About whether LLMs will end the need for software developers.
Has this happened?
Yes 71 (51%)Not sure 18 (13%)No 51 (36%)
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 LLMs will end the need for software developers.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Big part of coding is understanding the code and making decisions on what needs to be added/removed/changed. LLMs can code, even if they generate perfect code every single time, someone still needs to read the code and make decisions. Others speak about understanding business logic, interfacing with clients and stakeholders,etc... I get that, but even without that, someone will always need to decide how things should be done, improved,etc.. LLMs are not going to benchmark your code and they will never understand the developer/client's intent perfectly.
Why are LLMs in these context being viewed as more than really powerful auto-complete/intellisense? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't LLMs still years away from auto-generating a complete complex codebase that works without fixing a lot of bugs/assumptions?