Goalposts

Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?

2024 Augustcorytheboyd

About whether developers should feel threatened by AI coding tools.

I don’t feel threatened by it, and I haven’t seen anything that warrants this reaction. Putting code into files is trivial entry-level stuff. Let me know when an automation flawlessly (as in 100% accuracy), consistently (not just once), and with truly arbitrary requests (not cherry-picked) pulls off systemic refactors and feature additions to one or more massive codebases full of poorly written, non-standard garbage. For the record, I find today’s AI tools useful, but they do not at all threaten my livelihood.

An AI flawlessly and consistently performs systemic refactors and feature additions on arbitrary requests to massive, poorly written codebases.

Has this happened?

Yes 41 (39%)Not sure 21 (20%)No 42 (40%)

Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.