Never trust a person who uses post-increment operator in a for loop!

Never trust a person who uses a post-increment operator in a for loop!

for (it = begin(); it != end(); it++) // WARNING!

I’m not kidding. The post-increment operator returns a temporary instance of the iterator–a completely unnecessary, unused object.

It’s like using a plastic bag to carry a single apple. Not only is it wasteful, but it also proves that whoever wrote the code isn’t particularly aware of best practices.

ChatGPT has been praised and touted all over the internet for its ability to generate source code.

That said, you should never take the output of ChatGPT as gospel: it outputs sloppy code most of the time (probably because the training data itself was sloppy).

So, if you’re relying on ChatGPT or similar AI tools, you better double-check the generated code for accuracy and efficiency before deploying it in production.

Unfortunately, most people won’t follow this advice, and I foresee more subtle software bugs popping up in the future! I said subtle because AI-generated code (and text) may appear to be correct at first glance, but could be hiding some nasty surprises.

To be frank, ChatGPT and similar AI tools can be helpful but only when used in combination with human competency.

For beginners, relying on AI alone can be very dangerous. They will not recognize the mistakes, and slowly but surely they’ll start to pick up bad habits that are hard to unlearn.

If you’re just starting your programming journey, the best advice is to develop a thorough understanding of coding principles before relying on AI tools.

Grab a good book instead–such as Scott Meyer’s Effective Modern C++–, and learn from the pros. In the end, your code will be much more robust and efficient.

It’s worth the effort!

Oh, and don’t forget to avoid post-increment operators in for loops. 😉