5 ms·

I'd be curious to hear about the workflows people have come up with using ChatGPT. I'm still in the realm of "I don't know how to do this" or "I forgot the exac

by all2 3y ago

I'd be curious to hear about the workflows people have come up with using ChatGPT. I'm still in the realm of "I don't know how to do this" or "I forgot the exact incantation to that" or "is the an X that does Y in framework Z?"

tunesmith 3y ago
I just make sure to ask it really clear questions. I like how it encourages you to think about specification versus implementation. State a clear problem, get clear suggestions. Ask a clear question, get a clear answer. (Usually.)
- taneq 3y ago
  Also ask a vague or underspecified question, get something back that's not quite what you wanted, and iterate on it in natural language. Even at 1 token/sec it's still ridiculously much faster than writing it for yourself, especially if you're using an unfamiliar language or API.
tsumnia 3y ago
I don't have any automated GPT processes for teaching (though I'm going to tinker in December with the new GPTs), but I use for generating examples. It takes some coaxing to avoid other common examples from other institutions, but I eventually settle on something relevant, memorable, and that I can build off from. If its a particular algorithm I am covering, I've then used it to walkthrough the algorithm with some dummy values before confirming the calculations and values are correct. It will still slip up on occasion, but that's why I'm still confirming it did everything correctly.
pmarreck 3y ago
I'm a coder and it's helped there (although needs constant hand-holding and fine-tuning, yet is still useful) I wrote a couple commandline tools to do things like autogenerate commit comments or ask it questions from the commandline and return the right bash invocation to do whatever I need done https://github.com/pmarreck/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/functions/please.bash https://github.com/pmarreck/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/functio... Random thing I did this morning was see if it could come up with an inspiring speech to start healing the rift between israel and its neighbors https://chat.openai.com/share/71498f5f-3672-47cd-ad9a-154c3fe82b63 https://chat.openai.com/share/71498f5f-3672-47cd-ad9a-154c3f... It's very good at returning unbiased language
redblacktree 3y ago
I like to use it for one-off scripts. For example, I downloaded a bunch of bank statements the other day, and they had a format something like, "Statement-May-1-2023.pdf" and I asked GPT for a powershell script to convert that to "2023-05-01-BankName-Statement.pdf" It saved a bunch of manual work on a throwaway script. In the past, I might have done something in Python, since I'm more familiar with it than powershell. Or, I'd say, "well, it's only 20 files. I'll just do it manually." The GPT script worked on the first try, and I just threw it away at the end.
- nomel 3y ago
  This is what convinced me to pay. I'm completely fine with spending $1/workday if it saves me 10 to 15 minutes per day of bore.
charlesischuck 3y ago
Visual design work, coding, messaging, strategy, and law consulting. Using it for basically every component of my startup. Image generation and image interpretation means I may never hire a designer.
gwd 3y ago
GPT-4 is quite capable of writing function-length sections of code based only on descriptions. Either in a context where you're not sure what the a good approach is (for myself, when writing Javascript for example), or when you know what needs to be done but it's just somewhat tedious. Here's a session from me working on a side project yesterday: https://chat.openai.com/share/a6928c16-1c18-4c08-ae02-82538d82a95a https://chat.openai.com/share/a6928c16-1c18-4c08-ae02-82538d... The most impressive thing I think starts in the middle: * I paste in some SQL tables and the golang structrues I wanted stuff to go into, and described in words what I wanted; and it generated a multi-level query with several joins, and then some post-processing in golang to put it into the form I'd asked for. * I say, "if you do X, you can use slices instead of a map", and it rewrites the post-processing to use slices instead of a map * I say, "Can you rewrite the query in goqu, using these constants?" and it does. I didn't take a record of it, but a few months ago I was doing some data analysis, and I pasted in a quite complex SQL query I'd written a year earlier (the last time I was doing this analysis), and said "Can you modify it to group all rows less than 1% of the total into a single row labelled 'Other'?" And the resulting query worked out of the box. It's basically like having a coding minion. Once there's a better interface for accessing and modifying your local files / buffers, I'm sure it will become even more useful. EDIT: Oh, and Monday I asked, "This query is super slow; can you think of a way to make it faster?" And it said, "Query looks fine; do you have indexes on X Y and Z columns of the various tables?" I said, "No; can you write me SQL to add those indexes?" Then ran the SQL to create indexes, and the query went from taking >10 minutes to taking 2 seconds. (As you can tell, I'm neither a web dev nor a database dev...)
- distortionfield 3y ago
  This lines up with my general experience with it. It’s quite proficient at turning a decently detailed description into code if I give it the guard rails. I’ve compared it to having a junior developer at your disposal. They could do a lot of damage if they were given prod access but can come back with some surprisingly good results.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    Are you at all worried about what happens if we have a generation of human junior developers who just delegate to this artificial junior developer? I do. If too many of our apprentices don’t actually learn how to work the forge, how ready will they be to take over as masters someday themselves? I can see how ChatGPT was useful to the grandparent today, but got very disturbed by what it might portend for tomorrow. Not because of job loss and automation, like many people worry, but because of spoiled training and practice opportunities. I liked your take, so I’d be curious to hear what you think.
