The basics of prompt engineering
For this section, you will need to set up an account to use ChatGPT. You will have the choice between a free account that uses GPT 3.5 or a paid account that uses 4.0. For this book, we’re going to use the free account. At any point, if you want to, you can upgrade to the paid account! Once you’re set up, you will be free to move on to creating your first prompt!
Creating a prompt
The key to interacting with ChatGPT or any other GenAI is understanding what a prompt is. In my earlier writings about ChatGPT, for better or worse, I almost always exclusively referred to a prompt as a query. I did that because, in my opinion, the best way to interact with GPT is as a tool that can answer questions. These questions may command the system to generate a code block, email, or simply answer a general question, and though they may be worded as commands to ChatGPT, they have their roots in questions. In my opinion, a great prompt has its mental...
