My usual loop used to be:
1. Search for X
2. Review documentation and other websites that come up
3. Learn from my review and further refine my search
4. Continue steps over and over until I get what I want
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My new loop is:
1. Ask ChatGPT about X
2. Use the words that ChatGPT returns to me as search terms
3. Review documentation and other websites that come up
4. Learn from my review, further refine my search, and talk to ChatGPT about it
5. Continue steps over and over until I get what I want
I initially thought that using ChatGPT in such a fashion would lead to a longer amount of time - especially since I'm adding a new tool to my "loop".
Instead, finding and learning what I need is much faster. My old loop I would do 3+ times. The new loop with ChatGPT takes 1-2 times.
When you aren't familiar with X it becomes difficult to know what to search for. Even if you have the docs in front of you, you need to know key terms to search through the docs for.
ChatGPT makes finding key terms to search for much, MUCH easier. Fact checking ChatGPT (for the most part) doesn't take me that many cycles.