Mine was using VScode with copilot. Previously I had used tab completion and thought it was pretty neat. This time I began with the comment for a function I wanted to write. And the entire function just appeared below the comment. Written probably better than I would have. I remember saying, “uh-oh” out loud.
Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#712i wanted to build a formatter for my postgres language server but always knew i would never have the time for it. when claude code first came out, i gave it a shot, but it was too inconsistent and still needed too much handholding. i retried it again at the beginning of this year. like before, i set up the harness to run overnight, expecting to throw it away the next morning. but nope, it deliberately worked through all the syntax nodes and followed patterns closely enough so that a few hours of my work could make it ready for the pr.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#713Several. Yesterday a friend with no prior coding experience or knowledge showed me an app he initially built to help him study for public administration job positions. The exams for this positions are public (spain), but the tools are scarce, expensive or he did not like. So he used lovable, then switched to web gemini and claude, then paid claude. He now has +130 very active users on an initial free tier, while he f…
> Now I have a local folder where I drop my 1 student list, with names and emails, 2 my loose notes, and 3 a qualification & feedback sheet model; then claude creates a sheet per student, formats and copies the feedback to the right sheet cell, waits for my corrections, then sends everything to their school emails Yikes! Is this legal in your country?
possibly not or grey area under GDPR if I use identifiable information, as it is sent to Anthropic for processing, no matter if used for training or not, but I am unsure about this, I should probably anonymize and research it more, thanks for pointing it out
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now I have a local folder where I drop my 1 student list, with names and emails, 2 my loose notes, and 3 a qualification & feedback sheet model; then claude creates a sheet per student, formats and copies the feedback to the right sheet cell, waits for my corrections, then sends everything to their school emails Yikes! Is this legal in your country?
possibly not or grey area under GDPR if I use identifiable information, as it is sent to Anthropic for processing, no matter if used for training or not, but I am unsure about this, I should probably anonymize and research it more, thanks for pointing it out
There is another institution I teach at that gives us Gemini, but not via API, which limits its use for this kind of work to an extent, I could do it via drive, I assume. There being a contract puts the institution and Google as responsible of the data. The first institution I was talking about has MS Teams, without AI afaik, but if they contract it I guess I can do the same with sharepoint, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#715I 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 person…
> projects I simply could not have ever approached alone. I think that's part of the divide between enthusiasts and naysayers. If you use GenAI on things that you couldn't approach alone, it's an incredible tool. If you use it on stuff that you're pretty good at, it's not a gamechanger (and if you're an expert, it's a minor boost at best). Many people's job are about doing what they're an expert at.
> If you use it on stuff that you’re pretty good at, it’s not a gamechanger (and if you’re an expert, it’s a minor boost at best).
This was probably true last year, and it’s a common talking point, but I’ve seen too many examples now of deep experts using Claude & Codex in the last year to solve very big problems, and write or rewrite large systems. The experts do complain that the LLMs can sometimes get stuck or go off the rails and they need to pay attention and actively steer. But nobody I know who’s using it is still claiming the LLMs aren’t a game changer, even quite a few people who were staunch holdouts for a long time. I was skeptical myself, for a long time, but had my oh shit moment late last year.
One caveat - to get expert results, you do need to have some experience using LLMs, you need to use it to write plans and design docs, know how to use ‘skills’ and MCPs, use it to review code, and (for now) you need to understand context compaction and when/why to use sub-agents. If you’re a domain expert but an AI noob, it’s less effective than an expert who knows how to use AI and has experience.
One of the biggest problem with humans is we’re wired to spot patterns and draw conclusions and then we have a really hard time seeing and accepting change and updating our mental rules. The LLMs are getting better. They have already gotten better, and they’re going to continue getting better. It’s too early to draw conclusions, and many conclusions people have already declared are out of date and no longer true.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#716I bought an Alesis QS8.1 super cheap in perfect condition (was a top grade digital piano/synth in the 90s). and then i realized that ALL of the software (which i collected from defunct websites and archived on github) related to it was ancient and after a while of getting tired of using WINE every single time i decided i wanted a cross platform modern equivalent that did everything that several of these different pro…
I had that keyboard! I actually really like the piano-ish touch. I remember being sad though, when I realized they’d crammed all the sounds into I think 16MB (or was it 8?) and realizing how bad that was even by the late 90s! I think I still have mine in the garage somewhere… good times!
I loved mine. Had it since the 90s, working perfectly.
One day a few years ago my dad came by and was admiring it (it was a QS8) and asked to borrow it so he could play piano again.
I, of course, said sure, but was feeling a little salty about it inside, because I wanted it to play, that's why I had it all set up.
Anyway, about a year went by and I asked him about it to see if he was done with it.
He said "oh that thing? I gave that away, was just taking up space"
-.-
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#717Several. Yesterday a friend with no prior coding experience or knowledge showed me an app he initially built to help him study for public administration job positions. The exams for this positions are public (spain), but the tools are scarce, expensive or he did not like. So he used lovable, then switched to web gemini and claude, then paid claude. He now has +130 very active users on an initial free tier, while he f…
So you're sending your students private data to Anthropic?
See answer above. Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#718> a welcome farewell to Stack Overflow.
Nothing will change the fact that beginners have unknown unknowns. They can't solve most of their problems with a chatbot because they don't know what to ask. Maybe they can literally copy and paste in the code with a "help plz" and get a working result, but they won't learn anything from it.
> slightly panicked, "Uh Oh" realization of what these models can do?
No; my panic is about how people are using the tech, and responding to it.
That started with Stack Exchange, Inc.'s ham-handed attempts to force AI-powered features into Stack Overflow, even as the community was rejecting LLM-generated content in questions and answers. Businesses don't care what customers want, don't recognize how sloppy their slop is, and wouldn't try to do anything about it if they did.
Recently people have been talking about code shops accumulating massive piles of technical debt willingly, assuming that the next generation of models will sort everything out, or that humans don't need to understand the code because it will mostly be read by other models anyway. The underlying attitude is not surprising at this point.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#719I can actually use and enjoy Linux. The "year of the desktop" never came for me, but instead I got the "year of the cli". For 20 years I've used Linux in one form or another, but I've felt like I was kneecapped for the most basic things. Just trying to plug in an external drive or a second display meant hours of stack overflow and pasting commands I didn't understand. Now I'm using several Linux machines for Steam, N…
It changed the cost/benefits for papercuts. Instead of thinking, that's annoying, but not annoying enough to fix, I can spend a few minutes running things specific to my configuration. Fixing bluetooth, fingerprint readers were recent ones.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#720When I wrote a captcha cracking convnet in 2000 and tested it ... And in 1 out of 5 runs it beat me.
2000 eh? Well ahead of the curve!
... except that 2005-2013 or so was an AI winter. So it was too much ahead of the curve, also useless. Nobody was investing in AI at that time, not even Google (that was when they got started and they thought letting linguists manually write rules was "obviously" going to beat ML)
I mean except that I learned a lot and went into networking and internet which went well.