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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I feel like it's making me somewhat more productive because of how it gives me a kick in the butt and stops my mind wandering off. Getting immediate suggestions and ideas from a "third party" on whatever I'm doing leads me on to the next step of whatever I'm doing rather than getting tempted to procrastinate. I doubt this will benefit everyone, but I guess this is how pair programming can be quite effective for some people too.

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I've written a few things (words) where one of the LLMs gave me a pretty good starting point. It needed some work but it saved me Googling around to get some sort of starting draft down on paper--which invariably turns into more Googling around and distractions. It's always been stuff I've known well enough that I knew what was right, wrong, and insipid. But it was a starting point (which can be useful, especially if you're just going for workmanlike anyway).

GenAI allows me to stay in a flow state for longer and it reduces cognitive fatigue.

I guess you're using ChatGPT 3.5? I'd have thought v4 is simply too slow and you'd be unavoidably jolted out of flow waiting for it.

Both. v4 is fast during periods of low load, it is slower now than when I first got access. My usage patterns have shifted because of this, so I write longer prompts, have it do more work and switch to different tab. I'd pay more than twice as much to have it be at least 50% faster.

I feel it too, even if the suggestion is wrong it still trigger my brain to think "No, it should be like this." and then I write the thing. Rinse and repeat.

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