Coding assistance. "JavaScript function to use fetch() to run a HEAD request against a URL and return the headers" - I use little prompts like that dozens of times a day.<p>Running Python micro-benchmarks to answer questions about which approach is faster, often involving SQLite. I wrote about that here: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/12/code-interpreter/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/12/code-interpreter/</a><p>Lots of dumb little calculations, effectively using ChatGPT Code Interpreter mode as a calculator. I like being able to review the code it wrote - it ends up being a bit faster than me running the calculations myself in a Python notebook.<p>OCR. I paste screenshots directly into ChatGPT and ask it to extract text from them - great for things like producing alt= text.<p>Brainstorming. "Twenty ideas for a Datasette plugin to help with investigative data journalism", that kind of thing.<p>Naming things - another form of brainstorming. See <a href="https://til.simonwillison.net/gpt3/picking-python-project-name-chatgpt" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://til.simonwillison.net/gpt3/picking-python-project-na...</a><p>I use ChatGPT Voice mode when I'm walking my dog, which means I can have an hour long brainstorming conversation, effectively a rubber duck that can talk back to me - except my weird audio AI assistant can also look things up on the web for me and even write and execute test code without me even having to take my phone out of my pocket.
I'm a terrible amateur programmer. ChatGPT has let me be much, much more productive. I no longer waste tons of time on simple errors that are hard to spot, such as badly written if statements, typos in variable names, etc. It can usually spot these things much more quickly than I can. Similarly, it greatly speeds up figuring out things like deployment and build issues, though it's certainly not perfect in that regard.<p>For example, yesterday, composer wasn't happy with some dependencies, which now require PHP 8.1. Upgrading the server to PHP8.1 broke everything -- so I have to figure out how to deal with the broken dependencies or updating the php version without breaking everything, or both. ChatGPT often can give me a quick answer to this type of thing. Though, it sometimes can't either, which leaves me about where I'd have been anyways.
- Coding assistance<p>- DevOps/sysadmin assistance (eg. "how do I do $action with $thing (eg. Ansible)")<p>- Improve writing/correct spelling (via AI actions in Raycast. Select text, launch action). Here I try to willfully inspect its improvements so I can get better at communicating without the aid of AI. Also sometimes AI is wrong.<p>- Write email polite rejections (again via AI actions in Raycast. Select text of email wanting something, launch action, AI writes a polite rejection, I click send.)<p>- Summarize emails/articles/essays/etc.<p>I'd survive without it, of course, but it really helps speed things up every day.
I can ask it questions and get a straight answer instead of sorting through SEO spam.<p>I use Deepl Write to improve my German writing without straight up translating from English. It tells me how to write properly.<p>I use it to write emails when style and personal voice don't matter. For example to cancel subscriptions.<p>I have tried all sorts of other things but for very mixed results.