--- title: 2026: Annus horribilis | daily.dev description: A veteran programmer reflects on feeling obsolete as AI coding tools surpass human ability to understand code. He says the stress from this year's industry... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/2026-annus-horribilis-u2f99xlwu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: 2026: Annus horribilis | daily.dev og:description: A veteran programmer reflects on feeling obsolete as AI coding tools surpass human ability to understand code. He says the stress from this year's industry... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/2026-annus-horribilis-u2f99xlwu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/u2f99xLwU.png og:image:alt: 2026: Annus horribilis og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # 2026: Annus horribilis **[Planet Haskell](https://daily.dev/sources/phaskell)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A veteran programmer reflects on feeling obsolete as AI coding tools surpass human ability to understand code. He says the stress from this year's industry upheaval made him physically ill. He describes companies where looking directly at code is now discouraged, with specs written, reviewed and implemented entirely by bots. He references a reaction to OpenAI's October 2026 dump of mathematical proofs, noting that Rikab Gambhir points out most of them are 'horribly written'. He concludes that caring about code was always somewhat absurd, and that people, not code, matter. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - ["2026", AI Users vs The Unemployed.](https://daily.dev/posts/2026-ai-users-vs-the-unemployed--tavhigwcp) · DEV · 41 upvotes · 8 comments - [“I started to lose my ability to code”: developers grapple with the real cost of AI programming tools](https://daily.dev/posts/i-started-to-lose-my-ability-to-code-developers-grapple-with-the-real-cost-of-ai-programming-tool-2ysnnh7pi) · The New Stack · 2 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/2026-annus-horribilis-u2f99xlwu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"2026: Annus horribilis","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/2026-annus-horribilis-u2f99xlwu","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/2026-annus-horribilis-u2f99xlwu"},"datePublished":"2026-10-27T22:55:38.212Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T23:39:36.573Z","description":"A veteran programmer reflects on feeling obsolete as AI coding tools surpass human ability to understand code. 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