Ask HN: Were programmers more surprised than general public by ChatGPT in 2022?
3amichail29/10/2025, 7:47:04 PM
Maybe programmers were more skeptical about what AI could do before ChatGPT was released?
Comments (2)
jimbo808 · 1h ago
No. They didn't code very well back then, they just pattern matched and regurgitated whatever code snippet was in some GitHub repo that matched your prompt best. And that's what they're doing now, too.
They're useful tools when used intelligently, and they can have their moments of surprising utility, but by an large they're like really fancy boilerplate generators but with far less accuracy and reliability.
JohnFen · 1h ago
I don't know about most devs, but I wasn't surprised at all. But then, I actively work on deep learning (not LLM) systems, so I'm probably more in tune with developments in this stuff than most.
They're useful tools when used intelligently, and they can have their moments of surprising utility, but by an large they're like really fancy boilerplate generators but with far less accuracy and reliability.