The headline should be “Trump announces he will embezzle $1.776 billion dollars”. It is a crime, not a law. Elect a Democrat who won’t pretend crimes are normal: bethfordemocracy.com

Thank you for everyone who came out to our meet and greet yesterday.

Genies in the Forest & the Desert--once again genies reflect & amplify what already exists. The Desert becomes the desert but now you're alone. The Forest becomes the forest with whole new sources of food & shelter.

The assumption seems to be that the best use we have for people is eliminating their salaries.

murderbot day

AI tools don't muddle along with us. They fall below muddling, plausible deniability disguised as code. Low features, low flexibility, complexity stacking until even the genie gives up.

There's one concept from economics that explains almost every disagreement I've ever had about work and money. I've been teaching it for 30 years. Turns out I wasn't fully applying it to myself.

If the agent writes 1,000 lines in seconds, maybe you can finally let go of them. "When you can easily regenerate it, it feels less valuable. And that makes it easier to throw away." We've always struggled with sunk cost in code. AI might be solving that accidentally. More on E3 of Still Burning.

The first episode was very compelling. Looking forward to the actual interviews!

I want LiveCodeBench but showing how many tokens/€s/KWhs it takes to get to 100%. Not interested in scores less than 100%.

14th Amendment (1868): “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Seems pretty clear to me.

We're blacksmiths. Some of what we know transfers to this new world. Some of it doesn't. Figuring out which is which is our next greatest challenge. 🎧 Still Burning ep. 1 —

10 years from now, who even knows what part of software development will still be a human activity? Nobody Knows.

It's a little odd to me how influenced I am when a company's giveaway pens are really high quality. I end up thinking they must do everything well. Which has so far been true.

Lovely turn of a phrase

Knocking on doors yesterday, I met a six year old. She asked me what Congress was. I told her, "it's the people who make the rules for grownups." I didn't tell her that right now some grownups aren't following the rules. Congress should do its job and put them in timeout.

A new podcast, hosted by yours truly, coming soon...

I hate the re-soloing of development. We were so close to learning social skills, creating community, encouraging creativity & purpose, & applying empathy. Easier to manage if each of us is so busy with our genieswarms that we don't have time to talk & reflect.

What do you do when everyone wants everything now?

Jesse Jackson gave me words to live by—“I’m a tree shaker, not a jelly maker”

I've spent the last year deep in augmented coding — how genies change what programmers do & don't do. Now I'm curious what that looks like in govtech, where shipping isn't theoretical. Speaking at @Rise8's ShipSummit, Park City, March 31 - April 2.

❓ 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