Let's talk about AI Hype and the Theory of Constraints. From a business perspective, the key metric is "lead time." The time it takes to get an idea to the point where it's producing revenue ("in the customer's hands"). 1/10

Also on "well isn't *spell checking* AI???" smug arguments: Every spell checker on every software I use to write has gotten worse and stupid as more and more ML features have been added. It literally cannot do better than a simple strict check for words not in a dictionary.

The paradox of our times: everybody in software talks about how “AI” ramps up productivity by an order of magnitude Meanwhile the software I follow, the platforms I keep track of, and the releases I follow keep the same pace as before except buggier, less usable, and more prone to catastrophe

"I Built a Production-Ready App Using AI, and You Can Inspect the Entire Repo" * inspects repo * Me: "I couldn't find the tests. Are they in a separate repo?" Them: "Folks can run whatever tests they want." Er. Okay. When you said "production-ready"..?

When we look beyond these sensational "flying saucer reports", we see no AI-generated Spotify or Salesforce or SAP. No LLM-generated games bothering the charts. No noticeable uptick in new products being added to the app stores. So, where is everybody? codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/12/14/t...

Sick of push and pray? Try the DevOps way. That is, shift the testing of your GitHub Actions as left as possible. I'll tell you how in my latest blog post where you learn about property-based testing and mutation testing. polarsquad.com/blog/craftsp...

As the influx of new (agentic) text editing tools shows no signs of slowing down, one should remain calm and remind themselves of the following three laws of tools:

🧵 As we figure out what role LLMs and Gen AI systems will play in developing software, I await with interest actual experience reports, such as this one: (> next)

Programmers will debate endlessly the correctness of code implementing a “taser my genitals” button, its accessibility, and how to place it on the screen to minimise accidental activation, without ever pausing to ask whether frying the end-user’s balls is a good design or not

I am really enjoying having some time between contracts at the moment... I just wrote an article about the test desiderata - this has been on my mind to write about for several years at this point! coding-is-like-cooking.info/2025/12/test...

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

Next in my GitHub Actions series, I focus on turning testability smells to testability aids with a simple trick. If you're accustomed to copying code examples from tutorials (or accepting LLM outputs at face value) and pondering how to test them, this post is for you. polarsquad.com/blog/craftsp...

I'm starting a three-part blog series over at Polar Squad about designing, building, and releasing Typescript-based GitHub Actions with high quality. Here's a teaser that'll make you itch, the first post about critical design considerations is out soon. polarsquad.com/blog/craftsp...

My Apple Watch tracks my standing hours and notifies me when I should stand up for a while. Just now it congratulated me for standing up and moving while I was sitting.

Scott Galloway a decade ago: "In the 60s our brightest minds put us on the Moon, now they're in Silicon Valley trying to optimize ad visibility to get you to maybe buy a car you have no interest in." And we don't think about this as often as we should.

RIP Mikko Holmström. youtu.be/dNcqnvlSrEw?...

I luuurve my automated refactorings, which is why I'm @jetbrains.com across the board. But when I'm working in Python or JS, I'm forced to do some by hand. 2 in particular I do often when I'm separating concerns. Here's a little guide to how I tackle them codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/m...

Do trivial problems in software require modular solutions, or are we overengineering? Recently, I had a task of transforming a composite GitHub Action — essentially a shell script — to a complete TypeScript action even though it only interacted with the GitHub REST API using a single endpoint call.

Discussing with several software developers over the past few months has led me to believe that crafting high-quality designs is not as easy as it seems. Thus, I wrote a blog post attempting to tap into this specific challenge and how to overcome it. nikoheikkila.fi/blog/everyda...

"Our newest model, <name>, is available today. It’s intelligent, efficient, and the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use." Sure, but can it write decent automated tests, and iteratively refactor towards the simplest design? I thought as much.

Modularity is the key to fast feedback cycles, short delivery lead times, reliable products and a sustainable pace of innovation. Apart from that, it's not very important, really. codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/m...

