Tutorial

ChatGPT – Prompts for developers

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue. The language model can respond to questions and compose various written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code, and emails, making it an exciting tool for programmers at every level.

OpenAI (an AI research company) created ChatGPT and launched the tool in November 2022. It was founded by a group of entrepreneurs and researchers including Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015. OpenAI is backed by several investors, with Microsoft being the most notable.

What is prompt engineering and why is it important?

Prompt engineering makes it easy for users to obtain relevant results. It also helps mitigate bias that may be present from existing human bias in the large language models training data. Further, it enhances the user-AI interaction so the AI understands the user's intention even with minimal input.

When crafting a prompt,

  • Remember to be clear and concise.
  • Be Specific: Specify the programming language choice and clearly describe the functionality you need. For example, a prompt could be "Write a JavaScript function to calculate the sum of given numbers" instead of a vague “Write a function to calculate the sum".
  • Include the necessary context and details, but avoid any ambiguity or unnecessary information.
  • Define Inputs and Outputs: If the function or piece of code you need requires specific input or output formats, include this information in your prompt.

How ChatGPT can help Developers

ChatGPT, an advanced language model can help developers in multiple ways in their coding journey. Let’s explore some of them.

1. Writing Code:

Using ChatGPT, you can generate code based on specific descriptions. For example, if you require a C# function to calculate some of the 2 numbers. You can prompt ChatGPT as shown below and it will return the appropriate code.

Prompt Example: "Write a C# function to calculate the sum of the 2 given numbers."

2. Refactor Code:

With ChatGPT's help, you can refactor the code to enhance code efficiency, reduce errors, and make it easier to modify or extend in the future.

Prompt Example:

I have a piece of code and I need you to refactor it:
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

3. Code Review & Debugging

You can use ChatGPT to review the code snippet and share potential issues or bugs.

Prompt Example:

"Here's a C# code snippet. The function is supposed to return the maximum value from the given list, but it's not returning the expected output. Can you identify the problem?".
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

4. Adding Coding Best Practices or Principles:

ChatGPT helps you rewrite the code according to style guidelines.

Prompt Example:

Rewrite the code below following the Google style guidelines for JavaScript.
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

5. Explaining Code

ChatGPT can help explain the workings of old and complex code snippets. To get an explanation of a specific piece of code, provide the code snippet, and ask for it.

Prompt Example:

"Could you please explain how this C# function works?".
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

6. Optimizing Code

ChatGPT can help in optimizing the code to enhance performance or readability and make your code lean and efficient.

Prompt Example:

"Here’s a function I wrote in JavaScript that prints first n Fibonacci Numbers. Could you suggest any optimizations for better performance?"
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

7. Create Unit Tests

You can use ChatGPT to automate the unit testing by writing test cases for you.

Prompt Example:

Please write unit tests for the following code.
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

8. Add code comments

If your code is self-explanatory but requires commenting, ChatGPT can do it for you in no time.

Prompt Example:

Add comments to the following code:
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE

9. Create Boilerplate Code

ChatGPT can help you generate the boilerplate code.

Prompt Example:

Write a boilerplate JavaScript function that will take a variable of type User, and validate whether the user has the right permissions or not.

10. Create a Regular Expression

Regular expressions help us to match, locate, and manage text, providing a quick and relatively easy way to manipulate data, particularly in large complex programs and ChatGPT can help us in writing these RegEx.

Prompt Example:

Write a regular expression that matches:
REQUEST

These are some of the examples of how ChatGPT can make a developer's life easy. Besides that, ChatGPT can also help with learning new concepts, understanding design patterns, code refactoring, brainstorming ideas, interview preparations, and much more.

Source: Sandeep Kumar