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Just ChatGPT itself. It’s my therapist, stackoverflow, Wikipedia, and many other things. Best $20/month I’ve ever spent. I’m skeptical of most prompt-based too

Just ChatGPT itself. It’s my therapist, stackoverflow, Wikipedia, and many other things. Best $20/month I’ve ever spent. I’m skeptical of most prompt-based tools. I’d rather just get to the source and tweak ChatGPT to talk about exactly what I want.

softwaredoug 3y ago
I see chat very similarly to how I see spreadsheets - a computing paradigm for non programmers. As such they provide a very specific abstraction for broad range of tasks. The moat for most prompt based tools is very small. These tools are similar to the moat of a spreadsheet template. At the end of the day whether it’s a spreadsheet to track my mortgage or a tailored prompt, I typically want to fine tune it for just me.
muzani 3y ago
I still use the "vanilla" stuff. GPT-4 has been superior to Phind in my experience, especially on technical questions. And the web browsing beta closes all the holes remaining. Downside is speed, but it's a fire and forget thing. I tried AutoGPT and the like, but found the self-iteration not very helpful when tackling real world problems. GPT-4 gives enough step-by-step instructions to do anything I need it to do, without it being wired into my file system. Prompt engineering seems to be a thing of the past with GPT-4 too, though you still need to give context, which "prompt engineering tools" don't help with. Plugins are also pretty powerful. It seems to hallucinate a lot with Zapier, but it's still the best tool by far.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  Agree on AutoGPT. It’s more useful for me to share what happened and ask follow up questions. Also sometimes it simply is bad at something, and putting it in an AutoGPT loop just makes things more confusing :). At that point I just use google.
timtas 3y ago
Careful with the therapist part. https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-sui...

softwaredoug 3y ago

I see chat very similarly to how I see spreadsheets - a computing paradigm for non programmers. As such they provide a very specific abstraction for broad range of tasks. The moat for most prompt based tools is very small. These tools are similar to the moat of a spreadsheet template. At the end of the day whether it’s a spreadsheet to track my mortgage or a tailored prompt, I typically want to fine tune it for just me.

muzani 3y ago

I still use the "vanilla" stuff. GPT-4 has been superior to Phind in my experience, especially on technical questions. And the web browsing beta closes all the holes remaining. Downside is speed, but it's a fire and forget thing. I tried AutoGPT and the like, but found the self-iteration not very helpful when tackling real world problems. GPT-4 gives enough step-by-step instructions to do anything I need it to do, without it being wired into my file system. Prompt engineering seems to be a thing of the past with GPT-4 too, though you still need to give context, which "prompt engineering tools" don't help with. Plugins are also pretty powerful. It seems to hallucinate a lot with Zapier, but it's still the best tool by far.

softwaredoug 3y ago
Agree on AutoGPT. It’s more useful for me to share what happened and ask follow up questions. Also sometimes it simply is bad at something, and putting it in an AutoGPT loop just makes things more confusing :). At that point I just use google.

timtas 3y ago

Careful with the therapist part. https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-sui...