I've been testing daily how to adjust my development workflow and process to leverage tools like Chat GPT, Github Copilot, and Github Copilot Labs more effectively.
Ironically, I wanted to create some very basic pagination for this very blog. So, I reached out to Chat GPT with a simple prompt to create an algorithm for creating a list of pages, max 5 visible based on a total page count, where the current page is in the middle of the list if possible. And it delivered a great answer!
This was a great solution and works as expected with the one exception, for me, that it considered pageCount to be a human-readable number such as "There are 5 pages" and currentPage to be a zero-based index, where 0 represents the first page.
On the surface, this is frankly to be expected and a usual solution. I was just not happy with the overhead of considering the page index I'm rendering mapped to the page count. So I reached for the "Custom" brush via Github Copilot Labs in Visual Studio Code using the prompt "refactor this function where 'currentPage` is base one", and it refactored my function inline to the following:
👌✨
It's just what I wanted to make my process that much easier and it took no time at all. I didn't need to sit and consider if it was a good use of time to refactor it myself. I just reached for the tool and it delivered what I wanted.
It's an obvious way to use a tool designed exactly for this purpose, but I hope this helps you consider new ways to use these burgeoning AI tools in your work.
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