Prompts for explaining code** are a specific and valuable application within the larger context of Code Prompting. Code prompting, as a whole, involves using text prompts to instruct Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform various code-related tasks.
Within code prompting, one key area is the ability to use prompts to get LLMs to understand and describe existing code. The sources provide a concrete example of this:
- A prompt is designed with the goal to “Write a prompt to explain Bash code”.
- The prompt itself instructs the model to “Explain to me the below Bash code:” followed by the actual code (which in the example is the output from a previous code generation task).
This demonstrates that prompts for explaining code aim to leverage the LLM’s understanding of programming languages to provide human-readable explanations. This can be particularly helpful for developers when they need to read and understand code written by others in a team environment.
In the larger context of code prompting, prompts for explaining code sit alongside other code-related prompt applications, such as:
- Prompts for writing code: Instructing the LLM to generate new code in a specific programming language. The sources explicitly state that LLMs like Gemini can act as developers and help with writing code in any programming language.
- Prompts for translating code: Asking the LLM to convert code from one programming language to another. The sources provide an example of translating Bash code to Python to make it more reusable as a (web) application.
- Prompts for debugging and reviewing code: Guiding the LLM to identify and suggest fixes for errors in code. Although no specific example is provided in these excerpts, the mention indicates this is another facet of code prompting.
The sources emphasize that prompting for code, including explaining code, still uses the same regular large language models as those used for text-based prompts. This means the principles of effective prompt engineering, such as clarity and specificity, are also relevant in this domain. Finding the right prompt often requires tinkering, suggesting an iterative process of refining prompts to get the desired explanation.
Therefore, prompts for explaining code are an integral part of the broader field of code prompting, enabling LLMs to not only generate code but also to understand and articulate the functionality of existing code, thereby assisting developers in various stages of the software development lifecycle.