Ask HN: How do you as a normal swe use AI?

4•atworkc•22h ago

So am looking for more normal people, experienced people using AI, but I feel like whenever I hit youtube or other platforms the AI culture is way deep in the trenches and don't feel like this is how the majority of people tackle work, especially at their jobs.

What I see is mostly solo-devs going full battlestar gallactica on things. And I just want to see other people, normal people talk about and show how they use these new tools.

I'm also more interested in the first principles of things and not necessarily the shiny new model or shiny new workflow or shiny new thing. More towards problem solving.

So, if you have a bit of time to walk me through how you usually work in a day or point me to some good videos, resources on regular people doing it I'll be grateful!

Comments

sdevonoes•16h ago

AI as a replacement of Google. When I wanted to learn about something the usual path was: google it. Go through dozens of links, discard, filter the good ones, read them, and gain the knowledge.

Nowadays I ask the question to the LLM and for every answer I demand the links/urls where the LLM get the info from. I still read the referenced web sites. It’s faster.

aashhuttossh•9h ago

Could you clarify why you would still go through the referenced website? I mean, let's say if you were to fix an Nginx file and you ran into an issue, would you still be going through the docs?

Just asking to understand if that's the best way to use AI, to keep our own brains working, or is there a different perspective on it?

al_borland•1h ago

I’ve seen where the LLM gets the right page, but jumbles of the facts and gives the wrong answer. If you want correct answers, go to the source material, not the AI summary. The source also tends to give additional information that provides context for a better mental model.

adamtaylor_13•15h ago

I wanted to document this largely for myself (and because other folks have asked me this question), so I ended up writing a blog post on it: https://adamtaylor.me/posts/how-i-use-ai

I hope that doesn't run afoul of self-promotion rules. I just thought it'd be nice to have this answer somewhere it can evolve over time.

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