About whether top AI models are worth paying for over cheaper ones like Qwen.
Has this happened?
Yes 26 (19%)Not sure 22 (16%)No 87 (64%)
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 top AI models are worth paying for over cheaper ones like Qwen.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
You need to supervise the model anyway, because you want that code to be long-term maintainable and defect free, and AI is nowhere near strong enough to guarantee that anytime soon. Using the latest Opus for literally everything is just a huge waste of effort.