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I think to get good value out of it you really have to get a sense for what it's good for and what it's not. I don't have it write my day to day code, because

I think to get good value out of it you really have to get a sense for what it's good for and what it's not. I don't have it write my day to day code, because that's complicated and usually niche enough that it's not likely to give a good result. But it's awesome for something like writing a quick and dirty shell script. most recently I needed to bulk rename 50 or so files with an interactive piece for a special case. I described the operation to GPT and it spit out a nearly perfect shell script. Could I have written the same script in half an hour? Yes, but it was sure nice not to have to. I also like it for just bouncing around an idea. Recently I was thinking about writing a program to make a midi device from a guitar hero controller, and I was able to get a good sense of the available APIs / libs in a few different languages with a 3 minute back and forth with GPT. Again, I could have easily searched around myself and come to the same answer, but removing the friction is pretty nice.

supertron 3y ago
> I think to get good value out of it you really have to get a sense for what it's good for and what it's not. > I don't have it write my day to day code, because that's complicated and usually niche enough that it's not likely to give a good result. Yep totally agree. I don't think you should just treat it as a black box - throw in literally any prompt you can think of and then use the response verbatim, without even reading it, and expect to have success. You need to exercise some judgement and be a bit discerning. And think about what areas of your work are most unique to your own skills and experience, and what are the bits of work around the fringes that don't need to be done by you - and are not really part of your core "craft", and, are likely to be well suited to the capabilities of something like GPT-4. And like every other tool, using it effectively is a skill and requires perserverance, practice, and adjusting your approach as you go. Which means the user can get better at getting value of out an LLM over time. It's not a static or all or nothing thing.

supertron 3y ago

> I think to get good value out of it you really have to get a sense for what it's good for and what it's not. > I don't have it write my day to day code, because that's complicated and usually niche enough that it's not likely to give a good result. Yep totally agree. I don't think you should just treat it as a black box - throw in literally any prompt you can think of and then use the response verbatim, without even reading it, and expect to have success. You need to exercise some judgement and be a bit discerning. And think about what areas of your work are most unique to your own skills and experience, and what are the bits of work around the fringes that don't need to be done by you - and are not really part of your core "craft", and, are likely to be well suited to the capabilities of something like GPT-4. And like every other tool, using it effectively is a skill and requires perserverance, practice, and adjusting your approach as you go. Which means the user can get better at getting value of out an LLM over time. It's not a static or all or nothing thing.