On: Programming with natural language is going to work...

[Ygg2]

Honestly ChatGPT-4 sucks at writing code (if similar code isn't in its corpus of knowledge).

I asked it to write a YAML parser in pure Rust. The first thing it did was write this:

    pub enum YamlNode {
       Scalar(String),
       Sequence(Vec<YamlNode>),
       Map(HashMap<String, YamlNode>),
    }

This is what I expect a freshman in college to write as their first Yaml parser.

Literally unusable as a starting point.

I did try to correct it but it tripped up and somehow managed to fuck that up to.

[hderms → Ygg2]

Why does it suck, because it's doing a lot of allocations?

[Ygg2 → hderms]

No. You have a fair point, but not my biggest gripe. It's much more fundamental to what YAML is.

YAML allows YamlNodes as keys in a map (aka complex keys). E.g.

    ? [ a, b]
    : "complex key, scalar value"

You asked it for YAML parser and it gave you a shitty JSON parser.

Also this is the most banal thing about YAML, something that should be obvious just browsing the examples. And I gave it test suite and link to YAML spec.

Most work in YAML is around super obscure corner cases.