I’m a software engineer so for work I use it daily. It doesn’t “do my job” but it makes my job vastly more enjoyable. Need unit tests? Done. Want a prototype of an idea that you can refine? Here. Shell script? Boom. Somewhat complicated SQL query? Here ya go. Working with some framework you haven’t used before? Just having a conversation with AI about what I’m trying to do is so much better than sorting through often poorly written documentation. It’s like talking to another engineer who just recently worked on that same kind of problem… except for almost any problem you encounter. My productivity is higher. More than that, I find myself much more willing to take on bigger, harder problems because I know there’s powerful resources to answer just about any question I could have. It just makes me enjoy the job more.
In my personal life, I use it to cut through the noise that in recent year has begun to overwhelm the signal on the internet. Give me a salmon recipe. This used to be the sort of thing you’d put into Google and get great results. Now first result is some ad-stuffed website that is 90% fluff piece and a recipe hidden at the bottom. Just give me the fricken recipe! AI does that.
The other day I was trying to figure out whether a designer-made piece of furniture was authentic despite missing tags. Had a back and forth with ChatGPT, sharing photos, describing the build quality, telling it what the store owner had told me. Incredible depth of knowledge about an obscure piece of furniture.
I also use the image generation all the time. For instance, for the piece of furniture I talked about, I took a picture of my apartment, and the furniture, and asked it to put the furniture into my space, allowing me to visualize it before purchase.
It’s a frickin super power! I cannot even begin to understand how people are still skeptical about the transformative power of this stuff. It kind of feels like people are standing outside the library of Alexandria, debating whether it’s providing any value, when they haven’t even properly gone inside.
Yes, there are flaws. I’m sure there’s people reading this about to tell me it made them put glue on their salad or whatever. But what we have is already so deeply useful to me. Could I have done all of this through old fashioned search? Mastered Photoshop and put the furniture into my apartment on my own? Of course! But the immediacy here is the game changer.
I consider myself an engineer more than a “coder” - I solve problems. I don’t really care as much how. I do not enjoy code for its own sake, I enjoy a problem well-solved.
Software engineering turns out to be a way to solve problems and get paid very well.
I’d just as soon do some kind of other problem solving if it was interesting and paid as well.
If performance tuning a SQL query is your idea of a good time, don’t let me yuck your yum. I just need the data to solve whatever problem is in front of me that day.
I’m a software engineer so for work I use it daily. It doesn’t “do my job” but it makes my job vastly more enjoyable. Need unit tests? Done. Want a prototype of an idea that you can refine? Here. Shell script? Boom. Somewhat complicated SQL query? Here ya go. Working with some framework you haven’t used before? Just having a conversation with AI about what I’m trying to do is so much better than sorting through often poorly written documentation. It’s like talking to another engineer who just recently worked on that same kind of problem… except for almost any problem you encounter. My productivity is higher. More than that, I find myself much more willing to take on bigger, harder problems because I know there’s powerful resources to answer just about any question I could have. It just makes me enjoy the job more.
In my personal life, I use it to cut through the noise that in recent year has begun to overwhelm the signal on the internet. Give me a salmon recipe. This used to be the sort of thing you’d put into Google and get great results. Now first result is some ad-stuffed website that is 90% fluff piece and a recipe hidden at the bottom. Just give me the fricken recipe! AI does that.
The other day I was trying to figure out whether a designer-made piece of furniture was authentic despite missing tags. Had a back and forth with ChatGPT, sharing photos, describing the build quality, telling it what the store owner had told me. Incredible depth of knowledge about an obscure piece of furniture.
I also use the image generation all the time. For instance, for the piece of furniture I talked about, I took a picture of my apartment, and the furniture, and asked it to put the furniture into my space, allowing me to visualize it before purchase.
It’s a frickin super power! I cannot even begin to understand how people are still skeptical about the transformative power of this stuff. It kind of feels like people are standing outside the library of Alexandria, debating whether it’s providing any value, when they haven’t even properly gone inside.
Yes, there are flaws. I’m sure there’s people reading this about to tell me it made them put glue on their salad or whatever. But what we have is already so deeply useful to me. Could I have done all of this through old fashioned search? Mastered Photoshop and put the furniture into my apartment on my own? Of course! But the immediacy here is the game changer.