Generative AI is making it easier than ever for people with no prior experience to experiment with writing code. But just how big a deal is the emergence of “conversational coding?” From the Future of being Human Substack.
Depending on who you are, the ability of AI to analyze, debug, and even write code, is either a game-changer, or a non-starter. I’ve seen strong arguments that generative AI is massively accelerating the speed and sophistication of professional coding. I’ve also seen people who code for a living dismiss it as limited and unreliable.
That said, most of the discussions I’ve seen and heard so far have been between people who are already adept at coding.
But what about coding novices?
To what extent do the latest iterations of generative AI platforms open up the ability to “code” to anyone — and especially those without knowing anything about the coding language that’s being used?
I’ve resisted diving into the coding abilities of platforms like ChatGPT for a while now. But an experience with using ChatGPT to help fix a website a couple of weeks ago made me realize I should probably bite the bullet. And so a couple of weeks ago I set about exploring ChatGPT’s coding capabilities with a very simple challenge:
Could I get it to create fully functioning code for three very different web-based video games, with no direct coding input from myself?
The three games — and the process of developing them — are described below, along with links that allow you to play with them (and a couple of bonuses in the addendum).
But before I get there, I wanted to provide some context …