🐞AI-Powered Debugging: A Deep Dive into CodePal.ai and ChatGPT💻
In this blog, we will demonstrate how you can use CodePal.ai and ChatGPT to help you refine your buggy code!
Code debugging can be a tedious process. It often involves manually going through each line of code, making educated guesses, and using various debugging tools to find the root cause of an issue. However, artificial intelligence, especially in the form of language models, brings us a new and promising avenue for identifying bugs and offering suggestions for improvement. By leveraging AI-powered assistants, developers can streamline their debugging efforts and enhance the overall efficiency of the software development process.
In this blog, we will demonstrate how you can use CodePal.ai and ChatGPT to help you refine your buggy code!
Example in this blog
In this blog, we will be using the code example presented below that aims to merge two sorted lists into a single sorted list. Upon closer inspection, we discover a logical error where the code only merges the lists until one of them is exhausted, failing to append the remaining elements from the longer list to the final sorted list.
def merge_sorted_lists(list1, list2):
sorted_list = []
i = 0
j = 0
while i < len(list1) and j < len(list2):
if list1[i] < list2[j]:
sorted_list.append(list1[i])
else:
sorted_list.append(list2[j])
i += 1
j += 1
return sorted_list
What is CodePal.ai?
CodePal.ai is an AI-powered dynamo that streamlines your coding process with automated reviews, detailed quality analyses, and quick duplication detection, all in multiple programming languages. What's more, CodePal.ai will first diagnose your code's issues, then you can then pass it to its resolver provided by CodePal.ai, making bug squashing a breeze! CodePal.ai also supports different services to speed up your workflow, from coding to debugging, and from unit testing to deploying.
Debugging with CodePal.ai?
To use CodePal.ai to debug, you can simply visit the “Code Fixer” section and tell AI what should be fixed in the code, or what function you wish the code to have like this.
Then the code fixer will immediately help you with that!
Integrated Services
If we watch closely at the image above, we can see that there is an option “Explain this code” in the lower-right corner. By clicking the toggle button next to it, CodePal.ai will show you its most powerful features as displayed in the screenshot below. You don’t need to copy and paste your new code to a different website to find the function you are looking for. These integrated services can effectively boost your productivity in your software engineering workflow.
Debugging with ChatGPT
Of course, you can also debug with ChatGPT! ChatGPT’s main strength lies in its ability to understand and generate human-like text, which can be leveraged in many fields including software development. Try using the structured prompt below with ChatGPT:
This is my code for [Purpose].
Identify potential bugs or issues in the following code snippet:
"""[Code]"""
An example prompt after replacing the placeholders will look like this:
This is my code for merging two sorted lists into a single sorted list. Identify potential bugs or issues in the following code snippet:
""" def merge_sorted_lists(list1, list2):
sorted_list = []
i = 0
j = 0
while i < len(list1) and j < len(list2):
if list1[i] < list2[j]:
sorted_list.append(list1[i])
else:
sorted_list.append(list2[j])
i += 1
j += 1
return sorted_list"""
Let's see if ChatGPT can help us identify the bug. Here is ChatGPT’s response:
ChatGPT diagnosed three potential bugs or issues in the provided code for merging two sorted lists: (1) assuming that input lists are already sorted, (2) not handling the case where one list is longer than the other, and (3) incrementing both indices without considering duplicate elements. It also suggested a modified code that addresses these issues by properly handling sorting, considering list lengths, and accounting for duplicates.
Debugging Long Code with ChatGPT
But what if the code is pretty lengthy? When dealing with longer pieces of code, the process can be slightly different. Here are a few tips to make debugging more efficient:
Break It Down: If your code is long or complex, try breaking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces and then debug each piece individually. This makes it easier for ChatGPT to understand the code and identify potential issues.
Be Clear and Specific: When describing your code to ChatGPT, be as clear and specific as possible. Include details about what the code is supposed to do, as this helps the AI understand the context and provide more accurate feedback.
Iterate: If ChatGPT doesn't spot the issue on the first try, don't give up. Try rephrasing your prompt or providing more information. Remember, ChatGPT is a tool that's designed to help you, but it still requires your guidance and input to be effective.
Conclusion
Debugging with AI-powered tools really offers us a fresh, unique perspective, enabling us to uncover and address potential issues more effectively. By leveraging the power of AI, we can enhance our understanding of code behavior and improve the quality and reliability of our software solutions. So, the next time you're stuck with a stubborn bug, why not ask ChatGPT or CodePal.AI for help?