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Thanks a ton! Details around this use case are conspicuously missing from the public discourse. You've really changed your workflow to adapt to these new tools

Thanks a ton! Details around this use case are conspicuously missing from the public discourse. You've really changed your workflow to adapt to these new tools. The amount of mental effort seems comparable to learning a new IDE, maybe a bit less. Instead of the chat app, I wrote a python script that uses the GPT-4 completion API. I can just pop over to the terminal and type 'chat' and it's there. As far as I can tell, it's basically the same as the app. We are starting to see AI tooling that can fit an entire 100k line code base in its context window. I still see myself having a job five years out. Ten years out, not so much. Luckily I'll be close to retirement.

t1mmen 3y ago
I suppose I have adapted quite a bit, but it’s just a different path to the same style of code/modularity I’ve found most effective/productive. I was primarily FE for a while, and used to agonize over the smallest details when building eg React components. After a few years, I concluded that the innards don’t really matter most of the time, at least not early on, so I limited my obsessions to the “public interface” (naming, types and prop design) and libraries of well abstracted, composable, low-level building blocks. If and when things needed to be rewritten or optimized, replace the internals. ChatGPT just gets me there faster, and more often than not, gives me acceptable production-level innards while I get to stay focused on perfecting the exterior and cohesiveness of the overall solution. I’ve found this approach usually pays dividend when reworking parts of the system, too — GPT picks up on the flow of everything much better when the code is “self documenting”. Same appears true if humans need to get directly involved. Still blows my mind on a daily that we’re here already. I’m glad I’m not early in my career, I’d be very worried if I had another 40 years to go.
t1mmen 3y ago
I've got all of 30 minutes of experience with https://www.cursor.sh https://www.cursor.sh, but this appears to be another major upgrade to my workflow. In-context editing by AI, without any of the copy/paste annoyances. The PR I'm currently working on has about 1K diffs – I've literally touched NONE of that code directly. Freakin' wild!

t1mmen 3y ago

I suppose I have adapted quite a bit, but it’s just a different path to the same style of code/modularity I’ve found most effective/productive. I was primarily FE for a while, and used to agonize over the smallest details when building eg React components. After a few years, I concluded that the innards don’t really matter most of the time, at least not early on, so I limited my obsessions to the “public interface” (naming, types and prop design) and libraries of well abstracted, composable, low-level building blocks. If and when things needed to be rewritten or optimized, replace the internals. ChatGPT just gets me there faster, and more often than not, gives me acceptable production-level innards while I get to stay focused on perfecting the exterior and cohesiveness of the overall solution. I’ve found this approach usually pays dividend when reworking parts of the system, too — GPT picks up on the flow of everything much better when the code is “self documenting”. Same appears true if humans need to get directly involved. Still blows my mind on a daily that we’re here already. I’m glad I’m not early in my career, I’d be very worried if I had another 40 years to go.

t1mmen 3y ago

I've got all of 30 minutes of experience with https://www.cursor.sh https://www.cursor.sh, but this appears to be another major upgrade to my workflow. In-context editing by AI, without any of the copy/paste annoyances. The PR I'm currently working on has about 1K diffs – I've literally touched NONE of that code directly. Freakin' wild!