I occasionally find myself wanting to directly contact someone with expert understanding of something—some software, some topic—to ask a few specific questions and have a brief discussion about an idea, a workflow, etc. Naturally, I’d be happy to pay for such a service.
Stack Overflow is all well and good, but I am looking to have a longer discussion / more precise and detailed feedback about something specific that I’m working on. Most recently I’ve wanted to talk to an expert in Adobe InDesign to check that some process I have set up is the right way to go about things. In the past I’ve wanted to get advice and feedback on the overall architecture of a small project’s code base.
I haven’t been able to find a generic “contact an expert” website or serve out there. Has anyone else?
ChatGPT
Seconding the recommendation. I use ChatGPT recently to ask about various things. And although it (the unpaid GPT-3 version) makes many mistakes, it also often catches and explains my mistakes and misconceptions.
The fact that it makes mistakes is much less of a problem than it might seem, because when something feels fishy, I can ask extra questions. Unlike a human (or Bing chat) it won’t get offended when I challenge its answers. “Previously you said X, now you are saying Y, how is that possible?”
I agree ChatGPT4 is helping me tremendously as a personal tutor, especially in a session that has been ongoing since the start of the semester last month. I’ve been using it to supplement my readings and assignments, asking for a better understanding of topics, and to explain things better than a section of text I may type into chat.
In my 50s, working full time, and having started my pursuit of a degree a little over a year ago by taking two classes per semester, ChatGPT is very helpful and worth $20/month. Not only as a tutor but also some(thing)one to bounce thoughts off of.
chatGPT! no seriously, it does it!
Wyzant