Balgair 3y ago
I can share one set that we have. Basically, we use AI to do a lot of formatting for our manuals. It's most useful with the backend XML markups, not WYSIWYG editors. So, we take the inputs from engineers and other stakeholders, essentially in email formats. Then we pass it through prompts that we've been working on for a while. Then it'll output working XML that we can use with a tad bit of clean-up (though that's been decreasing). It's a lot more complicated than just that, of course, but that's the basics. Also, it's been really nice to see these chat based AIs helping others code. Some of the manuals team is essentially illiterate when it comes to code. This time last year, they were at best able to use excel. Now, with the AIs, they're writing Python code of moderate complexity to do tasks for themselves and the team. None of it is by any means 'good' coding, it's total hacks. But it's really nice to see them come up to speed and get things done. To see the magic of coding manifest itself in, for example, 50 year old copy editors that never thought they were smart enough. The hand-holding nature of these AIs is just what they needed to make the jump.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Did you have any scripts or other explicit “rules-based” systems to do this before? Is it a young company? It sounds like a pretty old and common use case in technical writing and one that many organizations already optimized plenty well: you coach contributors to aim towards a normal format in their email and you maintain some simple tooling to massage common mistakes towards that normal. What prompted you to use an LLM for this instead of something more traditional? Hype? Unfamiliarity with other techniques? Being a new company and seeing this as a more compelling place to start? Something else?
NicoJuicy 3y ago
I put in some code that was already done. Ask it to document the conditions according to the code and taking into consideration the following x, y, z. Output a raw markdown table with the columns a, b, c. Translate column a in English between () --- Speeds up the "document what you're doing" for management purpose, while I'm actually coding and testing out scenarios. Tbh. I'm probably one of the few that did the coding while "doing the analysis". Ps. It's also great for writing unit tests according to arrange, act, assert.
chrisjc 3y ago
I don't know what you do for a living/hobby, or what you might be interested in using ChatGPT to do for you, but here is how I became familiar with it and integrated it into my workflow. (actually, this is true for regular copilot too) What I'm about to say is in the context of programming. I have the tendency to get caught up in some trivial functionality, thus losing focus on the overall larger and greater objective. If I need to create some trivial functionality, I start with unit tests and a stubbed out function (defining the shape of the input). I enumerate sufficient input/output test cases to provide context for what I want the function to do. Then I ask copilot/ChatGPT to define the function's implementation. It sometimes takes time to tune the dialog or add some edge cases to the the test cases, but more often than not copilot comes through. Then I'm back to focusing on the original objective. This has been a game changer for me. (Of course you should be careful about what code is generated and what it's ultimately doing.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
piersolenski 3y ago
I made a NeoVim plugin that helps debug diagnostic messages, providing explanations and solutions for how to fix them, custom tailored to your code. It's a bit different from other plugins which only act on the text in the buffer in that it also sends the diagnostics from the LSP to ChatGPT too. https://github.com/piersolenski/wtf.nvim https://github.com/piersolenski/wtf.nvim
- sibit 3y ago
  That's a really neat plugin! Couple of questions for you: 1. How many times a [day/month] do you use it? 2. In your experience how often does GPT 'hallucinate' an explanation?
  - piersolenski 3y ago
    Thanks! I use it every day, especially with Typescript where the diagnostic errors and notoriously hard to read. The instructions it sends off the GPT are quite strict and fine tuned at this point, so the responses tend to be good. The solutions are either bang on the money or at least the explanations point me in the right direction. You can pass additional instructions and configure the model as well to further fine tune it.
WendyTheWillow 3y ago
ChatGPT is a good editor for the papers I write for school. Even for short sentences I don't like, I'll ask it for some options to reword/simplify. I also use it heavily for formatting adjustments. Instead of hand-formatting a transcript I pull from YouTube, I paste it into Claude and have it reformat the transcript into something more like paragraphs. Many otherwise tedious reformatting tasks can be simplified with an LLM. I also will get an LLM to develop flashcards for a given set of notes to drill on, which is nice, though I usually have to heavily edit the output to include everything I think I should study. In class, if I'm falling behind on notetaking, I'll get the LLM to generate the note I'm trying to write down by just asking it a basic question, like: "What is anarchism in a sentence?" That way I can focus on what the teacher is saying while the LLM keeps my notes relevant. I'll skim what it generates and edit to fit what my prof said, but it's nice because I can pay better attention than if I feel I have to keep track of what the prof might test me on. This actually is a note-taking technique I've learned about where you only write down the question and look up the answer later, but I think it's nice I now can do the lookup right there and tailor it to exactly how the prof is phrasing it/what they're focusing on about the topic.
paradite 3y ago
I experimented with using a streamlined workflow to use ChatGPT (GPT-4) for coding tasks. In the end I settled on a standalone desktop app to "compose" prompt with source code, instructions and formatting options which I can just copy paste into ChatGPT. The app is available for download if anyone is interested: https://prompt.16x.engineer/ https://prompt.16x.engineer/

