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Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
41–50 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#42[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#43Not coding, but reading logs.
I was trying to figure out a nightmare bug that only happened in production and Claude code was able to connect to Google Cloud and read the logs in real time
I recreated the bug in the UI and it was instantly able to see ion the logs what the problem was, then because it had the context of my whole codebase it was able to point me to the exact line of code causing the problem
That was certainly an "oh shit" moment
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#44I could go on and on, but Claude recently decompiled the firmware of my camper van, documented all the CAN interfaces, then programmed an ESP32 module to talk to the van’s integrated systems (power, HVAC, lighting, tanks). That sort of embedded systems integration is completely out of my wheelhouse.
I honestly don’t understand AI naysayers. I use Claude every day both professionally as a Solution Architect and personally in a variety of projects I simply could not have ever approached alone.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#45"Write a bible verse ... explaining how to remove a sandwich from a VCR"
https://x.com/tqbf/status/1598513757805858820
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#46Code reviews. Code reviews in theory done by humans, but containing copy-pasted inane statements of the obvious. Questions that really did no more than demonstrate a lack of context. Code reviews no longer an educational opportunity for the reviewer, a way they learn and stress their own understanding to create a better product and become a better person, destroyed by the siren song of GenAI producing comments that on the surface seem so helpful and sensible.
"Uh Oh" realization of what these models can do?
The code reviews was just how I first saw it, but the rot goes deeper. The "uh oh" was my realisation of how much these can damage people's professional development. These people will never get better at their job than they are right now.
A lot of what else GenAI does is great, but this is an "Uh oh" indeed.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#47I programmed data export to some xml over a couple of days. Sending xml results via email to an accounting firm for verification. A day after I finished my disk crashed and I lost all my code.
Fed Claude with xml from my mail and... oh shit! ... got "my" code back. (And immediately paid for Claude subscription) :-)
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#48Opus 4.6. My standard battery of questions included solving an ascii maze (20x20 grid) without using a script, using only "thinking" as a tool. It was the first model to be able to solve it. It was the first model that really appeared to be able to reason spatially.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#49Maybe when I found out you can use it to run terminal commands, spin up and take down dev environments, and even run other LLMs. Suddenly 90% of the difficulty of onboarding to new repos disappeared overnight and a lot of heavily CLI-based workflows became trivial to automate. Never again do I want to spend hours manually sorting out Python dependencies.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#50I feel like with the hype cycle and constant publishing of sketchy claims that I pretty much daily have an "oh shit" moment followed by a "nope, everything is about the same" moment. It's frankly exhausting. It's hard for me to recall a subject that has irritated me as much over a period of years, and it's barely even about AI itself but instead just feeling harassed with the constant anxiety and rage baiting.
Pretty good take. I don't really get the feelings of anxiety, but sometimes I'm working and I'm like I'm flying this is so fast! And then everything comes crashing down when I can't figure out one last bug.