What's Next in 2023?

To start the year I wrote a few different articles about Chat GPT looking at what it thinks about Haskell. After some extra reflection, my emotional reaction probably matched that of a lot of other programmers. I felt plenty of excitement about the tasks that could become a lot easier using AI tools, but also a twinge of existential panic over the prospect of being replaced as a programmer. This latter feeling was especially acute when I thought about the future of this blog.

After all, what's the point of writing a blog post about a topic when someone can type their question into Chat GPT, get a response, and then even have a coherent conversation about the details?

However, there are still plenty of things that Chat GPT isn't able to help with yet. And as I'm planning out what I'm going to write about over the next year, I want to focus on material that isn't quite so replaceable.

The most pithy distinction that will be guiding me is show, don't tell. AI can tell you what you really want to know, but it's still going to be a long time before it can really show it to you in the context you want to use it. Even if you can have a coherent conversation with a chatbot, this doesn't mean it can adequately respond to all the needs you can present for a larger project. You can't just feed in your whole codebase to Chat GPT and have it tell you what you need to write next.

So on the blog this year, you can expect a lot of content will be more project-based. I'll be working on some larger, overarching ideas. I'll often be presenting these more through video than written style, since a video presents more of the context and struggles you can expect while actually creating something.

Another distinction with AI is that it can tell you what to learn, but not necessarily how to learn it. It doesn't necessarily know how humans acquire knowledge, especially in something as complex as programming. So you can expect more course-related content in this area, but I'll be aiming for multiple shorter courses (including one or two free courses) this year to complement the existing, longer course offerings.

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