by all2 3y ago

tunesmith 3y ago

I just make sure to ask it really clear questions. I like how it encourages you to think about specification versus implementation. State a clear problem, get clear suggestions. Ask a clear question, get a clear answer. (Usually.)

taneq 3y ago
Also ask a vague or underspecified question, get something back that's not quite what you wanted, and iterate on it in natural language. Even at 1 token/sec it's still ridiculously much faster than writing it for yourself, especially if you're using an unfamiliar language or API.

tsumnia 3y ago

I don't have any automated GPT processes for teaching (though I'm going to tinker in December with the new GPTs), but I use for generating examples. It takes some coaxing to avoid other common examples from other institutions, but I eventually settle on something relevant, memorable, and that I can build off from. If its a particular algorithm I am covering, I've then used it to walkthrough the algorithm with some dummy values before confirming the calculations and values are correct. It will still slip up on occasion, but that's why I'm still confirming it did everything correctly.

pmarreck 3y ago

I'm a coder and it's helped there (although needs constant hand-holding and fine-tuning, yet is still useful) I wrote a couple commandline tools to do things like autogenerate commit comments or ask it questions from the commandline and return the right bash invocation to do whatever I need done https://github.com/pmarreck/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/functions/please.bash https://github.com/pmarreck/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/functio... Random thing I did this morning was see if it could come up with an inspiring speech to start healing the rift between israel and its neighbors https://chat.openai.com/share/71498f5f-3672-47cd-ad9a-154c3fe82b63 https://chat.openai.com/share/71498f5f-3672-47cd-ad9a-154c3f... It's very good at returning unbiased language

redblacktree 3y ago

I like to use it for one-off scripts. For example, I downloaded a bunch of bank statements the other day, and they had a format something like, "Statement-May-1-2023.pdf" and I asked GPT for a powershell script to convert that to "2023-05-01-BankName-Statement.pdf" It saved a bunch of manual work on a throwaway script. In the past, I might have done something in Python, since I'm more familiar with it than powershell. Or, I'd say, "well, it's only 20 files. I'll just do it manually." The GPT script worked on the first try, and I just threw it away at the end.

