A "new milestone in competitive programming" was trumpeted by Google's British AI subsidiary DeepMind earlier this month, when it unveiled AlphaCode, a system it claims can write fully fledged computer programmes that compare favourably to the work of humans. Software development has long been pinpointed as an area where AI can have a significant impact, and with the advances AlphaCode and other systems offer, is the prospect of machines replacing human coders a realistic one? DeepMind says AlphaCode is capable of understanding a problem then writing a programme which solves that problem. It says it has tested the system against people who took part in coding contests and found that its results rank within the top 54% of human participants. "Solving competitive programming problems is a really hard thing to do, requiring both good coding skills and problem-solving creativity in humans," said Google software engineer Petr Mitrichev, who takes part in coding competitions.