❓ THIS WEEK'S ONE BIG QUESTION: What Skills Do Developers NEED To Have In An AI Future? ❓ @trishagee.bsky.social / @kentbeck.com AVAILABLE NOW | WATCH HERE ➡️ youtu.be/lJiDBRh96oU

@kentbeck.com ’s The Forest & The Desert Are Parallel Universes at GOTO CPH 2025 explored how similar behaviors lead to opposite outcomes - and how to get from crumbs to cake. 2026’s lineup looks incredible.

Inviting English hate monger Graham Linehan to Congress is bullshit. Actual parents are terrified their children will lose access to medical care. Republicans respond by importing lying bigots to lie. I am running for Congress so they have to say this shit to my face: bethfordemocracy.com

If software development is human communication & two parties are speaking different languages, we regain hope for mutual progress when we realize that we are speaking different languages (even though we use the same words).

Why The "10x Engineer" Is A Dangerous Myth | with Charity Majors 📽️ AVAILABLE NOW Watch: youtu.be/aDCOuZ80lDQ

experienced engineers: one change, test, one change, test junior engineers: batch everything because they're in a hurry this is exactly backwards the person least capable of batching is the one most likely to batch

enjoyed @kentbeck.com on bridges open.substack.com/pub/tidyfirs...

It's been hard (it's being hard?) to learn how to make human connections. It's still a learnable skill.

I know we're in the "horseless carriage" stage of augmented development & it's too soon to know what the "real" name is of this new activity, but... ...the genie suggested "wishcraft" & I don't hate it.

Slices fail when they're too small to provide feedback. But no amount of features fixes a flawed premise. Go smaller, but ask questions with what you build.

Whatever happened to furniture polish. I know it must still exist but the ads for Lemon Pledge used to be everywhere. Did we all just become inured to dull furniture

Models suddenly getting good enough to write most of my code - which I am now prompting - creates complicated feelings. It took a long time to get good at coding. And it's not easy. Plus, there was something special about being in "the zone." Full: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-grief-wh...

Two legends confirmed for The Pragmatic Summit: Martin Fowler (@martinfowler.com) and Kent Beck (@kentbeck.com) We'll talk about what past booms+busts taught them, and their take on AI+software engineering: what they see working, and what not so much 11 Feb, SF: www.pragmaticsummit.com

I want the government that Beth is a part of.

Interesting post: The Bet On Juniors Just Got Better open.substack.com/pub/tidyfirs... by @kentbeck.com #ai

Some economists claim “affordability” problems are a myth. Their reports miss that return to office is basically a 10% cut in our hourly wages. And the resulting traffic hits everyone. Economics doesn’t measure our lives.

Catch up on this week’s episode with @KentBeck.com He breaks down how teams burn optionality, why structure matters, and how making the hard change easy shapes every feature that follows. Listen with host @robbyonrails.com: maintainable.fm/episodes/ken...

We Tried Trunk-Based Development... The Results Were Shocking | @davefarley77.bsky.social 📽️ AVAILABLE NOW WATCH HERE ➡️ youtu.be/CR3LP2n2dWw

Emily is really digging deep here.

You know that rude driving move where 2 cars going opposite ways are stopped at a light. The oncoming car is making a left turn. As soon as the light turns, the oncoming car guns it in front of the car with the right of way & forces it to slam on its brakes. Just saw a Waymo do this.

Socialism is good, actually. We deserve Representatives with the courage to say so. bethfordemocracy.com

Why does feature development slow & what can we do about it? (This problem because acute with vibe coding.) tidyfirst.substack.com/p/why-does-d... tl;dr use the time between features to create options. What? You have no time between features? We'll talk about that later...

Every Software Engineer Can Learn TDD (If They Do It Like This) | @emilybache.com 📅 TONIGHT AT 7pm (UK) Subscribe & turn on notifications 🔔 so you never miss an upload ➡️ youtube.com/@ModernSoftw...

If you are a follower of my YouTube channel and are interested in how and why we started, do check-out, my son, Tom's video on that topic. Oh! and don't forget to "Like & Subscribe", maybe to both channels 😉😎 youtu.be/EWMwqp3gH7Q

I am very comfortable with my lack of gender. Partially it’s just because I’ve been like this for decades. But it is also an act of faith. My religion teaches that my experience of gender is holy and sanctified. To deny my experience would move away from the sacred. www.uua.org/pressroom/pr...

