Recently, Musk made a groundbreaking prediction in a newly released video: by the end of 2026, humans will no longer need programming. He pointed out that future AI will directly write binary code more efficient than traditional compilers, completely eliminating the outdated intermediate step of "source code."
Musk's "Zero-Distance" Vision: Will the Programming Profession Disappear?
Musk believes the reliance on programming languages is weakening, and AI can seamlessly connect from requirements analysis to executable programs, significantly shortening the physical distance between ideas and implementation. In his view, the profession of programming may disappear, and software development will enter a "what you think is what you get" era of pure execution.
The "Spring Festival Release" of Domestic AI: Focusing on Agent-Native Development
Although Musk's remarks are controversial, the market enthusiasm is at its peak. In the domestic AI competition in early 2026, major manufacturers have updated frequently, with an astonishingly consistent focus: AI Programming and Agent Workflows:
ByteDance (February 14): Launched the Doubao 2.0 series, whose Code model has enhanced code library interpretation and Agent automatic error correction capabilities.
MiniMax (February 12): Introduced the world's first production-level model designed natively for Agents, MiniMax M2.5, supporting full-stack programming with extremely high reasoning efficiency, directly competing with top international standards.
Zhipu AI (February 11): Launched its flagship model, GLM-5, which improves programming performance by over 20% compared to the previous generation. It not only performs well in the SWE-bench test but also shows strong autonomy in complex system engineering tasks.
DeepSeek (preparing to launch): Market expectations suggest that DeepSeek V4 will enter the market during the Spring Festival as a "programming ace," continuing its dominance in the code field.
Industry Consensus: Programmers Won't Disappear, But 'Code Farmers' Will Be Replaced
Compared to Musk's radical predictions, the pioneers in the AI field, Anthropic, gave a more moderate yet harsh conclusion in their "2026 Agent Coding Trends Report." The report states that projects that once took 4 to 8 months now take just two weeks with the help of models like Claude. The programmer profession will not disappear, but their role will shift from "manual logic writers" to "architectural auditors" and "Agent coordinators."
Business Landscape: A $2.6 Billion Market Opportunity
According to Grand View Horizon data, the global AI code tools market is expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2030. Analysts point out that domestic AI tools, with their high cost-effectiveness, deep integration with local large models, and better alignment with domestic IDE habits, are accelerating their penetration into niche fields.
This revolution, from the bottom binary level to the high-level Agent, is, as Musk said, rewriting the way humans create things for ten thousand years.
