"I am going to need a function that receives X, Y, and Z, and returns Blah. In anticipation of that function, suggest a suite of tests as a Todo list for me." this isn't magic, but useful. "Write #1 as a failing test without implementation"

Ultimately, all that is shared is all that remains.

i have a flask app that does some data visualization. I have an LLM "helping me" to get a new visualization up and running. It thinks it has done so, but when we actually get the app up on the screen, it does not produce a graph. This is denied by the LLM, who says it works.

I don't like my core operating system being managed partly by a proper framework (brew/apt/etc) and partly by installing things via curl | bash and partly by pip and partly by npm and partly by... Look, it's SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, not random tools throwing stuff into the pool.

Since I'm intentionally overusing LLMs to learn techniques and pitfalls, I ran out of my Warp2 credits with a week left in the month. That felt a little frustrating, but I have plenty left in my JetBrains assistants, and learning to use the in-IDE tools is just as important as CLI.

Worth your time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoGO...

I was watching a tutorial today (I do this a lot) and I have some advice for you: Watch your screen. If there are red squiggles underneath some of your lines of code, don't ignore those. Fix it. Even if they're wrong, you want your editor to be able to spot real problems. Same with grey underlines

A riddle for @theguardian.com books page. p.s. My new book 'Physics for Cats' is out this week in bookshops and online. Details at www.tomgauld.com

okay, I admit it, with proper safety facilities in place, and careful use, I am faster at some things because of LLM assistance. No, I'm am not vibe coding. I have, but that's not for real work. I did vibe some of my standard bash scripts, though.

The thing I don't like about python's venerable range() function is that it reads this way: range(1,4) Meaning "the numbers from 1 through four, but not four." Or "the range inclusive of the start but not the end" Or "I was just kidding about the 4, back it off" It's too old to change it now.

So, wait, like, .... people think it would be good for every developer in their company to produce 20K lines of code per day? What are they smoking, and how did they smuggle it into the country?

An IDE needs to have a few features I really want: * Refactoring * Continuous Testing * Integration with standard project tooling * Strong static checking * Syntax Highlighting * Smart completion Most of the IDEs are really weak (or non-players) in 4 of 6.

“I worked on 2045. I’ll continue that. I have no blockers.” “I worked on 3122. I’ll maybe finish that tomorrow. No blockers” “I finished 2066, then started 2173. No blockers” “I worked on 2754. Still on it. No blockers” “I did 2355. Still on it. No blockers” “I just started 2039. No blockers”

I wrote this a while ago, and it's still true in many organizations: "Nobody will validate that the process is actually helpful, because measuring the ongoing investment seems an act of sedition. The process IS. It is unquestioned. It IS because it MUST Be." medium.com/pragmatic-pr...

Yes, feelings are data. But data is also data.

Please explain to your colleagues and managers that "asynchronous" and "parallel" are not the same thing. Even if they're going to do the jobs separately there is no guarantee they'll be done simultaneously. The way your teams work, it may be impossible to do those tasks simultaneously.

So, the reason that there aren't enough jobs and enough money and people can't afford their lives in the US is because we aren't paying enough in executive salaries? And the new $29B for Musk will fix the financial and customer confidence issues at Tesla.

An old article I'd forgotten I'd written: butunclebob.com/ArticleS.Tim...

No, I do not imagine the code I'm going to write, and then write the tests that tie to that fully-imagined implementation. I don't know anyone clairvoyant enough to pull off that kind of trick. It seems impossible because it is. That's also not what anyone is asking you to do.

Today it's "choose your otter"! When I'm slow to a meeting it is 1. A dominance play 2. Proof I'm not really interested 3. ADHD hyperfocus 4. constantly being interrupted en route 5. Neurodivergent poor sense of time I've been told all of the above by different people.

"I don't know why it takes so long and why nobody knows when it will be done." Do you want to understand?

This wasn't an april fools' post. "Cluely, a startup that claims to help users “cheat” on job interviews, exams, and sales calls, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company announced on Friday with a video posted on X."

I scribbled this up the other day... it might need some editing, but here you go: Do you create and require rework, unpredictability, and delay in your software process? Maybe you do. Have you thought about it? agileotter.blogspot.com/2025/07/how-...

