I am not a Python developer - actually never wrote serious code in python ever (except some flask/django api gig). Also data movement and engineering is not what I grew up with. However being in this industry for so long, I surely have clarity in terms of what’s needed and what’s expected.

In short, I knew what to write.

I needed help in syntax 🧑

After coming out of the wow aspect of it, I started using it quite frequently - I used all of the available one -

I actually needed all because typically after 30mins / 1 hr I would run out of my free tokens - so switch to the other one. I do have paid version with Claude and ChatGPT but wanted to see how much I can extend the free version.

What did I use those for?

  • Writing complete function
  • Updating code with context
  • Troubleshooting
  • Uploading image for Claude to troubleshoot

Observations

  • Extremely useful for quickly writing functions for typical coding tasks like stripping extensions from filename, python array search etc. Typically I was able to copy paste the function as is in my code. Great time saver 🥇
  • I also used it to update code with certain context changes. For example I was using ollama and then wanted to use openai for same purpose. Or sometimes wanted to use different library that does same job. Both Claude and OpenAI were successfully able to update my code once I pasted code in the prompt. Another great time saver 👍
  • Troubleshooting is another area where it shined ! Typically I use to use sites like StackoverFlow to find solutions for very weird developer issues - especially dependency hell management. However getting right answer was time consuming and required many tries. But both Claude and OpenAI were able to pinpoint the issues and suggest specific code snippet to resove the issues. Key difference is - I was able to chat with error messages and it was able to point to right direction. It really felt that I am talking to a expert in that area. Another great win 💯 Overall I was able to use LLMs as my helping expert to code like professionals in Python and build an end to end project in around 2 weeks (which included my basic learning of LLM world and distributions). Simply put - I think this helps developer community immensely and a huge time saver. But it also raised my expectations. Will check out following in future and will update:
  • Unit Test creation
  • Test case creation and execution
  • Performance Test creation and execution hints
  • IAC code genberation etc …