I asked Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT to debug the same Python error, and only two explained what actually broke

I asked Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT to debug the same Python error, and only two explained what actually broke Jorge Aguilar / MakeUseOf By  Jorge Aguilar Published May 30, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT Aggy is a writer and editor who has worked for many high-traffic digital publications. He's a technology and gaming fanboy who has been a writer, editor, consultant, and computer animator. Sign in to your MakeUseOf account Add Us On Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap It feels like it has gotten so common to ask an AI to fix your mistakes since it's easier than debugging. That's okay in most cases, but you need to go to the right AIs. I tested a few of them to see which gave a good output instead of just making a mistake or not helping at all. It turns out you should be very careful about what you get back. After this test, it's easy to see why vibe coding is pulling people in , but not teaching them. Related ChatGPT's decline is real — I tested it against Claude on 3 routine tasks, and it lost every time What happened, ChatGPT? We used to be cool. Posts 1 By  Shimul Sood You need to debug the root cause If you don't learn, you'll never get better I tested Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude on a tricky Python bug to see which one could actually explain what went wrong and not just hand back fixed code. The bug was a classic Python mistake . Basically, when you set a dictionary or list as a default function parameter, Python only creates it once when the function is first defined, not each time you call the function. That means every call ends up sharing the same dictionary, and data from one user can bleed into another user's session without anyone realizing it. Any AI can rewrite broken code. The real question is whether it can teach you why the code was brok