nomel 3y ago
This is what convinced me to pay. I'm completely fine with spending $1/workday if it saves me 10 to 15 minutes per day of bore.

charlesischuck 3y ago

Visual design work, coding, messaging, strategy, and law consulting. Using it for basically every component of my startup. Image generation and image interpretation means I may never hire a designer.

gwd 3y ago

GPT-4 is quite capable of writing function-length sections of code based only on descriptions. Either in a context where you're not sure what the a good approach is (for myself, when writing Javascript for example), or when you know what needs to be done but it's just somewhat tedious. Here's a session from me working on a side project yesterday: https://chat.openai.com/share/a6928c16-1c18-4c08-ae02-82538d82a95a https://chat.openai.com/share/a6928c16-1c18-4c08-ae02-82538d... The most impressive thing I think starts in the middle: * I paste in some SQL tables and the golang structrues I wanted stuff to go into, and described in words what I wanted; and it generated a multi-level query with several joins, and then some post-processing in golang to put it into the form I'd asked for. * I say, "if you do X, you can use slices instead of a map", and it rewrites the post-processing to use slices instead of a map * I say, "Can you rewrite the query in goqu, using these constants?" and it does. I didn't take a record of it, but a few months ago I was doing some data analysis, and I pasted in a quite complex SQL query I'd written a year earlier (the last time I was doing this analysis), and said "Can you modify it to group all rows less than 1% of the total into a single row labelled 'Other'?" And the resulting query worked out of the box. It's basically like having a coding minion. Once there's a better interface for accessing and modifying your local files / buffers, I'm sure it will become even more useful. EDIT: Oh, and Monday I asked, "This query is super slow; can you think of a way to make it faster?" And it said, "Query looks fine; do you have indexes on X Y and Z columns of the various tables?" I said, "No; can you write me SQL to add those indexes?" Then ran the SQL to create indexes, and the query went from taking >10 minutes to taking 2 seconds. (As you can tell, I'm neither a web dev nor a database dev...)

distortionfield 3y ago
This lines up with my general experience with it. It’s quite proficient at turning a decently detailed description into code if I give it the guard rails. I’ve compared it to having a junior developer at your disposal. They could do a lot of damage if they were given prod access but can come back with some surprisingly good results.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Are you at all worried about what happens if we have a generation of human junior developers who just delegate to this artificial junior developer? I do. If too many of our apprentices don’t actually learn how to work the forge, how ready will they be to take over as masters someday themselves? I can see how ChatGPT was useful to the grandparent today, but got very disturbed by what it might portend for tomorrow. Not because of job loss and automation, like many people worry, but because of spoiled training and practice opportunities. I liked your take, so I’d be curious to hear what you think.

Balgair 3y ago

I can share one set that we have. Basically, we use AI to do a lot of formatting for our manuals. It's most useful with the backend XML markups, not WYSIWYG editors. So, we take the inputs from engineers and other stakeholders, essentially in email formats. Then we pass it through prompts that we've been working on for a while. Then it'll output working XML that we can use with a tad bit of clean-up (though that's been decreasing). It's a lot more complicated than just that, of course, but that's the basics. Also, it's been really nice to see these chat based AIs helping others code. Some of the manuals team is essentially illiterate when it comes to code. This time last year, they were at best able to use excel. Now, with the AIs, they're writing Python code of moderate complexity to do tasks for themselves and the team. None of it is by any means 'good' coding, it's total hacks. But it's really nice to see them come up to speed and get things done. To see the magic of coding manifest itself in, for example, 50 year old copy editors that never thought they were smart enough. The hand-holding nature of these AIs is just what they needed to make the jump.

swatcoder 3y ago
Did you have any scripts or other explicit “rules-based” systems to do this before? Is it a young company? It sounds like a pretty old and common use case in technical writing and one that many organizations already optimized plenty well: you coach contributors to aim towards a normal format in their email and you maintain some simple tooling to massage common mistakes towards that normal. What prompted you to use an LLM for this instead of something more traditional? Hype? Unfamiliarity with other techniques? Being a new company and seeing this as a more compelling place to start? Something else?

