Coding Is Not Solved
- ID
- 29388
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 28 Sep 2026, 9:52 PM
- Fetched
- 29 Sep 2026, 12:46 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/coding-is-not-solved
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 7.0
- Created
- 29 Sep 2026, 12:46 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_ml_learnerssaas_founders
What happened
In a Sep 26, 2026 post, Alex Ewerlöf argues that "coding is solved" is wrong, claiming that maintenance, reliability, security and scalability (non-functional requirements) — not initial code creation — make up most of the cost of real software, and that even functional requirements remain unsolved. He names only three cases where not reading the generated code is defensible: personal software, proofs of concept, and deliberately weaponized AI, and contrasts them with low-risk-tolerance domains like healthcare, finance, automotive, defense, power plants, aviation and manufacturing. The piece drew 215 points and 204 comments on Hacker News.
Why it matters
If your team uses LLM coding tools, this gives you a usable triage rule rather than a vibe: the author's own line is that skipping code review is only defensible where risk tolerance is high (personal automation, a throwaway POC), while anything where a mistake costs money, lives or legal exposure requires a human who can be held accountable — which he argues an AI structurally cannot be. The practical decision is which of your shipped features sit on each side of that line, not whether to adopt the tools.
Discussion angle
Take three things your team shipped in the last quarter and sort them into the author's categories — personal/POC vs the low-risk-tolerance list — then ask whether your current review process actually matches that split, and what the 204-comment thread disagreed with.