Day 19: 🤖 BERT vs GPT — What’s the Difference (And Which One Should You Use?)

Understand the key differences between BERT and GPT — how they work, what they’re good at, and which one suits your Java-based AI use case best.

“Understanding BERT vs GPT — A Quick Visual for Java Developers Navigating the LLM Landscape”

📌 Part of the 30 Days of AI + Java Tips — simple explanations for backend devs using LLMs and AI APIs.

🔍 First, What Are BERT and GPT?

Both BERT and GPT are large language models (LLMs).
Both are based on the Transformer architecture.
But their design, purpose, and usage are quite different.

Let’s compare.

⚙️ Model Architecture: Encoder vs Decoder

✅ BERT is great for:

• Understanding meaning
• Classifying text
• Extracting key phrases
• Answering questions from known content

✅ GPT is great for:

• Writing long answers
• Creative writing
• Conversations
• Summarizing
• Code generation

🧠 Think of It Like This:

• BERT reads deeply but doesn’t…