Last summer, I participated in James Lyndsay’s excellent (and free, he is the nicest person) workshop series to learn about AI/LLMs. In one session, we tried out Cody, a coding AI assistant that you can use as a plugin with VSCode. It was pretty good at explaining code, though depending on the prompts we gave, it would sometimes just start making things up - referring to files that didn’t even exist in the code base.
The developer I work with who builds and maintains our Agile Testing Fellowship website uses Tabnines, a similar AI assistant for IDEs. He finds it helpful for speeding up his coding and testing. I tried out Tabnines and Cody side-by-side to explain code in our code base. They pretty much came up with the same results. As a tester, I want to understand the code. I’m in a Code Reading Club, learning how to read code. Being able to use AI assistants and ChatGPT to explain code is also a big help.