When I introduce mutation testing to teams on the Code Craft training workshop, it's invariably one of those "How did this not occur to us before?" moments. "Is our code broken and we don't know it?" Let's break it and see if any of your tests fail.

The upside of hosting one's DNS and web projects in CloudFlare is that when they go down, everyone barely notices a couple of sites missing because half of the Internet is also down.

The finale of the great TV comedy show Blackadder goes Forth. Back then I didn't expect one of the funniest programmes ever to end with a scene that makes me cry every time I see it. Every single time.

Netlify is worsening its pricing model by replacing build minutes with credits. Soon, each production deployment will cost me 15 credits, allowing for only 20 deployments per month.

I have a strange little pastime activity as a coroner, where I go through some of my old hobby projects that have been gathering dust for months or years, and nurse them back to health. Well, being a coroner is an exaggeration since they haven't really died ever. Every time I note the same pattern:

One piece of common wisdom that I've come to disagree with is "do the most complicated thing first." In a waterfall world, that's a risk-reduction strategy, but in an incremental development context, it's actually the opposite. 1/7

This is a good read. The sick cult of velocity burns out minds and ends careers at worst. Professionalism is about being slow when the time calls for it and accelerating thoughtfully. "The world doesn’t need faster engineers. It needs steadier ones" russmiles.substack.com/p/in-praise-...

Skip tonight's movie and read this if your management is shoving LLM usage on your team.

Pull Requests are mandatory here.

...because organisations aren't bundles of individuals, but systems. And as @jasongorman.bsky.social points out, if you add a "fire-hose to your plumbing", and your plumbing has lots of bottlenecks, it might not go all that well.

When folks talk about their "AI-assisted" dev process, it's very useful to see the resulting code so I can calibrate my understanding of what they mean by "good".

Things that not every product needs: - push notifications - chat - a perky AI assistant Jus’ sayin

"Gamers talk about 'saving their game'. If you save your game (at least before a boss fight) you can gracefully return to your healthy pre-battle state. It’s the same with software." — @agile-otter.bsky.social www.industriallogic.com/blog/save-yo...

If we're having a debate, and at any point you say, "let's ask ChatGPT", then you lose by default.

Only when used properly, which does not mean writing imperative script logic inside functions. The same goes for OOP, naturally.

People think software development is about writing code. It is not! It is about: Communication Collaboration Simplicity Courage Respect -- XP Values, @kentbeck.com @jamesshore.bsky.social #agilecam

When will @bsky.app start supporting passkeys as MFA solution instead of emailing me login [email protected]

I'm seeing a wave after another of people migrating away from Vercel. What a meltdown for a tech company, although there must be a tiny wave of right-wing nuts subscribing for support. I migrated to Netlify years ago for better developer experience. I haven't regretted that decision.

"Teams that care about quality will take the time to understand LLM-generated code before it makes it into the repo. But some teams are checking in code nobody’s read, and that’s only been cursorily tested. And, evidently, there’s a lot of them." codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/c...

Don't just prepare for the bad news, beg for it! The most enriching discussions with my peers have begun with me actively seeking criticism. 🧵

If your research into developer productivity is based on Pull Request stats, you've excluded some of the most productive teams from your data.

This is the way.

We ordered books for our office book club from Amazon. Purchase made in the Amazon storefront, sold by World of Books, delivered by Mail Handling International, delivery outsourced to DPD, and further outsourced to Postnord. This is why I almost exclusively purchase ebooks. Logistics is a joke.

Large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits. www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

HEY has been a truly excellent email client, and I've been using it since it launched, but it's a tad too costly for my personal email needs. After reading this blog post, I suddenly found looking for alternative clients very easy and attractive. I already use Fastmail for mail storage and domains.

ON THIS DAY in 2014 i was being widely accused of having millions in a swiss bank due to my collusion with technology conspiracies that ran all the way up to the top academic and government institutions

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”

You do not need to say good things about the dead. Especially if they were a literal fascist.

Picard Tamarian tip: Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. The river Temarc in winter. Kira at Bashi. Sokath, his eyes uncovered.