this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Are you still using AI tools to help with development? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by jeff@programming.dev to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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I trialed GitHub Copilot and used ChatGPT for a bit, but recently I found myself using them less and less.

I've found them valuable when doing something new(at least to me), but for most of my day-to-day it seems to have lost it's luster.

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[โ€“] catch22@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is really useful info, can you recommend a tutorial that you feel shows how to effectively use these tools along with traditional style coding? Or would you say it's just a try and see approach/learn as you go. Personally, I think your comment best demonstrates where we are right now with AI assisted development.

[โ€“] sisyphean@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately the tutorials out there are mostly terrible. I've learnt it by experimenting a lot and seeing what worked for me. Some general advice:

  • Subscribe to both Copilot and ChatGPT Plus and try using them as much as possible for at least a month. Some people prefer the former, others the latter, and you can't know in advance which.
  • Always use the GPT-4 model in ChatGPT but keep in mind that there is a 25 answers/3 hours rate limit. So try to squeeze as many questions and information into your messages as possible. GPT-4 is miles ahead of any other publicly available LLM, including GPT-3.5.
  • Tips for ChatGPT:
    • Give detailed, well-written prompts. Try to describe the problem the same way you would to a coworker.
    • After describing the problem, ask ChatGPT if it needs any additional information to implement the code well. It usually asks very insightful questions.
    • Answer the questions and then ask it to break down the problem into individual functions and then, in separate messages, ask it to implement them one by one.
    • Remember that the context window is limited, after some time it won't remember the beginning of the conversation so it's worth repeating parts of the specification later.
  • Tips for Copilot:
    • Write the method signature and have Copilot implement it for you
    • Write a comment and have Copilot implement the corresponding code
    • Paste the code as a comment in a different language, write "the same logic in $lang2" in a comment, and it will translate it from $lang1 into $lang2.