My thoughts on how AI will automate my SWE job in 2026 (I will be plainly honest on this post, even though some people on both sides of this debate will be upset. So, please, respect that these are my predictions. I don't want to start an argument, I just want to share my thoughts with people who might be interested.) So, through the last few days, I've been running a crazy experiment: rebuild HVM from scratch, with AI only. Turns out there is now a model (you know which - no more ads 😑) that is already capable of writing most of my code. I give it instructions, go do something else, and come back to a (possibly) working implementation. And that's really incredible. What I wonder is: what is still consuming my time? I'm an experienced developer. Given enough time™, I could accomplish a lot. In a year or two, I could write a browser, an operating system, a game engine, an MMORPG. So, if AIs are truly automating my job, how come I didn't ship all these things yet? What would objectively prevent me from becoming a single-man massive SWE company, if I wanted to? Well, other than the obvious bureaucratic matters, even in the pure coding sense, that is obviously not possible, for one reason: The AI can only work for so long before it needs me. Here's how this experiment went: 1. I wrote a full spec of the "next-gen HVM" 2. I asked the AI to make the first part (parser) 3. It wrote 80% correct code, but got key points wrong 4. I corrected these points (expert intelligence injection) 5. It wrote 100% correct code 6. I asked the AI to make the second part 7. ... repeat 2-5 over and over ... About 3 days later, I have a working prototype. I didn't write more than 1% of that code. I spent 95% of that time playing games. From a point of view, the AI automated 95% of my job, if we measure by time alone. Yet, from another point of view, it automated 0% of my job. After all, without the expert (me) stepping in every 30 minutes, the AI wouldn't be able to move past the very first module. That is, if I just said "implement the spec" and left it working alone, it would not complete the job. Not in 3 days, not in 3 years. I'd just come back to a bug-ridden, useless codebase, and a traumatized codebot. Is a way, this is kinda the best case scenario for the desperate about job loss: today AI can automate most of your job, as long as it is you doing it! How convenient, isn't it? Of course, we can't count on that being true forever. If the "autonomous work time span" keeps increasing - as many expect - then, as soon as it hits the 3 day mark (48x times from where we are now), it would have been able to complete the job without any intervention. At least in theory. Now, when (or whether) that happens, it depends on the big AI labs, and I really have no control over it. Yet, what I can do is ask: Given whatever is the SOTA model's autonomous work time window, can I implement a new language and tooling so good that it extend that time window by a constant, but substantial, factor? Can I make the Bend2→NeoGen→AI loop so good that this same model would be able to complete this very task with way less interventions - or, even better, fully autonomously? I'm really excited because I think the answer is "yes", and it seems like we're really close to that point here. If that really works, that would be a huge, because we'd then be able to automate the development of massive scale software, a few years before models are able to do so on their own. (I wonder if HOC should just become a SWE company at that point?) Plus it would be a massive bump on my quality of life, as I'd finally be able to stop playing League of Legends, and go play Ragnarok Online instead, like the old times 🥳 Anyway that's what's currently on my mind Thanks for reading and have a great day (Today I'll let the AI keep polishing ""HVM4"" as I do other things😏 on the background. I really want to see how far this goes.)