About whether AI can do a developer's whole job, not just coding.
Has this happened?
Yes 42 (32%)Not sure 20 (15%)No 71 (53%)
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 can do a developer's whole job, not just coding.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Certainly some software jobs are easier than others, and anything that is more just coding (e.g. crud apps) than designing would be easier to automate. It's interesting though why this hasn't been done a long time ago? I remember a piece of software called "The Last One" from the 1980's that was meant to automate creation of simple business apps like these, and here we are 40 years later with people still creating "no/low code" solutions, and people still manually writing crud apps! Why?
I don't think AI will replace jobs until it can do the entire job (full lifecycle from requirements to bug fixes, etc) and be interacted with in the same way a boss or team lead could interact with a developer. If you still need a person in the loop then it's not a person replacement - it's a productivity tool.