I don't really have anyone to ask questions I get sometimes about building software, and chatGPT has been helping fill the gaps. Basically I'm thinking of it like a combination of a rubber duck and a dialogue-enabled google search. But it's been really helpful along those lines when I'm for example not sure a good way to change a bunch of stuff across a bunch of files, and am pretty sure it's something that can be automated somehow, and chat GPT will be like "have you considered using one tool to get the file names that need changing, then another tool to create an AST of the files, and then another tool to actually modify that AST?" And I'm like oh duh, yeah, I didn't know there's tools like that but I should have assumed there are, nice.

Basically that's how all my usage has gone. I've had it write some elisp and it has been ok, sometimes it invents made-up functions (that don't exist in org-mode for example) but I'll just tell it that a function doesn't exist and it'll come up with some other solution, until I get it to a point where all I need to do is change a couple things.

I remain highly skeptical the thing will replace me anytime soon (ever in my lifetime?) but I'm surprised at the possibilities of making my life less tedious.