About whether coding will still exist as a profession in five years.
Has this happened?
Yes 61 (54%)Not sure 17 (15%)No 35 (31%)
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 coding will still exist as a profession in five years.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Definitely. It's possible that programming will reach its peak as a percentage of the population that's employed within 5 years as AI tools make people more productive, but I don't see things changing to "AI, write me an app that does this" and the AI getting it to build, run, and deploy perfectly in anything under 20 years. Programmers will be required until it can do that, because any tiny issue can cause the program to fail and the AI would need to find requirements from whoever is prompting it, which is the hard part.