Use of LLMs for Programming

Created: Aug 08, 2024 by Pradeep Gowda — Updated:Aug 20, 2024 From: Carmel, IN — Tagged: llm · programming .

Saw this post - How I Use “AI” by Nicholas Carlini through Antirez’s post

I use LLM very similarly, and these are my (thoughts) on his bullet list.

As a tutor – (I have used to define and clarify concepts)
To get started – (The bootstrapping problem; great for starting projects in frameworks and languages that you are not a regular.)
To simplify code – ( ask LLM to rewrite something)
For boring tasks – (I know how to do it, but too lazy or busy to write it all myself. ask LLM to write the first draft, and improve it)
To automate tasks – (so much easier to just ask LLM to write scripts than writing one yourself. See some of my experiments in writing automation scripts below)
As an API reference – (all the time. eg: show me an example of using urlencode in Python)
As a search engine – (all the time!)
To solve one-offs – (this is similar to “To automate tasks” above)
To teach me – (this is same as “As a tutor” above)
Solving solved problems – (this is similar to “to simplify code”, especially useful rewriting gnarly stuff)
To fix errors – (all the time. “explain this error” and solve it.)

My automation experiments:

And some programming uses of LLMs: - Generating Zotero Papers Index

This article – q What do I title this article? is another hands-on illustration of using a local script to localize (if you are a programmer, you are likely spending a lot of time on the terminal) the use LLMs for coding adjacent tasks.

One from Simon Willison – django-http-debug, a new Django app mostly written by Claude