About whether AI tools can safely delete and simplify code in large codebases.
Has this happened?
Yes 36 (28%)Not sure 40 (31%)No 51 (40%)
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 AI tools can safely delete and simplify code in large codebases.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
I'm not talking about dead-code elimination (that's something that compiles do since decades, without AI), and not about something like Scalafix's automatic refactorings (which are actually deterministic and correct, because it doesn't use AI), but about some true AI that could simplify code—and remove in that process at least 80% of it, because that's usually just crap that piled up over time.
Like said: Wake me up when when you can show me metrics where the use of AI shrunk code-bases by significant large amounts. For example going from 500 kLOC to 100 kLOC, or something like that. (Of course without loosing functionality; and at the same time making the code-base easier to understand). That would be success.
Everything that goes in the opposite direction is imho just leading inevitably to doom.