- I've used AI to write and improve Python scripts. And to help me fix errors.
- Also used it to write or improve wording on emails, posts and comments.
- Used it to advise about where to travel,, things to do,
- AI useful for chatting with then you are feeling down.
- Asked AI for advice on things.
- Used AI to get answers quicker than Googling.Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#32It's a bit surprising seeing all the positive replies to this thread. In my experience (using GPT-3), the time I spend debugging the code generated by the AI is almost the same as if I was to write it correctly in one go. The comprehension aspect kinda helps me sometimes, like when I need to understand some obscure shell script.
Positive replies are most definitely using GPT-4
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#33Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#34I’ve been experimenting with pairing a tool I wrote called Promptr [1] with another tool called Open Interpreter [2].
I start with a prompt that teaches Open Interpreter how to use Promptr, and then I discuss what I’m trying to accomplish. It’s certainly not perfect, but there’s definitely something good that happens when you can iterate using dialog with a robot that can modify your file system and execute commands locally.
[1] Promptr: https://github.com/ferrislucas/promptr
[2] Open Interpreter: https://github.com/KillianLucas/open-interpreter
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#35I like asking ChatGPT for things that I know I can understand, but do not feel like figuring out (today I asked it how to write a specific SPL template for API gateway transformations). I spent hours looking over the internet for someone that had done it before, and then ChatGPT just spit out exactly what I was looking for (after two extra requests to better indicate my intentions).
Do you have example threads where you found it useful?
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#36I use copilot in vscode. It watches what I type and inline suggests the next line or code block based on what I’ve been doing and say a function name or the events I’ve not yet added listeners for. I hit tab to accept. It saves me at least 20% of the time i would spend typing and is insanely good. I have copilotx conversation in vscode that is aware of my codebase and active file. I can quickly get up to speed with a…
This is wildly more efficient than talking with a human where I have the overhead of social dynamics and navigating their communication quirks. I can see that this was beneficial for you, which is nice. I can also see this being a huge, huge problem for team dynamics. Didn't like talking to people before? Well now you never have to again! You can go off on your own and generate entire new architectures, codebases, wh…
I’m an introvert. I previously only used writing long notes to myself to think before engaging with a coworker. Now I’ve unlocked “voice without social dynamics” to do that which is a whole other dimension.
Team dynamics now for extroverts mean instead of waisting and hour of phone time for them to slowly talk through basic ideas and catch up to the introverts who could prepare for the meeting on their own, now extroverts have a way to think through and prepare for meetings so the meetings become more valuable and the extroverts (at least to me) become less irritating to work with.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#37I mostly recommend it to my colleagues so they don’t keep bugging me on how to do things. This has kept my productivity (thinking about stuff) sky high.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#38ChatGPT (plus) helps me every day with boilerplate code or even finding off by 1 bugs and small things like that. Sometimes I also ask it to rewrite something clearer, or add some comments sparingly. Copilot can get really aggressive. Sometimes it's right there, "what I was thinking about! Woo! magic!" And sometimes, it's like "OMG let me hit the return key". So I often turn it off and forget it's off for a week... B…
One thing I am confused about is using ai for boiler plate code . Shouldn’t that be a macro or code generated, or even an aspect ? Having large snippets of ai generated code outside of a macro or code generation tool does not make any sense .
Its helpful to do boilerplate in languages or legacy code you touch less often, e.g. React class components.
But also, it can reasonably set types for the inputs of say a React component, just based on an example (made up) usage of some props you give it. And you can even, if you are very uncouth, simply generate the sensible props for a certain kind of object given a description by say the user.
It can do things like generate controlled form state management etc, which was quite error-prone to do with macros when things get complicated.
It can summarize commits for documented code accurately too, especially if you comment what you've done for some reason or another. This saves a good 2-3 minutes an hour I didn't know I could save, for the average of say 1-2 commits I'd do usually per hour.
Notably GPT-4 is needed to do these consistently well.
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#39ChatGPT (plus) helps me every day with boilerplate code or even finding off by 1 bugs and small things like that. Sometimes I also ask it to rewrite something clearer, or add some comments sparingly. Copilot can get really aggressive. Sometimes it's right there, "what I was thinking about! Woo! magic!" And sometimes, it's like "OMG let me hit the return key". So I often turn it off and forget it's off for a week... B…
One thing I am confused about is using ai for boiler plate code . Shouldn’t that be a macro or code generated, or even an aspect ? Having large snippets of ai generated code outside of a macro or code generation tool does not make any sense .
Sometimes you have some boilerplate-ish code with complicated but repeating patterns, but it's only like 3 or 4 sections, so figuring out how to combine it isn't really worth the effort compared to spending 10 seconds for copilot to write the other 3 instances and checking the result.
Another example could be that you would really like to use macros/templates for something, but you can't due to external requirements, like Unreal Header Tool being unable to parse those if you want to export your classes to the engine. So you get to write the same code multiple times for different types. Amazing!
Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?
#40ChatGPT (plus) helps me every day with boilerplate code or even finding off by 1 bugs and small things like that. Sometimes I also ask it to rewrite something clearer, or add some comments sparingly. Copilot can get really aggressive. Sometimes it's right there, "what I was thinking about! Woo! magic!" And sometimes, it's like "OMG let me hit the return key". So I often turn it off and forget it's off for a week... B…
One thing I am confused about is using ai for boiler plate code . Shouldn’t that be a macro or code generated, or even an aspect ? Having large snippets of ai generated code outside of a macro or code generation tool does not make any sense .
You still have to write the code for the macro. With ChatGPT you can just say “write a mapper between these two object in C# 11, make the target members uppercase and skip X, Y and Z”