Goalposts

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

2024 Novembernetdevnet

About whether LLMs can replace outsourced teams that deliver full software projects.

I don't know what's your experience with outsourcing. But people outsource full projects not the writing of a couple of methods. With LLMs still unable to fully understand relatively simple stuff, you can't expect them to deliver a project whose specification (like most software projects) contains ambiguities that only an experienced dev can detect and ask deep questions about the intention and purpose of the project. LLMs are nowhere near that. To be able to handle external uncertainty and turn it into certainty, to explain why technical decisions were made, to understand the purpose of a project and how it matches the project. To handle the overall uncertainties of writing code with other's people's code. All this is stuff outsourced teams do well. But LLMs won't be anywhere near good for at least a decade. I am calling it

An AI delivers a full software project, catching ambiguities in the spec and asking deep questions about the project's purpose.

Has this happened?

Yes 75 (56%)Not sure 22 (17%)No 36 (27%)

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