The role of AST with ChatGPT. As of July 2023, ChatGPT has evolved to understand and interpret basic Python code using an approach called Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs).

Once one has this ability to use the AST in the head, learning another language within a similar school of thought (going to Befunge is a bit of a jump from Java, but not as much from Forth ...

A good code generator basically works like a compiler: It reads some input, creates an intermediate representation called an abstract syntax tree (AST), validates the AST for structural correctness, ...