When I was technical blogging on how to learn from open-source code [1], I used it quite frequently to get unstuck and/or to figure out how to tease apart a large question into multiple smaller functions. For example, I had no idea how to break up this long `sed` command [2] into its constituent parts, so I plugged it into ChatGPT and asked it to break down the code for me. I then Googled the different parts to confirm that ChatGPT wasn't leading me astray.
If I had asked StackOverflow the same question, it would have been quickly closed as being not broadly applicable enough (since this `sed` command is quite specific to its use case). After ChatGPT broke the code apart for me, I was able to ask StackOverflow a series of more discrete, more broadly-applicable questions and get a human answer.
TL;DR- I quite like ChatGPT as a search engine when "you don't know what you don't know", and getting unblocked means being pointed in the right direction.
This has been my experience as well. I use Phind as a search engine, it's pretty bad for anything else. It does excel at obvious JS questions, but you can get those anywhere. It's great at sussing out a function that you only half-remember.
If I had asked StackOverflow the same question, it would have been quickly closed as being not broadly applicable enough (since this `sed` command is quite specific to its use case). After ChatGPT broke the code apart for me, I was able to ask StackOverflow a series of more discrete, more broadly-applicable questions and get a human answer.
TL;DR- I quite like ChatGPT as a search engine when "you don't know what you don't know", and getting unblocked means being pointed in the right direction.
1. https://www.richie.codes/shell
2. https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv/blob/e8b7a27ee67a5751b899215b...