Essential AI prompts for developers

Summary

This video script offers four strategies for developers to maximize AI's utility in their projects. The Q&A strategy prompt encourages AI to ask clarifying questions for better recommendations. The pros and cons approach helps in evaluating different implementation options. The stepwise chain of thought method breaks down complex tasks into manageable steps, while the role prompt assigns AI a role, like a teacher, to simplify learning complex topics. These strategies aim to make AI work smarter, not harder, for developers.

Takeaways

• 😀 The video introduces four strategies for developers to effectively use AI to assist with their work.
• 📝 The Q&A strategy prompt allows AI to ask you questions to better understand your needs and provide tailored recommendations.
• 🗂️ The script demonstrates using AI to propose a folder structure for organizing a growing dashboard project.
• 🔑 The video emphasizes the importance of providing current project details along with prompts to AI for better results.
• 🤖 AI can be directed to ask yes/no questions to refine its understanding and recommendations.
• 🛠️ The Pros and Cons strategy helps in evaluating different approaches to a problem by listing the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• 🔄 The Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy involves breaking down tasks into manageable steps and asking AI to guide through them one at a time.
• 🔑 The 'next' keyword is used to control the pace of the AI's guidance, ensuring one step is completed before moving to the next.
• 👨‍🏫 The Role Prompt strategy assigns AI a role, such as a teacher, to simplify complex topics and guide learning through a step-by-step process.
• 📚 The video uses the example of learning Regular Expressions to illustrate how AI can be used for customized learning experiences.
• 🤝 The final takeaway is the encouragement to work smarter with AI, letting it handle the 'hard work' while you focus on strategic tasks.

Q & A

What are the four prompt strategies mentioned in the video for developers to work effectively with AI?

The four prompt strategies are the Q&A strategy prompt, Pros and Cons, Stepwise Chain of Thought, and the Role Prompt.

How does the Q&A strategy prompt work in the context of organizing a growing dashboard project?

The Q&A strategy prompt involves asking the AI to propose a folder structure for the project and answering yes/no questions to help the AI provide a better recommendation.

What is the purpose of asking the AI to ask yes/no questions in the Q&A strategy prompt?

The purpose is to provide the AI with additional context and details that can help it generate a more accurate and tailored recommendation.

What does the Pros and Cons strategy involve when deciding on the implementation of a database connection class?

The Pros and Cons strategy involves asking the AI for different ways to implement the database connection logic and evaluating the pros and cons of each suggestion to choose the best option.

How can the Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy help in refactoring a complex code file?

The Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy involves asking the AI to break down the refactoring process into smaller steps and wait for a keyword 'next' before proceeding to the next step, ensuring changes are validated one at a time.

What is the role of the 'next' keyword in the Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy?

The 'next' keyword is used to signal the AI to proceed with the next step in the refactoring process, ensuring that changes are made incrementally and can be reviewed before moving on.

What is the purpose of the Role Prompt strategy when learning a new concept like Regular Expressions?

The Role Prompt strategy involves assigning the AI a role, such as a teacher, and instructing it to break down complex topics into simple, step-by-step lessons, providing guidance and nudges rather than direct answers.

How does the AI respond when it is asked to play a role in a conversation, such as being a teacher?

When asked to play a role, the AI adjusts its responses to fit that role, tailoring its explanations and guidance to the specified role, making complex topics more accessible and understandable.

What is the significance of combining the Role Prompt with the Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy?

Combining the Role Prompt with the Stepwise Chain of Thought strategy allows for a more interactive and guided learning experience, where the AI provides step-by-step instructions and nudges the user in the right direction without giving away the answer directly.

How does the video script suggest improving the effectiveness of prompts given to AI?

The script suggests improving prompt effectiveness by using strategies like Q&A to gather details, Pros and Cons for evaluating options, Stepwise Chain of Thought for incremental problem-solving, and Role Prompt for tailored learning experiences.

What is the final message of the video regarding working with AI?

