Every morning I ask it whether it has headache. Then I smack it with a monkey wrench.
Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
141–150 of 752 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#142I'm having it generate code of course (it hallucinated the ability to write a minecraft mod for bedrock in C#). Other than that, it wrote a Discord bot for me.
I have also used it to make data tables comparing cars. Silly stuff like TCO$ per kW per kg. I found the best way to make a spreadsheet was to ask it to generate A, B, C column headings and numbered row headings. Then asking it to emit the excel/gsheet formulas instead of calculating the values. You have to double-check everything, but pasting the table into gsheets and just using the formulas bypasses any numerical issues. Excited to use this approach to tackle another problem (and get Wolfram integration set up, that looks amazing)
Summarizing and explaining science concepts to interested kids. It's good at simplifying language. I was trying to put a young kid on Wikipedia, even the simple english version uses too much jargon. This can break down the jargon, answer questions about specific details for clarification, and even calculate real world examples. It's a pretty neat science teaching tool.
Just used it to plan a classy bachelor party. Full itinerary, transit times, estimated costs, it provided suggestions on places to go based on my suggestions, really impressive.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#143Useful Prompts for work.
1. Explain this code - reduces time spent learning a new code base
2. What do these changes do - reduces time reviewing PRs, I paste in the diffs
3. Making style changes - CSS is just meticulous for me
I also use it for foreign language learning. I'll write a paragraph in french and ask chatGPT to find the errors and list the grammar concepts that they relate to. ChatGPT has basically replaced my text books and explains concepts better than my professor.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#144Is there a big difference between chatgpt and chatgptplus? I use chatgpt for routine things every day (some basic word smithing, looking up how to use libraries, etc) and it is already quite good. What does the 20/mo get me that I don't already get with the free version?
I think the regular one only has the standard model. And when I used the regular version, it was often busy so I could not log in.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#145I asked him to create new plausible scenarios for an X-Ray training program I'm writing.
It was not THAT plausible, but it filled the placeholders I have in my UI quite well and he actually used other words related to anatomy than thos I provided in an example.
Also, I asked him to output the resulting scenarios according to a vague json schema and he complied. Copy/pasted it in my JS front and it went without a hitch.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I got a cheap AI lawyer if someone sues me, all good. All jokes aside, the alternative was to not have a "Terms of Service", so fairly sure it's better than nothing.
Fairly sure it's better than nothing. Until it isn't. Live and learn, as they say.
It's an arms race. First nobody was reading them, now nobody is writing them.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#147It's pretty good for brainstorming ideas and it can generate a mindmap in markdown format that you can visualise in tools such as Markmap. E.g. with a prompt like this (works best in v4):
"I'm brainstorming a business venture that is a cross between a boutique clothing store and DIY sewing classes. It’s called Style & Stitch. You can shop for clothes and learn to make your own. Please help me brainstorm some ideas for as a mind map (using Markmap markdown)."
You can ask it to combine ideas from different domains together for extra creativity (above example is output of one such attempt). Often it's not that creative on first attempt but if you prompt it with something like "how about some zanier ideas" it will do better.
I also like to prompt it with "output XYZ .. as a table with columns for X, Y, Z" or similar to get a nice markdown table of its output where it makes sense.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#148I use it a lot for Linux administration, troubleshooting, and scripting as well as some programming. I've only recently started using GPT4 and the API so I've only been using the chat interface so far. Examples of some stuff I've asked it just today: - Asked which config files handled sleep mode when lid is closed and kept fixing it and asking for more possible locations until it fixed my issue (going into sleep duri…
It's amazing for system administration tasks like this. A few weeks ago I used it to install about 25 SSDs in the course of an hour. I was able to build up a one liner that let me figure out which discs were recently added and had not been formatted or mounted anywhere. It helped me do this really, really fast.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#149For being productive? Not at all for the most part. I haven't really found anything that I do that I can punt to ChatGPT. I guess I could have used it to help me write this response, but what would have been the point? The little bit of time I spend messing with it (and Bard now that I have access) is mostly just for fun; trying different jailbreaks and creating ridiculous scenarios and seeing what kind of reaction I…
I'm pretty much the same. I don't find significant productivity gains from using it - maybe because I have a specific way of doing things already. For instance, I know it's better for me to understand React/whatever framework rather than letting chatgpt write the react state/reducers/etc and all that stuff.
I can definitely use it for emails and have used to simplify exec emails in my company but that's just it.
Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?
#150I have been using GPT-4 to generate i18n files, and it is great. You can see this post to check GPT-4's translation capabilities: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/11rty62/gpt4_...
I can simply feed in an en.i18n.json file, and it will generate i18n.json files for as many languages as I want. I don't use a specific prompt, but I occasionally include general information about the software in it.
Edit: I do verify the output by translating it back to English using Google translate, but it seems I need to be more careful.