NicoJuicy 3y ago

I put in some code that was already done. Ask it to document the conditions according to the code and taking into consideration the following x, y, z. Output a raw markdown table with the columns a, b, c. Translate column a in English between () --- Speeds up the "document what you're doing" for management purpose, while I'm actually coding and testing out scenarios. Tbh. I'm probably one of the few that did the coding while "doing the analysis". Ps. It's also great for writing unit tests according to arrange, act, assert.

chrisjc 3y ago

I don't know what you do for a living/hobby, or what you might be interested in using ChatGPT to do for you, but here is how I became familiar with it and integrated it into my workflow. (actually, this is true for regular copilot too) What I'm about to say is in the context of programming. I have the tendency to get caught up in some trivial functionality, thus losing focus on the overall larger and greater objective. If I need to create some trivial functionality, I start with unit tests and a stubbed out function (defining the shape of the input). I enumerate sufficient input/output test cases to provide context for what I want the function to do. Then I ask copilot/ChatGPT to define the function's implementation. It sometimes takes time to tune the dialog or add some edge cases to the the test cases, but more often than not copilot comes through. Then I'm back to focusing on the original objective. This has been a game changer for me. (Of course you should be careful about what code is generated and what it's ultimately doing.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

piersolenski 3y ago

I made a NeoVim plugin that helps debug diagnostic messages, providing explanations and solutions for how to fix them, custom tailored to your code. It's a bit different from other plugins which only act on the text in the buffer in that it also sends the diagnostics from the LSP to ChatGPT too. https://github.com/piersolenski/wtf.nvim https://github.com/piersolenski/wtf.nvim

sibit 3y ago
That's a really neat plugin! Couple of questions for you: 1. How many times a [day/month] do you use it? 2. In your experience how often does GPT 'hallucinate' an explanation?
- piersolenski 3y ago
  Thanks! I use it every day, especially with Typescript where the diagnostic errors and notoriously hard to read. The instructions it sends off the GPT are quite strict and fine tuned at this point, so the responses tend to be good. The solutions are either bang on the money or at least the explanations point me in the right direction. You can pass additional instructions and configure the model as well to further fine tune it.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago

ChatGPT is a good editor for the papers I write for school. Even for short sentences I don't like, I'll ask it for some options to reword/simplify. I also use it heavily for formatting adjustments. Instead of hand-formatting a transcript I pull from YouTube, I paste it into Claude and have it reformat the transcript into something more like paragraphs. Many otherwise tedious reformatting tasks can be simplified with an LLM. I also will get an LLM to develop flashcards for a given set of notes to drill on, which is nice, though I usually have to heavily edit the output to include everything I think I should study. In class, if I'm falling behind on notetaking, I'll get the LLM to generate the note I'm trying to write down by just asking it a basic question, like: "What is anarchism in a sentence?" That way I can focus on what the teacher is saying while the LLM keeps my notes relevant. I'll skim what it generates and edit to fit what my prof said, but it's nice because I can pay better attention than if I feel I have to keep track of what the prof might test me on. This actually is a note-taking technique I've learned about where you only write down the question and look up the answer later, but I think it's nice I now can do the lookup right there and tailor it to exactly how the prof is phrasing it/what they're focusing on about the topic.

paradite 3y ago

I experimented with using a streamlined workflow to use ChatGPT (GPT-4) for coding tasks. In the end I settled on a standalone desktop app to "compose" prompt with source code, instructions and formatting options which I can just copy paste into ChatGPT. The app is available for download if anyone is interested: https://prompt.16x.engineer/ https://prompt.16x.engineer/