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Comment by ldehaan | Hacker News Reader

I use it every day at the f500 I work at. I have gotten my team to adopt it, and it has increased productivity from those who were already productive.

The people who weren't already good can't figure out how to use it properly.

I also see a bunch of people online, most?, using it incorrectly, writing prompts that would give bad info. Maybe they're doing it on purpose?

To those who have everything, more will be given.

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I'm good at what I do (at least I think I am), yet I don't know what to use it for.

For specific questions, I find (and trust) the results faster on Stack Overflow. The code that ChatGPT produces is fairly good and my boss is impressed when I showed him the answer of How to parallel filter a List in Java. Yet, filtering a List is a far cry from building an app (which my boss thinks ChatGPT can do, given enough explanation what to do).

And any other general questions, while again, impressive...are too general for someone with a specific knowledge and useful only for somebody not familiar with the subject. Maybe the trick is how the answers are presented with confidence and giving the feeling that the converser actually knows something about the subject, yet I know it just machine generated babbling without any real understanding...

StackOverflow seems to be the ultimate litmus test for ChatGPT at this point for coding work. Pros: it customizes the code more than StackOverflow will. Cons: Subtle errors that can be difficult to spot at first glance, but could be easily caught when run/tested. Like for example I will see it trying to import functions from modules, when the function doesn't exist in that module but another one, and the code is mostly written like its okay otherwise.

What type of tasks do you get help from ChatGPT?

Curious to know some solid use cases of productivity improvements in real world?

I've used it pretty successfully to grammar check emails. I write a rough version and ask chatGPT to check it. It usually comes back with a slightly tweaked version that I use parts from.

Also, naming things.

writing splunk queries, they are often wrong but close enough that I can edit it into working

I was just wondering about this the other day, glad to see it's got some capability there.

I asked to it generate team trivia name suggestions based on some parameters. It did a good job and some were funny. ChatGPT can be very creative.

I used it to make a nicely stylized prototype web app for a company using local storage for data in a few hours. Maybe I’m just not very competent at that stuff but the css I feel would have taken me hours alone

I've been teaching myself how to do low-level graphics programming using Apple's Metal API with assistance from ChatGPT. It can rapidly explain concepts, provide example snippets, explain error messages and suggest corrections, explain concepts, and provide steps.

Apple's Metal API suffers from a weak ecosystem of third-party documentation and examples (unlike OpenGL), and Apple's documentation is barebones, so having a tool like ChatGPT that can interact with that entire space conversationally is a huge boon.

Sometimes it suggests erroneous approaches. When that happens, I can ask it for alternatives. It's not actually too troublesome to vet the information since it has to actually work on the hardware, and honestly, I feel like I'm learning it more deeply by trying the different ways anyway.

Update on this: I’ve reached the point where I’m comfortable cracking open the 300pg Metal Programming Guide and jumping directly to the section covering what I’m interested in learning about. I’ve switched to using ChatGPT to generate example shaders that use particular techniques. It’s still extremely valuable, but there’s a level of organization or strategic thinking that’s missing in the responses provided.

yeah +1 on this, seeing a lot of weird posts where people claim chatgpt screwed something up, and the prompt is all wrong or it is just a special case that will be solved eventually.

The citation thing is a good example of this, just because chatgpt makes up citations today doesn't mean that it will always make up citations, accurate citations is just the wrong use case today. Already there are extensions that make accurate citations work. Still, people point at inaccurate citations as some kind of proof that chatgpt won't work.

Probably people want it to fail or don't want to believe how transformative it is.

>Probably people want it to fail or don't want to believe how transformative it is.

Ego defense is a very real, and very powerful driving force in human behavior and it is coming out in full force.

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