Josh Olin, entrepreneur and founder of WeGPT.ai, recently tweeted about how GPT-4 enabled him to build web requests and applications using GPT-4, and in the process learn Python. In a span of seven months, from last April, Olin used GPT-4 to create the fundamental capability of fetching HTTP data from an API endpoint. 

Further, the resulting code was then put in Gist, continuously guiding GPT-4’s attention to its own source code by providing new feature requests, suggesting improvements, and fixing bugs. Olin had no prior knowledge of Python. 

As challenging as that sounded, GPT-4’s capability as a coding teacher has resulted in a number of people experimenting with the technology. 

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman’s tweet on GPT-4’s capabilities. Source: X

Moving Away from the Traditional Route 

With the versatility of the model, programming has become one of the prominent real-use cases, allowing anyone, even those without coding knowledge, to build apps, thereby, enabling anyone to become a programmer. 

Traditionally, a software engineer who has undergone a formal training of four years of engineering is equipped to become a Python programmer provided the Python course was taught as part of the curriculum. If not through a professional degree, certification and courses can make a person proficient in Python in 6-12 months, and even more for advanced courses. 

With GPT-4, one accomplishes the task of programming within minutes and even learn python language in the process. With the investment cost on an OpenAI API or ChatGPT-4 subscription, a user can pretty much program and learn. Furthermore, GPT-4 allows clubbing of features which allows one to tweak the functions as per requirement. 

Daniel Ávila Arias, co-founder of CodeGPT, an AI Saas platform enabling developers and companies to build AI-based solutions shared a video on using the CodeGPT extension with OpenAI to review Python code. 

With GPT-4 Vision, coding is accelerated to another level. With just images of basic drawing or scribbles from a whiteboard, a whole coding program can be generated. 

Relevance of Coding Teachers? 

GPT-4 and ChatGPT have enabled different forms of self-learning, with the question of the fate of teachers on the line. A study done by the University of Toronto observed that AI coding assistant tools such as OpenAI Codex, enhanced the performance of novice programmers, allowing them to write code more efficiently and with reduced frustrations. 

While the tools may not just be a teacher, they work best as a knowledge accelerator. In certain cases, a person with prior knowledge of Python programming will be able to effectively use it as opposed to someone with zero knowledge of it. 

A New Era of Effective Accelerationism 

Big tech companies’ shift towards educating users and teaching them programming language is gaining pace. Google is not far behind with the company offering cloud platforms that allow Python developers to build applications but also offer exclusive courses to learn the programming language. 

With the massive advancements of AI in 2023, learning goals also took a massive shift. Discussions on how people will study for jobs that won’t exist in the future took shape. 

IBM’s global managing partner of generative AI Mathew Candy recently said that you don’t need a computer science degree to get a job in tech, and it would be much easier for people without technical skills to build products. Thus, hinting towards a shift in learning and employment that require self-learning, in this case, programming. 

It is possible that in 2024, we will witness further developments where more real use-cases and practical applications of GPT-4 in programming will emerge.