Will we ever get past the "curb appeal" problem of software engineering - that revulsion they feel at the sight of automated tests, collaborative coding, continuous integration, and incremental development? I'm not sure what makes them as emotionally jarring as they seem to be.

I was just reminded of the "features dying on the vine" symptom. This is evidence of a system breaking down. You probably don't want it. You may already have it. now what?

Thought: People don't believe that tools and techniques can make their jobs easier & faster. Hence so little uptake on TDD, pair/mob programming, learning to use the editor well, learning the language grammar and standard library, etc. They believe there is no point to it, & nothing gets better.

An interesting problem of AI coding: "You have run out of tokens for this month. Upgrade your account to access more tokens." I ran out of coins to feed the machine while it was in the middle of a task; it left me with unfinished work and an inoperable side-project.

When someone talks about working in "swarms," what does that mean to you?

"The survey findings unveil that [TDD] offers substantial benefits in terms of early defect detection, leading to reduced costs and effort in rectifying issues during the development process. Moreover, [TDD] encourages improved code design and maintainability..." -- Rahman, et al, 10/2024

Stand and sing the anthem of the church of the status quo: "Unless you first prove with irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible, highly-relevant, scientific evidence that this will work for this team in this company at this time, we are not trying it."

Just for the record: Agile (nor any given methodology or framework thereof) is not based on "communicating through cards" and "the card" is not the primary means of communication. The primary means of communication and progress is the coded behavior and capability of the product.

I could use a nice trip to somewhere in Europe or the UK. I'd like to sponsor my trip by doing useful work with your company. I have a lot of skill and experience in software delivery, code craft, and team management. Consider contracting me for a few days. I would love to help.

Coming to terms with AI code partners is weird. I shouldn't be surprised that they sometimes un-write code in the craziest ways, leaving things terribly broken.

The technique problem with legacy code is that since it wasn't written with tests, it's hard to write tests without changing the code, and it's scary to change working code without having tests. Writing tests last forces you into this legacy code situation.

"You should have done x" is usually about the speaker's expectations rather than the listener's past actions.

"I bought the same car and suit as a millionaire; this will make me a millionaire, too!" Imitation as manifestation? What is the name for this "expect to achieve by shallow impersonation" cognitive bias? You see it a lot, but I don't know what it is called.

I love articles that say "We don't use agile, what we do is..." and then describe something 100% in line with the Agile Manifesto. I guess they mean "We don't use [SAFe, scrum, XP, LeSS]" but that's not how it's presented.

What are your thoughts about this python code: target = next(account for account in accounts if account.disabled())

Do you remember all those rushed changes that your developers implemented three years ago and how they complained about the design damage they caused to make that happen? It's all still in the codebase. It doesn't disappear. It never disappears.

Asynchronous does not mean Parallel industriallogic.com/blog/parallel-efforts/ There is simple math for this.

Humidifier Review xkcd.com/3044

i thought "maybe I'll see if AI can refactor this..." then I noticed that IntelliJ does it fine. It's all built in. Three or four steps later I'm done.

I needed to dive back into Java after working in other languages for a while, and forgot about reference semantics and mutators. I copied a date (I thought, really just shared a reference), then used the Calendar.add() method which mutates the date and returns nothing, and...

First rough draft is up -- much to be done, but it's a listicle and has pair programming resources. agileotter.blogspot.com/2025/02/pair...

Simulation of SW dev gates Submissions per job: 2.5 FTT: Expected 50% Achieved 45% Linter (pass rate: 90%) rejected 2 PR Review (pass rate: 70%) rejected 23 Integration Tests (pass rate: 91%) rejected 2 QA (pass rate: 90%) rejected 3 System Test (pass rate: 98%) rejected 0

Many development teams unknowingly and habitually waste hundreds of hours each week on tasks that don’t contribute directly to delivering value. Here are some of the biggest culprits: www.industriallogic.com/blog/reclaim...

In software, it's become common to say "let's divide and conquer" meaning "let's all split up and work individually, and integrate it later when all of us are done."

Not estimating is irresponsible. So is estimating. agileotter.blogspot.com/2024/12/irre...

The programming language a person uses last is just a skill they choose and use; it's not an immutable genotype. That person is a programmer who happens to program in TS. They're not "a TS programmer"