Ways I use language models

Code generation

I use language models to generate code following specific instructions. Usually, this involves a short prompt. I typically generate 30 lines of code or less. I may use the model to write an script starting with nothing. I more frequently use models to amend or augment code in an existing code base. For example, I may highlight a list then prompt “write a function to remove falsy values then sort in descending order by field date”

A web search alternative

Instead of Google or alternative search engines, I use a language-model-first search engine like Perplexity, You or just a model playground. For a while I used the OpenAI playground. Since the release of Claude 3, I’ve been using the Anthropic playground. I also use the llm CLI to quickly invoke models, though I’m still building muscle memory for this approach. The latter is nice because it maintains a local sqlite database of all model interactions.

To scaffold examples and demos

Whenever I need sample data for a demo or example, I’ll use a language model to either generate the sample or write a script to do so. This my take the form a prompt like

Write a creative menu for a barbecue restaurant

which is an approach I’ve used to generate unstructured data to separately demonstrate the model’s capability to extract structured data.

As a thought partner

For me, writing about something helps clarify my understanding and highlight areas where I lack understanding. I use a model to probe my understanding of topics with instructions to identify areas I might have overlooked. This is useful when researching,

Proofreading and refining my writing

I use language models to proofread my writing and suggest improvements based on my goals and audience. I also use models to help refine specific sentences or paragraphs. If a sentence doesn’t sound right, I’ll ask the model to suggest a clearer way to express it, then I’ll refine it further if needed. It’s about as useful as getting a cursory pass on a first draft from a peer reviewer, but doesn’t take up a human’s time and I can run it as often as I want. It’s pretty good at identifying issues. I still need to find a good and fast way for a model to automatically propose fixes without needing to regenerate an entire document.