A book every working professional should read: 'Let ChatGPT Handle the Tedious Stuff'

I read the book titled 'Let ChatGPT Handle the Tedious Stuff'.

This is a book that every working professional would benefit from reading, but I felt it would be especially beneficial for those who are not particularly comfortable with computers to read.

Also, I work in the IT industry myself and am generally considered someone who is 'good with computers,' but even so, there were many ways of using it that I didn't know, and I learned a lot.

Highlights of this book

• Written based on what you want to do

• Covers all sorts of tedious daily tasks

• Careful guidance for points where beginners might stumble
  (e.g., ChatGPT can insert line breaks with Shift + Enter, etc.)

• Includes prompts (instructions for AI) refined through trial and error, ensuring stable output
  (*Note: LLMs like ChatGPT produce different outputs every time even with the same input. Also, just a slight lack of clarity can lead to unintended results, but the book is very attentive to these details.)

• High level of expertise from the authors (a Kaggle Grandmaster and a blogger with a solid reputation in the AI community)

• Full-color, playful, and fun to read!

I thought the stability of the output was particularly good. Readers can get the desired output without struggling, and conversely, anti-patterns—what kind of prompts lead to failure—are also included, so you get all the benefits of the trial and error.
You can really picture the grueling prompt engineering work that went into writing this.

Impressions by part

From here on, I will write my impressions of each part.

Part 1: Basic ChatGPT knowledge you should know

This part covers basic knowledge about ChatGPT and the like.

And this introduction is very thorough.
It describes what ChatGPT is and even the fine details of how to use it, making it a starting point that anyone can read regardless of their PC literacy. Also, there are descriptions regarding the training data period, hallucinations, and copyright, and I thought it was excellent that it is written so that
even someone using ChatGPT for the first time today can clearly understand the points of caution.

Part 2: Daily techniques where ChatGPT is useful

In this part, we actually have ChatGPT do the tedious stuff.

The era has arrived where we can solve things that might have been written in the O'Reilly book 'Automate the Boring Stuff with Python' using natural language (the language people speak). For example, even if you ask it to create thousands of QR codes, it will do it in a few hours. What's amazing is that until now, to do these kinds of tedious tasks, you had to start by building a programming environment and learning that language, but


now anyone can get to the output just by being connected to the internet and entering natural language.

On a slightly more IT-focused note, the concrete example of using ChatGPT to understand architecture diagrams and asking it questions when you don't understand something was an eye-opener.

Also, for the audio editing prompts, I am grateful that both anti-patterns and best practices—'this didn't work, so I did this instead'—are written without holding anything back.

I know some people cannot use ChatGPT because they handle confidential data at work, but you can still utilize it by having it write programming code using dummy data, and you can even have ChatGPT create that dummy data for you.

And the stories of the author, Karaage-san, from his younger days are just too funny.
(See the photo on page 81, Chapter 6)
This kind of playfulness makes it fun to read through, and it’s even more enjoyable if you try to guess which author wrote which section.

Part 3: Data Science with ChatGPT

In this part, you have ChatGPT handle data visualization, analysis, and forecasting.

This part is also very thorough. Technical terms are always supplemented with simple, plain language.
Example: Within the same session (conversation history)...

What I thought was particularly good in this part was the section on having it create graphs and make GIF animations.I have a casual presentation coming up, so I think I’ll actually try using it.

Part 4: Even More Convenient Applied Techniques for ChatGPT

In this part, as the title suggests, it covers applied usage, specifically how to read academic papers using ChatGPT, how to create shift schedules, and how to build browser apps.

As the book says, if you think of it as a “tutor that is available 24/7 and never gets annoyed no matter how many times you ask the same thing,” ChatGPT Plus is a bargain.

The content starts to feel a bit more techy from this part on, but it remains as thorough as ever.
For example, it even includes detailed tips such as, “Boundary values like ‘above’ or ‘below’ are easy to get wrong. If you explicitly state ‘up to the 4th’ (meaning the 4th is included), you will get the correct result.”

And though it’s a small detail, “it is better to have it read papers in TeX format rather than PDF” was a piece of knowledge that was extremely useful to me.
(It might be obvious once someone points it out, but I hadn’t realized it...)
I’ve been using tools like DeepL Pro and sometimes had trouble with mathematical formulas getting garbled, but this solves that.

Throughout the entire book, the choice of themes consists only of truly practical examples, for which I am very grateful.

In closing

The Kindle version has been released too!
If you’re interested, please go buy it.
Rest assured, I don’t get a single yen from it (?)

The X (Twitter) accounts of the authors of this book

• Curry-chan (@currypurin) -san

• Karaage (@karaage0703) -san

A podcast where the two of them talk about the book

Postscript

I received a very positive reaction from the authors, “Curry-chan-san” and “Karaage-san,” yay!

Karaage-san also included a link to this blog in their article!

Oohashi-san from the editorial team even reposted it! I'm so happy!!