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Effective Software development with the Robots

Alex Axthelm

The Practical Framing

• This is about using ChatGPT through the RMI subscription
• The goal is not autonomous coding
• The goal is using the robot to make your engineering brain more effective

Background

• Same process as 5 years ago, but the path to finding a working code block is lower
• The robot has replaced Stack Overflow
• “I found this on the internet and it maybe works”
• It’s the synthesis of GH comments, SO posts and Hacker News
• Very good at doing a lit search, following source links can be very informative

My Default Workflow

1. Figure out what my approach to the problem would be
2. Describe the problem to the robot.
3. Let it suggest a plan If different than mine, discuss tradeoffs
4. Ask it what context it needs. Provide link to GH if available. Tell it to check, and be explicit if it can access. Upload if it can’t
5. Integrate responses locally.
6. make check and make reboot-docker
7. Read the diffs while checks are running

Loop.