5 ChatGPT Tricks To Enrich Your Coding Journey
The world of coding can seem overwhelming when you first venture into it. Code snippets you encounter in programming tutorials can seem like they are written in an alien language you don’t understand.
If you don’t have a mentor to seek guidance from or a study buddy to brainstorm with, the adventure of learning to code can feel a lot like being stranded in a boat in an endless ocean with no pair of oars to row you toward the coveted shores of programming expertise.
In this study guide, some incredible hacks have been shared with you to help make your coding journey fun, more intuitive, and efficient with ‘ChatGPT’ as your round-the-clock coding companion.
1. Ask ChatGPT To Design A Personalized Learning Roadmap Tailored To Your current Knowledge and Future Aspirations
You’re probably thinking, ‘I can just use Google for that’. And while you can definitely do that, keep in mind that it will be harder to find a specialized guide based on your current skill level.
Given below is a prompt where I tell ChatGPT what my current knowledge of Blockchain is and ask ChatGPT to “Draw me a Roadmap For Learning Blockchain”.
It responds by giving me a roadmap with increasing difficulty of concepts.
🌟 Advanced Blockchain Topics Roadmap 🌟
ChatGPT also categorizes each level of learning blockchain according to difficulty level when probed further. Choose the words in your prompt carefully to get ChatGPT to respond in a way most helpful to you.
You can view the complete conversation (and also continue it) here
2. Use ChatGPT as A Study Buddy To Master Your Data Structures and Algorithms(DSA) Concepts
Learning DSA is not an easy feat, especially when you are doing it all by yourself. Do you need a study buddy who can explain how to reverse a linked list in the simplest of ways?
ChatGPT has got your back.
If you don’t understand something, be specific when asking about it and ask ChatGPT to explain that concept in more detail. Add “Explain visually” or “Draw a diagram” at the end of your prompt if you are a visual learner.
In the example below, I ask ChatGPT to visually explain what happens to each part of a linked list when it’s being reversed.
ChatGPT explains the entire process of reversing a linked list step-by-step in great detail.
However, if I want only a visual explanation and label the original and reversed linked lists separately, I can ask the AI bot to do just that.
View the conversation here.
3. Learn How To Optimize Your Code
If you are new to the principles of writing efficient code, you can ask ChatGPT to analyze your code and offer suggestions to improve its time and space complexity.
In the prompt given below, I ask ChatGPT to improve the complexity of my code and it offers suggestions and rewrites my code.
4. Use ChatGPT To Debug Your Code
Staring at your computer screen to find a single bug hidden among countless lines of code can be tiresome.
With ChatGPT, you can find solutions to some bugs you missed. While it is not 100% accurate, the AI bot can still help you find the most obvious bugs you might have missed as a beginner.
You can find such a use case below where ChatGPT is used for preliminary checks to debug smart contracts.
Are you diving headfirst into JavaScript and can’t figure out that elusive bug that causes your code to go wrong? You can save yourself hours searching the web by asking ChatGPT for help.
Do keep this in mind when asking ChatGPT for help: Learning to read documentation is always a valuable skill to have as a developer. It will help you become able to identify complicated bugs that ChatGPT cannot find.
5. Use ChatGPT As A Programming Language Translator
Suppose you are a JAVA developer diving into the World Wide Web to search for clues that lead to the solution to an extremely challenging problem you need help cracking. After hours of searching, you finally find it!
But alas, the solution is written in a 6-decade-old programming language only your grandfather might have encountered.
So, what do you do?
Do you grab those ancient programming textbooks or hunt for tutorials online and get into the learning mode?
It might take you a few days to understand the solution and implement it in a modern language. Such precious time can be easily saved by utilizing ChatGPT’s help.
Simply ask ChatGPT to translate the decades-old code into a language you understand.
As you venture out to new programming adventures, don’t forget to use the predictive sorcery of the AI chatbot to help you in your darkest hour, when your code isn’t running and you feel lost in the myriad of programming languages you have not yet mastered. You can win your programming battles, and code better and faster by employing the tricks shared in this guide.