The final message is to work smarter, not harder, with AI by utilizing strategic prompts to guide the AI in providing the most effective assistance and solutions.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 AI Prompt Strategies for Developers

The video introduces four strategies that developers can use to effectively leverage AI in their work. These strategies are also applicable for non-developers. The speaker emphasizes the importance of audience engagement through likes and subscriptions, and introduces the 'Q&A strategy prompt' as a method for AI to ask clarifying questions. This helps in refining the AI's recommendations, as demonstrated with a project organization example. The video also touches on the iterative nature of AI interactions and the importance of not striving for a perfect prompt initially but rather using the Q&A strategy to enhance it.

05:01

📚 Stepwise Refactoring with AI

This paragraph delves into the 'Stepwise Chain of Thought' strategy, where the AI is instructed to break down complex tasks into manageable steps. The speaker uses the example of refactoring a code file, demonstrating how to guide the AI to make one change at a time and wait for confirmation before proceeding. The importance of careful validation of AI suggestions is highlighted, along with the potential for clarification and adjustment of the AI's recommendations. The paragraph also addresses the need to maintain the flow of the stepwise process, even when making corrections or asking for further details.

Keywords

💡Q&A Strategy Prompt

The Q&A Strategy Prompt is a method where the AI is asked to generate questions for the user, which in turn helps the AI to better understand the user's needs and provide more accurate recommendations. In the video, this strategy is used to help organize a growing dashboard project by prompting the AI to suggest a folder structure, and then answering the AI's yes/no questions to refine the recommendations.

💡RESTful API

RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface and is a set of principles for designing networked applications. In the context of the video, the user confirms the need for a RESTful API during the Q&A process, indicating that the project should adhere to this architectural style for web services.

💡Auth

Auth, short for authentication, is the process of verifying the identity of a user or device. In the script, the user confirms the need for auth during the Q&A with the AI, suggesting that the project requires a mechanism to verify user identities, likely for secure access to the application.

💡Microservices

Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, loosely coupled services. The user indicates 'no' when asked about using microservices, implying that the project should not be structured as a collection of fine-grained, independently deployable services.

💡Singleton

In software design, the Singleton pattern is a design pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one single instance. The video mentions the Singleton as a recommendation for implementing a database connection class, highlighting its pros and cons, and ultimately choosing it for its simplicity and lack of need for flexibility with other data sources.

💡Resource Exhaustion

Resource exhaustion in computing refers to a situation where a process or system uses up all available resources, leading to failure or poor performance. The video script uses this term to describe a potential downside of one of the database connection suggestions, indicating that it could lead to the system running out of necessary resources.

💡Async/Await

Async/Await is a feature in many programming languages that allows for asynchronous code execution to be written in a synchronous manner, making it easier to read and understand. The AI suggests using async/await in the current code as a part of the refactoring process, which is a way to handle asynchronous operations more efficiently.

💡ORM

ORM stands for Object-Relational Mapping, which is a technique used in software engineering to map object-oriented data to and from a relational database representation. The video mentions ORM as a suggestion for database interaction, but the user decides not to use it for their project.

💡Stepwise Chain of Thought

The Stepwise Chain of Thought is a strategy where complex tasks are broken down into smaller, manageable steps. In the video, this method is used to refactor code by asking the AI to provide step-by-step guidance, ensuring that changes are made incrementally and can be validated at each stage.

💡Role Prompt

A Role Prompt involves assigning a role to the AI, such as a teacher, and instructing it to act according to the strengths associated with that role. In the script, the AI is asked to play the role of a teacher to simplify complex topics like Regular Expressions, guiding the user through learning them step by step.

💡Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions, often abbreviated as Regex, are sequences of characters that form a search pattern. In the video, the AI, acting as a teacher, helps the user learn the basics of Regex, providing examples and correcting misunderstandings to guide the user towards mastering the concept.

Highlights

Introduction to using AI effectively with four prompt strategies for developers and non-developers alike.

Encouragement to like, subscribe, and engage with comments and likes.

The Q&A strategy prompt to help AI organize and recommend project structures.

Example of a dashboard project with unorganized files needing a folder structure.

