3.5 is absolute garbage. It is puzzling to me that OpenAI continues to make it available, simply because of the reputational damage.

"It is puzzling to me that OpenAI continues to make it available, simply because of the reputational damage."

"reputational damage"? You might live in a bubble. I think most people use 3.5 with joy for free.

For my (programming) tasks it is also only slightly more useful. So much that I sometimes subscribe to get the higher quality, but for the occasional question 3.5 is enough. And if 3.5 is not able at all, because the question is too tough, then 4 seldom is capable either in my experience.

I was wondering the same thing! The number of people I've had to explain to "get the premium version, do not judge it based on GPT3.5!"

I find it very useful.

I'm not asking it to write code for me or anything. More like a quick way to look up syntax or flags for obscure programs I don't use too often.

If you like playing with LLMs, $20/mo for GPT4 is definitely worth it.

API access, which is pay as you go, is much cheaper if you just want to just play around. If I'm not using plugins, I genuinely prefer playground.openai.com to chat.openai.com, because I can modify messages. I've found that any time ChatGPT gets something wrong, that wrongness is stuck it the context, and screws things up.