Gauging Tech Community Acceptance of Rapid Prototyping in Unfamiliar Programming Languages using LLM Chatbots

Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots such as ChatGPT possess information not only about human languages but also computer languages. It is now possible to perform programming and software design tasks with assistance from ChatGPT. We are particularly interested in how the software development community views the use of LLM chatbots in rapid prototyping using unfamiliar programming languages. In four different tech events, several example scenarios of how a tech-savvy engineer could use ChatGPT to prototype apps in unfamiliar programming languages were demonstrated, including a health education app. The four events include an IEEE chapter workshop, an IEEE WIE (Woman In Engineering) meeting, an IEEE joint chapter talk, and a university-level Computer Science class. The responses from the tech audience showed that the majority perceived value in the use of LLM chatbots in these contexts, even though there were subtle differences among different groups. This shows the need for further research on how to effectively incorporate LLM chatbots into traditional software design workflow to better serve the software development community.CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software design engineering.