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Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

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61–70 of 118 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#61

Post by maliker »

I use copilot/chatgpt to autocomplete tricky APIs for me: pandas, matplotlib, flask, etc. Stuff like is this done with method chaining or is it in the weird array-style notation (pandas). Is it a function or a parameter that changes the secondary axis label (matplotlib). I can’t wait until it’s built into Excel for some of the formula nonsense there.

I also occasionally use it to translate languages. E.g. I’ll write something I know how to do in python and ask it to translate to JavaScript where I need something on the frontend.

Stuff like that takes out about half of the time coding that used to be documentation lookups. But then again I only code 20% of my time now, so your experience might be different.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#62

Post by sharemywin »

supertron wrote: post #57

I use it (LLMs / GPT-4) as a sort of "realtime intern" to offload the more commoditised tasks that I don't really need to do - and that I don't contribute unique value to by doing myself. So some boilerplate CSS layout code, sketching out unit tests, initial stubs of API client code. Lots of "filling in the gaps" - which frees me up to spend more time thinking about higher level architecture, structure, business prob…

this is a really good point:

it also keeps me from getting stuck on small distracting problems which would previously create some resistance or procrastination -

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#63

Post by cudder »

zff wrote: post #4

I do one-off text transformations that not worth writing a script for. Eg. paste a bunch of unformatted data and format them in json, find patterns in huge text etc.

This is the best use I've found so far as well, which is a bit disappointing for something that many hyped to be so revolutionary. It's handy, but sadly not a major paradigm shift.

Translating between (natural) languages is another nice one. You can throw in json structures or fluent files or what have you and most of the time have it come out with pretty good translations that are formatted correctly.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#64

Post by HerrBertling »

It's small things and reassuring myself, most of the time. Sometimes I let it scaffold basic tests for React components ("assume a working Jest testing setup, use @testing-library/react" does quite some work there). Sometimes I have some logical conditions where it takes me a minute more than expected to make sure I get the logic. I'll have ChatGPT explain what that code does, just to make sure I'm not running into some stupid errors my caffeine-lacking brain produced.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#65

Post by sharemywin »

zff wrote: post #4

I do one-off text transformations that not worth writing a script for. Eg. paste a bunch of unformatted data and format them in json, find patterns in huge text etc.

I've used to take a giant json file and help me get a handle of the scheme. it wouldn't all fit in the window so I just cut some of it out.

I also used to take a chunk of html and replace all the class names and src urls with ...

I also had a list of 300 codes that kind of had semantic names and it was able to build me a table that mapped to a second list of about 20(code, descriptions).

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#66

Post by sharemywin »

EMM_386 wrote: post #58

I've been a software engineer for decades and I still use it daily for that purpose. It's like having superpowers. Even if I know how to do something, sometimes explaining it is easier than writing out all of the code. An example recently would be in a TypeScript project when a class-based approach to something was deprecated, in favor of a functional approach. I only had to paste the old function signature and say "…

I think that's what's the most interesting is when it can tell you what the code does. or have it go line by line and add comments. great for learning something new.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#68

Post by sharemywin »

deathmonger5000 wrote: post #34

I’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…

seems pretty cool. possibly dangerous but cool.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#69

Post by ezedv »

Personally, I use AI-powered project management tools to automate tasks like scheduling and data analysis. Chatbots also help streamline customer support.

Additionally, AI-driven email categorization saves hours by prioritizing messages. It's about finding the right AI tools for your workflow, and there are plenty of options out there.

And last but not least, I also use TranscribeMe in order to transcribe voice notes to text: https://www.transcribeme.app/r

Re: Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

#70

Post by Slimbo »

MPSimmons wrote: post #53

Mostly to get around bad docs. I need to implement things using libraries, services, and APIs that aren't well documented, but the source code is public, and people have written code against them, and ChatGPT has read all of the things that I would read (and more) to get to the point where I can use it, so I just ask it. The 2021 knowledge limit is pretty annoying, since libraries change so often, but it's still very…

Many of the 'brain runs out in 2021' problems can be solved with plugins such as pdf readers and web browsers.
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