I’m a software engineer at a startup with impossible deadlines - I’ve used GPT4 for months to generate huge amounts app/server code, and much like your IDE, once you learn to use these tools you don’t want to go back to the days without it.

Speed

  • Bard is very fast- similar to GPT 3.5 Turbo
  • You need to multitask two GPT4 instances side by side to compensate for how slow GPT4 can be

Reliability

  • Bard lies and makes up fake API calls more than GPT4

UI

  • Bard UI is garbage - You have to keep manually scrolling down the chat window, and for some reason the largest button on the page is “stop” (???)
  • You can tell Bard to modify its response to be longer/shorter and a few other options - I thought this would be useful, but it never ended up helping

Memory

  • Bard has really short memory - Forgets details from last response!
  • GPT4 memory is also unreliable, any details that are important you have to repeat

Intelligence

  • GPT4 is objectively smarter

Internet Search

  • GPT4 Internet search is garbage
  • Bard has “Verify with Google” - I had high hopes for this, but never actually had a use for it

Willingness to give full code

  • GPT4 is bad, but Bard is worse. Both need to be begged/threatened to return more than 100 lines of directly paste-able code.

Generating Useful Code

  • Bard can give more concise medium complexity functions

Adding tougher features

  • Bard hallucinates and lies

Dealing with lies

  • When you tell GPT something doesn’t work, GPT will try something else
  • When you tell Bard something doesn’t work, Bard will lie, claim to fix it, then give back the same code

Following Instructions

  • GPT4 sometimes doesn’t follow instructions, but improving the prompt will fix that. Bard will happily ignore instructions, as clear as they may be.

Summary:

  • GPT4 is still objectively better than Bard. Quite frankly, the prompts Bard couldn’t handle, GPT3.5 could.
  • The cons of GPT can be worked around, but for Bard, it’s almost faster to do it yourself. Unless Bard was used like Copilot for short 1-2 lines of autocomplete, I wouldn’t trust it.

PS: If you’re not using AI yet for development, I highly recommend it - It’s like using an IDE instead of Notepad. AI can easily 2-3x your output, but you have to learn how it works so you can prompt it correctly, and you have be good at fixing its mistakes.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
      252·
      10 months ago

      Since we just had a discussion about how aggressive the discussions on Lemmy have recently become, where did this come from? 😅 Am I missing some context here, or is this the most weirdly unprovoked attack?

      • BaroqueInMind@kbin.social
        24·
        10 months ago

        Maybe people should stop acting like peal clutching, limp-wrist, fragile little bitches when reading naughty words on the internet or when reading a critique about something/someone. Or maybe we should all talk polite and act kind to one another even when it’s not truly genuine or necessary. Both are possible.

    • Lmaydev@programming.dev
      111·
      10 months ago

      These tools are game changers imo.

      Personally I don’t use them to write code but to query how to do things.

      It’s a massive productivity booster for me.

    • Kata1yst@kbin.social
      8·
      10 months ago

      What a weirdly unjustified, baseless attack on someone contributing a useful conversation. And when presented with evidence that you’re not just being a huge jerk, that you’re entirely wrong, you get defensive and continue to denegrate OP?

      Shame on you. If you have had half the illustrious career you claim to have, you should have worked in enough places and with enough people to know when to eat crow.

      Infighting and personal attacks like this from positions of false authority like yours are exactly why people have such low opinions of programmers as members of society.

    • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world
      45·
      10 months ago

      Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

      Nobody cares how good you are at algorithm efficiency. Most coders like you are terrible to work with and are kept on for niche needs.