About whether AlphaCode threatens software engineers whose job is solving business problems.
Has this happened?
Yes 26 (21%)Not sure 22 (18%)No 75 (61%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AlphaCode threatens software engineers whose job is solving business problems.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
I actually agree with you on that. I had another comment further down the thread where I said that software engineering can’t be fully automated by anything short of artificial general intelligence.
As humans we have a coherent world model that current AI systems are nowhere near close to having.
That coherent world model is a necessary precondition for both understanding a business goal and implementing a program to solve it.
AlphaCode can do the second part but not the first.
AlphaCode doesn’t have that world model and even if it did it still wouldn’t autonomously act on it, just follow orders from humans.
Competitive programming is going to be solved much earlier than programming in a business context will, because it’s completely independent of business requirements. It’s at most half as hard of a problem .