Using AI to ask yes/no questions to refine recommendations.

Handling AI's deviation from yes/no questions by providing short answers.

The Pros and Cons prompt to explore different implementation options.

Example of evaluating a db Connection class for a project.

Asking AI for pros and cons of various implementation suggestions.

Rewriting code in a singleton pattern based on AI's recommendations.

Stepwise Chain of Thought prompt to break tasks into manageable steps.

Refactoring a code file with AI's step-by-step guidance.

Using the keyword 'next' to control the pace of AI's suggestions.

Clarification on specific steps and AI's agreement with user's suggestions.

The Roll Prompt to assign AI a role, such as a teacher, for learning complex topics.

Learning Regular Expressions with AI as a teacher, using stepwise learning.

AI's role in guiding learning by nudging in the right direction.

Final summary of the four prompt strategies: Q&A, Pros and Cons, Stepwise Chain of Thought, and Role Prompt.

Encouragement to work smarter with AI by utilizing these strategies.

Transcripts

In this video, I'm going to give you 4 prompts

and prompt strategies that you can use as a developer

to get the AI to work really hard for you.

Now, even if you're not a developer, I think you'll

like this video.

You can use these strategies no matter what you're doing.

Just a quick note, do make sure that you like

and subscribe.

It means the world to us, your comments and your

likes;

we read every single one.

OK, let's go #4 is called the Q&A strategy prompt.

This is where you get the AI to prompt

you so that you can prompt the AI.

It sounds weird, but check it out.

I've got a small dashboard project here that is rapidly

growing and currently all of the files are just kind

of in here together, right?

There's there's this main app file, there's a db file, there's

a service file, there's a pug template here.

It's, it's like a junk drawer.

So I'm going to ask the AI to propose a

folder structure for this project that's going to help me

organize this thing correctly.

I'm also going to mention my workspace when I

do that, and this passes information about my current project

along with this prompt. But instead of just stopping there,

what I'm going to do here is I'm going to

ask the AI to ask me some yes/no questions

to help it provide a better recommendation.

OK, let's see what it's asking for here and answer

each one of these.

I'm just going to provide the question number and a

simple answer to do that.

So yes, we do want restful API, yes for

auth, no, not using micro services.

Yeah, static files, right?

And I can just keep doing this.

Now notice at number six, it starts to veer away

from simple yes or no.

And and by #10 it's just not even a yes

or no question at all.

But that's OK.

This is the nature of AI.

We'll just work with it and provide very short answers,

and then we get a nice recommendation for how to

structure this project.

The magic of the Q&A prompt is that it helps

you put all of the details in the prompt that

you would have put there in the beginning if only

you'd thought of them.

So don't try and write the perfect prompt the first

time.

Use the Q&A strategy to help the model prompt you

to give it the best prompt #3 is called Pros

and Cons and you can probably guess where this is

going.

In programming there is rarely a single right way to

do anything, despite the blog post that you read last

week telling you otherwise.

I've implemented a bit of the model's suggestions on how

to structure my project now, and you can see I've

got here an API folder, view, db, but for the

db Connection class here I've written the connection, but I'm

not 100% sure if this is really the best way

to do this for this app.

So I'm going to ask the model for suggestions on

different ways I could implement this space connection logic, and

I'm going to ask it for the pros and cons

of each suggestion.

I'm also going to mention the file directly so that

the prompt sends the code that I want the model

to review here.

OK, so let's see.

The first recommendation is a singleton.

Cons are that it can be inflexible with other data

sources.

OK, I don't have other data sources.

Number two is how I'm doing it right now and

the cons are yikes -

possible leaks that sounds bad. Number s3 could lead to resource

exhaustion.

I don't know what that is, but it sounds really

bad. Number 4 isn't really a new suggestion as much as

just use async await in your current code, which is

not a bad thing to do and #5 is ORM

which I'm not going to be using.

OK, so let's pick the singleton and I'm going to

ask it to rewrite this code in that pattern and

then I could just ask how I would use this

in the app.

