It can maintain context very well which makes it more revolutionary than other AI models.

![ChatGPT being amazing](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2p9aifcup11pqhstyws9.jpeg)

Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can save us a significant amount of time.

## How to use it to increase your productivity 🔥

There are numerous ways you can use ChatGPT to automate your daily tasks. I'll go over some of them that will help us enhance developer productivity.

### Code generation 🧑‍💻

This is the most common usage of ChatGPT. You can generate code in a variety of programming languages. Such as Python, Java, JavaScript, C++, and more. Here's an example below:


![Code generation with ChatGPT](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hilxu4vxgwtsjn07lng8.jpeg)

Sometimes, it explains way too must 😅. Just be aware of that.

## Code translation 🗣️

You can even translate code from one language to another! Simply tell it you want to convert the x code to y code and then paste the code snippet. It is highly recommended to use [markdown syntax](https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet) when providing code. Here's an example below:

![Code translation with ChatGPT](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xwig7u758l052a72q092.jpeg)

How cool is that!

### Bug detection and fixing 🪲

We debug more than we write code as developers. ChatGPT can also debug and repair our code. Just give it a prompt saying, "What's wrong in the code below" and provide the code. Here's an example below:


![Bug fixing with ChatGPT](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6o12leqrwrb8oqftnfr6.jpeg)

That was a simple example. For more complex situations, you may have to provide more details.

### Guidance 📖

After knowing about ChatGPT, now I am aspired to build an AI like it. So now I need guidance on that. Let's ask ChatGPT about it.

![Asking guidance from ChatGPT](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e12fss01f4oyou893j7l.jpeg)

So amazing! It can give you a very good start on your journey. Here is another example:

![Another example on ChatGPT providing guidance](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1u61r2dyjqhayiywvg3k.jpeg)

### Dummy data generation 🧩

Most of the time, when my front end is ready before the API, I test the UI with dummy data by hardcoding it. In this case, ChatGPT can be used to generate dummy data in your specified format. Here's an example:

![Generating dummy data with ChatGPT](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rxu5yxek3oq22hwgfi0b.jpeg)

There are endless ways you can use ChatGPT. I only mentioned 5 to give you an idea. I highly recommend you go and get your hands dirty with ChatGPT.

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## Will it replace developers?! 😨

ChatGPT is extremely smart and can code a lot faster than human coders. The only thing it can do is write code. But software development is not just about writing code. It's about Planning, Thinking, Problem-Solving, Teamwork, and much more than that. So ChatGPT is still not enough capable of replacing software developers. It will certainly replace the dummies who just copy-paste code from StackOverFlow without knowing how it works.  When arguing whether ChatGPT will replace us, most people overlook the fact that it is only an assistant. So ChatGPT is not here to take our jobs, but rather to make our lives easier and more productive. Please let me know what you think about that. 👇

## Conclusion

That's all for now. Hope you got value from this article. If you did, make sure you like it. I will publish a thread version of this article on my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/developeratul). So, make sure you stay tuned. Thank you so much for reading and I will see in the next one. ✌️

## Follow me on socials 🌐
### 👤 Minhazur Rahman Ratul
- Twitter ([@developeratul](https://twitter.com/developeratul))
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