Many HN commentators went through the same thing over the last 3 years. You'd find plenty of skeptics in 2023 and 2024 comments. First half of 2025 was the anger stage. Later half of 2025 was full on bargaining stage when models like GPT5.2 and Opus 4.5 were released. In 2026, people are in depression stage.
I don't think most devs will go into acceptance stage until later this year when Blackwell-class models come online and AI undeniably write better code than vast majority of humans. I'm pretty sure GPT5.2 and Opus 4.5 were only trained on H200-class chips.
Edit: Based on comments here, it seems like HN is still mostly at the anger stage.
If the only way to advance my career was to talk into a chatbox that makes shit up and encourages people to kill themselves i would stop using computers to spend my days picking oranges. i guess some people feel differently.
I just tweeted the exact same thought a few days ago, I guess we're all going through the same journey right now.
When GPT3 was opened to researchers 4-5 years ago, a friend of mine had access and we tried some stuff together; I was blown away that it could translate code it hasn't seen between programming languages, but it seemed to be pretty bad at it at the time. I did not expect coding to be the killer app of LLMs but here we are.
>What I came to realize as I began using these tools more is that I was entirely wrong about feeling like my skills would become useless. They don't replace all the experience and knowledge I've accumulated in over two decades as a developer, and instead they enhance what I could do.
What you determine to be denial depends only on what you think is inevitable. OP said "my value is in performing more advanced functions that aren't just writing code", and to you it's denial because (from the implication) you think the complete elimination of software engineers as a job is inevitable. If OP said "my value is that I am multifunctional and can pivot to a completely different industry of mental labor" some people would call it denial because they think all those jobs are next in line on the chopping block. If OP said "my value is in being able to perform physical labor for cheap" some people would call it denial because robotics is progressing rapidly. And so on.
> Writing code isn't where I bring the most value. Understanding business problems, analyzing trade-offs, and making sure we're building the right things is where I can put all those years to good use. It might sound like an obvious thing, but it took me a while to get to this point.
Reaching this epiphany is a major milestone in the career of an SE even before the days of LLMs. That's basically the crux of it.
No. Bringing up stages of grief in a debate (rather than an account of personal experience, like in the post) is an argument-killer, because any negative response from the alleged grieving side is instantly taken down by smugly categorizing their negativity as a stage of grief. It's not just reserved to LLM arguments too, this is a common wrapper for the less dignified "you disagree with me which proves I'm right" position.
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[ 292 ms ] story [ 1376 ms ] threadI don't think most devs will go into acceptance stage until later this year when Blackwell-class models come online and AI undeniably write better code than vast majority of humans. I'm pretty sure GPT5.2 and Opus 4.5 were only trained on H200-class chips.
Edit: Based on comments here, it seems like HN is still mostly at the anger stage.
When GPT3 was opened to researchers 4-5 years ago, a friend of mine had access and we tried some stuff together; I was blown away that it could translate code it hasn't seen between programming languages, but it seemed to be pretty bad at it at the time. I did not expect coding to be the killer app of LLMs but here we are.
FYI this is the denial stage.
Reaching this epiphany is a major milestone in the career of an SE even before the days of LLMs. That's basically the crux of it.