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Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#931

Post by burnto »

I had received four very different bids for a home repair project. Just wildly different itemization breakdowns, costs, timelines, scopes, even formats. Opus helped me turn it into an apples-apples comparison, filled in missing areas with reasonable inferences based on the other bids, provided a nice pdf I printed to review with my partner, even offered suggested key questions for follow up calls. It really clarified the advantages of one of the bids.

I use it professionally all the time and could cite technical scenarios where it’s become almost indispensable, but saving me time and money and reducing stress on this mundane stuff… now imagine applying to people’s stressors: job searches, health, big purchases, debt… there’s an opportunity to actually make people’s lives better. After 30 years of hype cycles, I should be wary of techno-optimism. But here I am feeling cautiously optimistic anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#932

Post by moezd »

I was working on a project where the code was erroring hard, inconsistent, immensely bloated and probably written by a bit of 2023 era AI assistance. It didn't have a lot of tests, too. I had no intention to be a garbage man on that specific project, and yet fates had their own plans for me.

So I immediately went for the package.json, attached whatever test commands that could be done, then wrote some hand holding markdowns for the agents to consume. First I let it explore the codebase and take notes, then I asked for a different approach to implement, which essentially turned that "paint the sides and ship" project to a full rewrite. But guess what? All features, one by one, were implemented and extensively tested by AI. I tested all outputs myself, especially when agent got impatient and thought something was wrong in the shell env, and after a few PRs, I started to read less and only skimmed the results to see if the code "feels like it belongs with the rest". Bloat was reduced by about 25% and now all features look like they were created by a rather competent offshore software shop. Not bad, since I was also juggling a couple more projects and involvements at the same time which would've led me to certain burnout.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#934

Post by regisb »

thih9 wrote: post #765
shreddude wrote: post #44

I 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…

> I honestly don’t understand AI naysayers. As an AI naysayer, I see and appreciate the productivity gains, I don’t like the associated cost, mostly the spike in workflow centralization and opaqueness.

Yes and I'd like to talk about the environmental impact as well please.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#936

Post by joering2 »

Npovview wrote: post #543
simonw wrote: post #58

ChatGPT Code Interpreter back in ~March 2023. I uploaded a CSV file (of police incidents in San Francisco) and watched it load that into Pandas, show me some charts, then export the data to a SQLite database file for me to download. I write software for data journalists and this new thing appeared to be able to do everything I wanted my software to do just as an unplanned side effect of having the ability to run Pyth…

https://brownstone.org/articles/since-lockdowns-a-12-gdp-los... here's an example of Spanish journalist using AI to analyze US inflation data properly.

very interesting article, can you post it as separate HN thread?

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#937

Post by ericmcer »

dgemm wrote: post #272
andrewthornton wrote: post #77

My furnace went out during the 2025 holiday and I couldn't get an appointment with a repair person for 2 days. It was getting very cold in my house so I went into my attic and made several videos of the furnace attempting to start and gave it to gemini. It diagnosed the issue immediately and had me spin one of the components (a small exhaust fan) while the furnace tried to fire. It came on immediately. I had to do th…

Similar - had an HVAC tech out to diagnose mine (some intermittent electrical problem was killing thermostats randomly) and since it was intermittent they couldn't figure it out. I ended up using Gemini to narrow down a list of potential problem components and just replacing them all which fixed the issue. Kind of a superpower to turn anyone with a bit of tech inclination and problem solving skills into an HVAC tech…

Same story, ended up just need to replace a fuse and clean out some filters.

I hate to be a "tech elitist" or whatever, but goddamn it seems like software is one of the most learning intensive careers you can pick. A little dabbling around the house has made me an amateur plumber/HVAC/handyman/gardener/etc. I should have gone into a trade, just for the comfort of having a skillset that doesn't need to be updated every 3 months. I guess my brain plasticity will thank me.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#938

Post by calini »

I'll be really honest, I was running out of time on a mid size ticket at work. Basically swapping ~50 models from Go native to Protobuf messages, preserving some sane defaults we had in some already declared `.pb`s. I let it do it, it one shotted it, then I thought "hmm, would be nice for it to keep a changelog of big changes it does for me from now on so I don't have to keep reminding myself. I told it, and it created a hook for itself to do just that. From that chat onwards, every change bigger than what it considered "trivial" got added to an `AGENT_CHANGELOG.md`.

That got me hooked.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#940

Post by Gamemaster1379 »

williamdclt wrote: post #285
shreddude wrote: post #44

I 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.

I'm an expert at datalakes. I manage them for my company. I also am proficient at backend web. Even still I use Gen AI frequently to manage it all. When my company downsized I kept the lights on. Not enough bandwidth to do more. I've since materially improved the system and doing things we never did even at a team of 2 or 3.

Outside my expertise I've begun writing static recompilers for old retro game systems and have gotten some games off the ground. I understand WHAT they're doing but I neve had the expertise to do such things myself. Even if I did I could never operate at the velocity I am now.

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