Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#11

Post by jmknoll » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:55 AM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #4

Mostly just asking stuff directly on https://chat.openai.com/chat . Last 8 requests were (all successful): - Asked it to improve a HN comment I wrote. - Asked about an idiom I couldn't remember, by saying it in other words. - Asked it to dumb down some things about options (finance) I didn't understand. - Asked it if I could use the eBay API to list my purchase history (you can, and it knew how). - Asked it to genera…

Completely off-topic, but do you like prisma, and how are you using it (scale, complexity, solo vs team, etc).

I toyed around with it a while back, and it looked potentially awesome, but different enough that I was worried about using it on a work project in case it failed in some use case.

Im so sick of the SQL ORM situation in Typescript, but Prisma might have an answer.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#12

Post by ActorNightly » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:55 AM UTC

It's a very good doc search. if you are working with new systems, it's insanely efficient for learning

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#13

Post by spcebar » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

I was trying to figure out what an uncommented piece of code left by an old vendor actually did and so I asked ChatGPT. It instantly took me line by line through the code and saved me probably 10 to 15 minutes.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#14

Post by JoshMandel » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

Lots of tasks that I understand, but where I'm not familiar enough with the details to be productive. Anything that's easier for me to read than to write. Anything where I'd otherwise be stumbling around trying to build a template for myself.

Here's an example capturing a session from earlier this week:

https://twitter.com/JoshCMandel/status/1638723030154203138

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#15

Post by jmann99999 » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

Generally rewriting emails for clarity... but I found another neat use of GPT-4.

For public APIs, I ask to make sure its aware of the api. Then I ask for endpoints. I find the endpoint I want. Then I ask it to code a request to the endpoint in language X (Ruby, Python, Elixir). It then gives me a starting point to jump off from.

Thirty seconds of prompt writing saves me about 20 minutes of getting setup. Yes, I have to edit it but generally it is pretty close.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#16

Post by abledon » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

I use it to write tons of boilerplate code in random flavour of the week languages I am dealing with at work or on hobby projects. e.g. nginx/ansible/powershell/golang etc.. weird codebases your thrown back into a few years later. I know what I want, I just forget the exact syntax of how to get it done. Sometimes its wrong and I have to correct it, but half of the battle is knowing when its bullshitting.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#17

Post by bassrattle » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

I ask it for functions in Google Sheets and it gives me the perfect thing I never would have come up with myself, sometimes functions a mile long. I also explained the Maps for Sheets and GPT for Sheets extensions, and it is a master of both.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#18

Post by JoshMandel » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:03 AM UTC

I find GPT very helpful for trying to understand the rationale behind decisions from a bit outside my field. These are cases that probably don't take any great insight for a practitioner, but which can be hard to arrive at for an outsider.

Being able to have a quick back and forth can keep me on track and productive instead of falling down a rabbit hole of research. An example might be this discussion with Bing from earlier today

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jCZICl8wrsk8b5OTM9xpFbL5...

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#19

Post by olalonde » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:04 AM UTC

jmknoll wrote: post #11

olalonde wrote: post #4

Mostly just asking stuff directly on https://chat.openai.com/chat . Last 8 requests were (all successful): - Asked it to improve a HN comment I wrote. - Asked about an idiom I couldn't remember, by saying it in other words. - Asked it to dumb down some things about options (finance) I didn't understand. - Asked it if I could use the eBay API to list my purchase history (you can, and it knew how). - Asked it to genera…

Completely off-topic, but do you like prisma, and how are you using it (scale, complexity, solo vs team, etc). I toyed around with it a while back, and it looked potentially awesome, but different enough that I was worried about using it on a work project in case it failed in some use case. Im so sick of the SQL ORM situation in Typescript, but Prisma might have an answer.

It's a solo project, CRUD stuff, but having used pretty much all JavaScript/TypeScript ORMs in existence, I can say that Prisma is way ahead of the competition. I would personally recommend it. A traditionally cumbersome and annoying thing about trying a new ORM is that you basically have to re-learn a pseudolanguage for building SQL queries but that hasn't been an issue this time, thanks to ChatGPT. So overall, happy with Prisma and plan to keep using it.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#20

Post by carbocation » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:04 AM UTC

I’m obligated to pick up a new bioinformatics DSL and have been asking GPT4 to translate my current code (bash, go, python) into this language. It is not perfect but it gets me close to what I need, with some editing.

Sometimes I ask it to make music: https://github.com/carbocation/jinglebells