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Focus on decisions, not tasks

(technicalwriting.dev)
293 points kaycebasques | 2 comments | 18 Oct 24 17:58 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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simonw ◴[18 Oct 24 21:02 UTC] No.41883461[source]▶
This fits the way I like to use LLMs: I always ask them for options, then I decide myself which of those options makes the most sense.

Essentially I'm using them as weird magical documentation that can spit out (incomplete but still useful) available options to guide my decision making at any turn.

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A_Venom_Roll ◴[19 Oct 24 08:27 UTC] No.41886486[source]▶
Would you be willing to give an example of this?
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1. setopt ◴[19 Oct 24 15:11 UTC] No.41888251[source]▶
Not exactly the same… But recently I wanted to pick a library in Python or Julia for simulating differential equations using a GPU. So I asked ChatGPT which libraries exist for this (JAX, CuPy, etc.), asked it to generate code to solve e.g. the 2D heat equation on a 1000x1000 grid for 100 time steps using each of those frameworks. Then I stepped in and verified that each code appeared to do the same thing, and proceeded to benchmark their performance on my hardware. Afterwards I had an informed choice of which framework to use for my project, even though ChatGPT gave me the benchmark code instead of the answer.
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2. nuancebydefault ◴[19 Oct 24 17:36 UTC] No.41889217[source]▶
Similarly I find Bing copilot very handy for exploring problem spaces and their solution spaces. Then i dig/ask deeper and deeper until i understand the solution. It is a quick way to brainstorm without diverting too much, and hence converging, since that tech knows a lot details about a lot of things.