About whether learning a programming language still makes sense given AI.
Has this happened?
Yes 29 (23%)Not sure 23 (18%)No 76 (59%)
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 learning a programming language still makes sense given AI.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
No matter how many frameworks, programming languages, the cloud, tools we have invented demand for programmers has stayed high.
LLM is another tool. Until it can talk to a stakeholders and build something it can be accountable for to a
high standard that actually solves the problem and does well at the 1000 or so factors that make good software. I don’t worry about it right now.
AI is a threat to programmers precisely when it is a threat to civilisation. It may change the job substantially,
but change is normal, so did the www, mobile, VC, cloud, Javascript explosion, functional programming and so on.