Please join us in celebrating the newest presenter to join us on the Modern Software Engineering channel... @tastapod.com (Daniel Terhorst-North! 🎉 Dan is a technology and organizational change specialist who has been coaching, coding and consulting for over 30 years... 1/2

Doomsday scenario: we figure out that genies can cheaply file for software patents & suddenly everything in software is patented, stuff like lazy initialization. Then the genies spend all their time negotiating about patent rights & no time coding.

Building Ikea furniture this weekend reminded me of two challenging life facts: * If it's not aligned, more force won't help. * If it's aligned, more force won't help. Take that, #996.

Interesting post: Pitching Hackathon Ideas: Oxymoron open.substack.com/pub/tidyfirs... by @kentbeck.com

If you demand that people control something they can't control, then expect them to control something else. If the mandate is "No Bugs!" without any social or technical change, then expect a response like "no *reported* bugs".

The flow of money represents the wants and needs of everyone in an economy. The problem with having billionaires is the same problem as trying to add huge numbers to tiny numbers using floating point. Except that in this case the “tiny numbers” that get lost are “normal people’s wants and needs”.

The number of assertions per test is power law distributed.

Refactoring is a key skill for good software design and it's also something you can get better at through practice. Check out my newly-published video training course which has lots of examples and exercises you can try courses.cd.training/courses/refa...

Please join us in celebrating a new presenter joining us on Modern Software Engineering, Sam Newman Technologist, independent consultant, speaker, and author of Building Microservices and Monolith To Microservices. Welcome, Sam.

Augmented coding is like ocean swimming vs pool swimming. In the pool you have straight lines & plenty of feedback. In the ocean you have to pop your head up & see where you're going periodically to actually make progress towards a goal. More strokes faster isn't going to get you there faster.

Augmented coding prediction--we're going to see team sizes shrink. XP has been dealing with this for 25 years, so g'head & ask if you'd like to know what comes next.

Beth certainly will!

@kentbeck.com of the day: Rhythm. Waiting until the right moment preserves energy and avoids clutter. Act with intensity when the time comes to act.

We’re proud to announce our 2nd #YOW25 keynote speaker: @kentbeck.com! His keynote “Sustainable Augmented Development” explores how we can keep development velocity high without sacrificing long-term sustainability. 🎟️ MEL 4-5 | BNE 8-9 | SYD 11-12 Dec yowcon.com

Running tests contains a fundamental information asymmetry seemingly ignored by most test runners. Test passes? NBD Information value much less than one bit. At most, increment some counter you'll show me later. When a test fails, though, that's a big deal! Show me that for sure.

3X Explore/Expand/Extract observation--criticism as a resource. I tried to use a tool yesterday & was angry when it didn't (yet) work for me. If you're Exploring & a user gets mad, that's such a gift. Just yesterday you a) didn't know quite what to do & b) weren't sure anyone cared what you did.

Coding agents aren't like juniors, they are like Amelia Bedelia

My favorite part of running so far is connecting with skeptics. People have a picture in their head of a “trans socialist”. It isn’t usually a curious motorcycle-riding homeowner with a pickup truck who is nearly impossible to offend. That moment of confusion can be the start of a conversation.

If your most effective management skill is insisting people work 80 hours a week, you might want to consider learning some new management skills.

The NUMBER ONE Principle of Software Design | @davefarley77.bsky.social & @kentbeck.com AVAILABLE NOW 📽️ Watch HERE 🔗 youtu.be/oRxHR-Ll4zQ

I don’t understand what any of this stuff going on in the culture means but I fully support it because it upsets maga nazis so much

Vocab word to avoid—inguinal

Join @kentbeck.com's #YOW25 1-day masterclass: Tidy Together: A Software Design Masterclass, and learn safe refactoring, design change mgmt & the human side of code. 📍 MEL 3 Dec yowcon.com/melbourne-20... 📍 SYD 10 Dec yowcon.com/sydney-2025/...

I contrast augmented coding with coding one finger at a time.

3X: Explore/Expand/Extract is thrown into higher relief by the introduction of the genie. Exploration is cheaper. The need to shift gears into Expand is starker. And the use of the genie to efficiently Extract is still a mystery.