Is an AI PHP Code Generator Better Than PHP Code Produced By a Human Developer

In this article you will learn:

1. What is Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence is an application of artificial intelligence that aims to generate some kind of output based on what the user requests.

For instance if you want to develop code to implement a specific task in your software projects, you can use an artificial intelligence generation tool to request that the tool generates such code.

2. How Generative Artificial Intelligence Can Be Use to Generate Programming Code

For instance, in this example of ChatGPT tool I have requested to Generate PHP code to analyze an audio sample and extract the speech of people talking using ChatGPT.

ChatGPT generated a document with some PHP code and several explanations as you may see in this video:

3. Is Generative Artificial Intelligence Better Than Human Developers

It depends on what you are doing. Lets consider different situations:

3.1. Developer that wants to learn how to do basic tasks: Yes

If you want to learn how to implement a new task that you never did before, generative artificial intelligence tools can be great for you.

It is the almost the same as searching on Google or Bing or other search engine for a solution to a problem.

This fact was mentioned in Google I/O 2024 event, as you may check in this 10 minute summary of the event.

3.2. Developer that wants to learn how to do complex tasks: No

For the current generative artificial intelligence tools that I know, the solution must have been already published somewhere on the Internet because the artificial intellingence tools learn from what humans already produced and published.

So if you are looking to learn about a solution is that is not published on the Internet, the current breed of generative artificial intelligence will not teach more than the basics.

Here is another example of using ChatGPT to request to Create a full PHP application to manage the stock of products in a e-commerce store.

As you may see, ChatGPT shown a basic solution to start developing that application. The complete solution is way more complex and ChatGPT did not seem to present that complet solution because it did not find in a public place on the Internet.

3.3. Developer that wants to teach solutions for basic tasks: No

Many developers have started using generative artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and Google Gemini to create blog articles explaining how to solve basic tasks. This is fine. However, since many developers did the same, their articles are very similar.

Search engines like Google also use artificial intelligence to detect what each page is about. So Google is able to detect articles that aim to teach how to solve the same problem.

Usually the other articles are considered copies even if the phrases are written in a different way. So usually only a few articles will rank well on Google about the same topic. Those articles are the ones with the main content that was totally created by humans. This fact shows that modern search engines reward human creativity.

Here is an example search on Google for a solution to perform a basic task.

3.4. Developer that wants to create useful solutions for other people: Yes

Usually, the useful solutions are tools and APIs that do something useful and too complex to explain in a single article.

Most people are not interested in learning how those tools and APIs work. They want to use those tools and APIs quickly and easily.

For instance, if you have an e-commerce application, the developers may want to use it as it is with minor configuration effort.

3.5. Developers that want  to teach how to use complex tools: Yes

All tools that lasted and survived after all the progress that humankind has been going through, implement powerful new features.

Since people need to learn how to use these new features, there is always room for professionals who want to teach how to take advantage of the power of those new features.

The fact that you are reading this article proves that you want to learn about the power of these new tools, like those that use generative artificial intelligence.

4. Is There a Future in the Market For Human Developers

As you may have read above, the future for human developers is more on developing tools and APIs that can be useful for other developers.

Developers that focus on teaching about new tools and APIs will also have a great future.

This conclusion also applies to professionals in other areas besides software development because all areas use more modern tools to make everybody's work more efficient to complete tasks in less time and with greater quality.