OK, so it looks like we just import it and

then call the get instance and then and then query

it.

Nice.

Easy peasy.

Remember, there's no one right way to do anything in

programming, so use a pros and cons prompt and have

the model give you several options so you can pick

the best one for you.

Hey folks, quick interruption, hope you don't mind.

If you like the content in this video, make sure

you

subscribe to the GitHub Insider

Newsletter where you're going to find tons more of

This stuff.

Every month delivered right to your inbox. Link in video

description.

Go ahead and do that.

Now back to the video.

Number 2 is one of my favorites, and it's called Stepwise

Chain of Thought.

Chain of Thought just means that you ask the model

to break things up into steps and go one step

at a time.

For instance, this code file could stand to be refactored,

cleaned up, but there's a lot of work to be

done here.

So let's ask the AI to help us refactor it.

So we get back a kind of verbose response.

Here it is moving one step at a time, but

it's trying to do the entire refactor in in one

shot.

It's just too many changes for us to validate at

one time.

Let's try this again.

So this time I'm going to tell the AI to

move one step at a time, but to wait for

the keyword "next" before proceeding.

This magic keyword is what's going to make the AI

only do one thing at a time.

First, it wants us to stop using var, which, sure,

fine.

I'm not going to touch that yet because I want

to refactor the db connection variable itself.

And if we do next here, it does that.

OK, perfect.

And then we can click on the apply and editor

button here and it will try to merge the changes

from what it's suggested with what we currently have.

And you do have to be careful when you do

this check that everything is right.

I mean, look here, it left this function out of

the refactor entirely.

So we need to fix that up.

Now,

wometimes when you do this, you'll want to ask questions

about a particular step, get clarification, like it wants me to

add a vehicle interface here.

But I'm thinking this would be better as a separate

model class.

So let me ask about that.

Yeah, See, it kind of agrees with me, and you

have to be careful about this because the AI will

almost always agree with you if you insist that something

is the right way to do something.

But when you do that, you get out of the

flow of waiting for next.

So to fix that, I'm going to go back into

the chat and just delete that item from the history

so that I can then proceed with next.

Although apparently it refuses to move on until I make

the vehicle parameter an object.

Fine, fine, I can take a hint.

All right, number one, last one, it's called the Roll

Prompt.

And this is where we're going to depart from our

vehicle dashboard and learn a new trick.

Literally. AI's love to be given a role to

play in a conversation.

And you can basically tell them what they're good at

and then just they're magically good at that thing.

It's incredible.

So I'm going to ask the model to play the

role of a teacher.

I'm going to tell it that they are excellent at

making complex topics simple and I like to learn by

doing.

So I'm going to tell the AI that it's good

at doing that too.

And what are we going to learn today

class? Regular Expressions!

And then I'm going to combine this with the Stepwise

Chain of Thought prompt and tell it to go one

step at a time and wait before moving on to

the next concept.

And if I get the answer wrong, I don't want

it to just give me the right answer.

I want it to nudge me in the right direction

so that I can figure it out myself.

OK, here we go.

All right, looks like we're going to learn the basics

of Regex.

Let's see.

Match the word cat.

You can match characters just by putting them in a

sequence.

OK, so it's literally just cat.

Yes.

All right, let's see if I can do another match.

Any three letter word that starts with C and ends

with T, and the dot is used to match any

single character.

I guess that's just C dot T. Holy crap, I'm

an expert.

OK, one more, one more match cat or caught but

not cut use square brackets.

So like this.

Oh, I got that one wrong.

I like how the model calls this a misunderstanding like like

maybe this is both of our faults.

Oh, I see brackets match individual characters.

OK, so if we put the A and the O

in the brackets, yes.

All right, I feel like a regex pro already.

And you can use this to create custom curriculum to

learn anything at all.

AI's love to role play.

OK, so Q&A prompt, pros and cons, stepwise chain of

thought and the role prompt.

Remember these prompts and work smarter and not harder with

your AI.

Working harder is the AI's job.

See you in the next video.

And as always, happy smart coding.