Learning new programming skills requires tailored guidance. With the emergence of advanced Natural Language Generation models like the ChatGPT API, there is now a possibility of creating a convenient and personalized tutoring system with AI for computer science education. This paper presents GPTutor, a ChatGPT-powered programming tool, which is a Visual Studio Code extension using the ChatGPT API to provide programming code explanations. By integrating Visual Studio Code API, GPTutor can comprehensively analyze the provided code by referencing the relevant source codes. As a result, GPTutor can use designed prompts to explain the selected code with a pop-up message. GPTutor is now published at the Visual Studio Code Extension Marketplace, and its source code is openly accessible on GitHub. Preliminary evaluation indicates that GPTutor delivers the most concise and accurate explanations compared to vanilla ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. Moreover, the feedback from students and teachers indicated that GPTutor is user-friendly and can explain given codes satisfactorily. Finally, we discuss possible future research directions for GPTutor. This includes enhancing its performance and personalization via further prompt programming, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of GPTutor with real users.

翻译：学习新的编程技能需要个性化的指导。随着ChatGPT API等先进自然语言生成模型的出现，现在有可能为计算机科学教育创建方便且个性化的AI辅导系统。本文介绍了GPTutor——一款基于ChatGPT的编程工具，它作为Visual Studio Code扩展，利用ChatGPT API提供编程代码解释。通过集成Visual Studio Code API，GPTutor能够参考相关源代码全面分析所给的代码。因此，GPTutor可以使用设计的提示词通过弹出消息解释选中的代码。GPTutor现已发布在Visual Studio Code扩展市场中，其源代码也在GitHub上开放访问。初步评估表明，与原始ChatGPT和GitHub Copilot相比，GPTutor提供了最简洁准确的解释。此外，学生和教师的反馈表明GPTutor用户友好，能令人满意地解释给定代码。最后，我们讨论了GPTutor可能的未来研究方向，包括通过进一步提示工程提升其性能和个性化，以及通过真实用户评估GPTutor的有效性。