Does Computer Science still exist?

After an AI agent autonomously ported the 1982 dungeon crawler "Hack" from PDP code to JavaScript with near-complete test coverage and debugging, a CS professor questions what it means to "understand" code when AI agents can accomplish such reasoning independently.

Monday, March 23, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: LobstersBY sys://pipeline

A CS professor reflects on whether Computer Science still exists as a discipline after watching an AI agent autonomously port the classic 1982 dungeon crawler "Hack" from PDP code to JavaScript overnight — debugging, reasoning, and achieving near 100% test coverage without human intervention. The piece uses this as a lens to examine how AI changes the nature of programming, the relationship between programmers and machines, and what it means to "understand" code. Thoughtful, substantive essay from an academic perspective on agentic coding's implications for the field.