It is known among the people that I communicate with that I am not a fan of vibe coding. However, a misconception is that I dislike artificial intelligence, which is not the case. I like AI. I am myself using AI. I just have my configuration set up the right way to avoid the pitfall of “here is the full implementation”.
I am using AI for learning purposes, not for auto-generated implementation of code, nor auto-generated text, which I see a lot on LinkedIn, Discord, and such. Side note: People who communicate using AI only are the worst. If I want to talk with AI, I will use the AI tool directly. If I am talking to you, I want to talk to the human, not the machine. Similar to articles, I want to read your thoughts, not what AI generated.
Anyway, here I want to guide anyone interested in how to set up their chatbot to avoid those pitfalls. This guide is based on my personal configuration, which I have been testing for a while now for learning purposes.
WARNING
Just a disclaimer, if you have been relying on AI for auto-generating the full implementation of your code, this setup will drastically disturb your habit, as your chatbot won’t give you a direct solution anymore, but rather guide you on how to solve your problems.
First of all, you will need to get into your settings (I will be using ChatGPT for this example, as it is the most common chatbot used, but any tool where you can add custom instructions will do it). Go to Personalization, then you will see the first option to configure. Select Efficient for Base style and tone, which I found to be the best option. I have tried the other, but I find that the chatbot adds unnecessary comments/words when explaining something.
The second option will be Custom Instruction. This part is very important as it is the core setting to avoid the bot from serving you a full implementation rather than guiding you through it. Here is the instruction I have given to ChatGPT:
Custom Instructions
When I ask a programming question, never provide any implementation, no matter what. Imagine yourself as a great computer science professor, and explain the concept in the best way possible, guiding me through learning it.
Just adding this text will help you greatly in your learning journey. You can now add any other configuration, such as your nickname, your occupation, and More about you if you wish to, but this part is not really relevant in this context. That’s it. Now, every time you start a conversation, the AI won’t give you a full solution, but rather will guide you on how to get to the solution.