I’ve replaced Google with ChatGPT (for programming, at least).
Google no longer cuts it when it comes to getting precise answers to extremely niche, nuanced, technical questions.
As a software engineer, if you have used Google long enough, you can likely find answers to most “advanced” programming questions, but you sometimes get to a point where your questions had never been asked before (or they were, but they never bothered posting a solution).
That’s where ChatGPT blows it out of the water.
Sure, I could read the reference or the code, but I can also write a prompt, wait 10 seconds, and get my answers right most times.
That doesn’t mean I don’t validate the answer. That’s not my point.
I’m not copy-pasting ChatGPT code (the same way I wasn’t copy-pasting Stack Overflow code), I’m just asking for directions.
Exactly the same I did with Google.
That’s not to say I stopped using Google completely. When looking up a website or a restaurant, Google is still the tool of choice, for now.
Even for programming, keyword-based search is still good enough if both: the question is simple, and the answer well-known.
But if any of those two are not true, ChatGPT is the way.
And let’s be real, Google was already getting worse before ChatGPT. I used to be very proud of my Googling skills, but a few years ago, they did something, and it’s never been as good since.
ChatGPT has no ads, no SEO “hackers” and no clickbait.
Granted, I’m paying $20/month for it, whereas Google is paid by ads, but I still wouldn’t pay a cent for ad-less Google, as it is today.
It’s not the ads, it’s the results.
If you’re a software engineer and you’re not using ChatGPT when programming, I strongly suggest you try it out. It makes that much of a difference. Really.
GPT-4 is even better, but I’m still hesitant to say it’s worth the $20 for everyone. It surely is for me. Give it a try and decide yourself.
I don’t like to speculate in public, but we all know what happened to software engineers who couldn’t Google information back in the day. We might as well add it to the toolbox, at the very least.
