Ask HN: Has AI helped you with your productivity? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has AI helped you with your productivity?

I am really curious how people's experience with AI has been in the past few years. ChatGPT came out about 3 years ago and I wanted to know how it has affected your productivity / your perception of your productivity.

I write a LOT of code and I am a fan of Cursor, though there are times where I feel like the AI is a net negative, and I should be more careful about my use of AI. Especially while debugging, it doesn't really work for me. I can't outsource "thinking" to it. Otherwise I intend to keep paying Cursor $20/month + usage. I am also subscribed to ChatGPT and pay $20/mo to it as well. I don't pay for any other tools, I don't use other tools on a semi-daily basis either.

1. What do you do for work? 2. Has AI been helpful? 3. What tools have been the most helpful? 4. What tools have been the biggest letdown?

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A little bit. I write for a living and code in support of my writing. It saves me from reading API docs for the sort of code I'm well able to verify. I also use it to test different ways to phrase something. Recently I used it to turn a diagram I doodle into Django code. It removes a bit of friction and I appreciate that.

I only use the free tier of ChatGPT. It's fine and I'm starting to get a good feeling for its limitations.

I also use Deepl a lot for longer, tedious German texts. I also use Deepl Write to check my writing, especially in German since I am not fluent. I love writing unimportant transactional emails in English and letting Deepl handle the translation. That saves me a lot of time.

1. What do you do for work?

I'm a product manager.

2. Has AI been helpful? && 3. What tools have been the most helpful?

I use claude projects for lots of different use cases, and I use claude code to prototype simple features. It's generally helpful yes.

4. What tools have been the biggest letdown?

Writing quality.

I've tried:

- meta prompting (asking an LLM to make an LLM prompt to do the task)

- providing examples

- prompt engineering to reduce the amount of obvious LLM giveaways in writing style.

I can't get claude sonnet 4/opus 4 to write with any taste.

There are two things LLMs can't do well yet in my opinion:

- To my knowledge they haven't generated any new or novel insights in any field or topic.

- They haven't produced what I would perceive as high quality writing.

I'd love to see prompts that others feel have produced good writing.

Yeah. AI is a great tool.

I’m paying 200 for Claude code and another 60 bucks for other tools. I don’t need to hire anyone yet or waste my time delegating for same performance but 40x the cost .

The tools are as good as I can make them, so ultimately it’s on me and I like that.

I don't believe people's subjective reports. Even my own. I want more unbiased published studies.

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