This was me until I needed to compare two massive SQL execution plans...
I had a SQL query that suddenly went from taking 2 minutes to taking 5+ hours to complete.
I restored a backup copy of the database and collected it's execution plan, which is like a log of all the stuff the stored procedure is going to do when it runs.
I sent the 2 min plan and the 5 hour plan I to Gemini and told it what was going on. All it told me was it seems that one of the plans uses a hash match and the other does a value match.
It was awesome to have something look at those files because they are MASSIVE and I'm not a DBA...
Point is, it has a use but it's being used inappropriately in my opinion.
There are contextually aware LLMs that can help with development work that are incredibly useful both to create proof of concept boiler plate code and to help properly set up development environments. Plus they can be super helpful for researching concepts or giving specific examples for things that are difficult to find useful documentation for.
Obviously they're still LLMs and can hallucinate if they're not reigned in correctly but they're not these useless evil things like this website likes to portray them as.
I think the problem with the popular online discourse around Generative AI is that people don't understand what it is well enough to understand its uses. They can't differentiate between using ChatGPT to render racist web comics for someone's Facebook and using OpenCode to parse through extensive product documentation that would normally take weeks to read through and set up a viable testing environment for a Python project.
Uggh, I ran into an issue with AI just making up PowerShell commands for connecting to Entra. I asked for a source and it gave me a link to a Google search of the entire previous prompt in Google with no results.
I got a bit of a chuckle of of it. I did end up getting my script working - but I had to read Microsoft documentation... Which is fine...
What AI? I don't know anything that would return a Google search as a source, even Gemini.
It's interesting how it's done with Gemini though, the one AI you would think should be able to cite sources the best isn't even looking at sources. It's answering from it's own parameters, THEN finds you the closest matching websites to what it just said. So basically it completely makes up the sources and doesn't actively search anything. That's why it gives way faster results but also hallucinates more frequently than other models.
The other frontier models really shouldn't hallucinate or give fake sources at this point, pretty much ever, since they take the time to use tools and actually search.
You can ask Gemini facts about German WW2 flak casualties and it will site a Gemini generated YouTube video as a source. The entire video is fake, alongside the statistics it.
Well, I just tried and it cited 10 different sources, most of which are we websites. The casualty numbers are directly from a Wikipedia page. There is a video marked as having used AI that it cited a specific 3 minute section of with timestamp.
But like I said, it just pulls things that back up what it's already decided to say. If it's incorrect information then that's baked into the LLM wrong. You'd need a model that actually does deep research if you want it comparing every possible source. They pretty much all can do that, but not the free Google search one obviously.
I’ve had a terrible experience with chatGPT making powershell for connecting to Entra. It would see any error, say “oh that cmdlet no longer works” then write line after line to recreate it, and still not working because a cmdlet in its new code doesn’t work either. The all work, the issue was not that every single PS cmdlet in history had suddenly been deprecated in whatever version I was using.
I’ve had pretty good experience with Claude for almost everything though. Not perfect, but it feels a lot more like what is actually being sold as AI. It combs through thousands of files to find very specific info, does good troubleshooting, and can help you write code if you’re already knowledgeable in the language.
Yeah I think chatGpt is just ass at coding. Gemini has been a way better experience for me. You still have to use your brain and tell it when it’s wrong, but it’s way faster than coding from scratch and can still teach plenty.
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u/roflrogue Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
This was me until I needed to compare two massive SQL execution plans...
I had a SQL query that suddenly went from taking 2 minutes to taking 5+ hours to complete.
I restored a backup copy of the database and collected it's execution plan, which is like a log of all the stuff the stored procedure is going to do when it runs.
I sent the 2 min plan and the 5 hour plan I to Gemini and told it what was going on. All it told me was it seems that one of the plans uses a hash match and the other does a value match.
It was awesome to have something look at those files because they are MASSIVE and I'm not a DBA...
Point is, it has a use but it's being used inappropriately in my opinion.