Tips for AI-assisted software development: Boring tech gives AI superpowers. AI coding agents performs best with tools, languages, and frameworks that have been around long enough to show up in its training data. When use the bleeding edge, it hallucinates.

Tips for AI-Assisted software development: Work in small batch sizes. Humans and AI have limited short term memory. Ensure the task you're working on fits within your and AI's short-term memory. When switching tasks start a new session, clear the context of you and the AI.

“AI is incapable of programming well thought out and complex code” This is both true and irrelevant. The goal is to write well thought out and simple code (which may solve a complex problem).

If you use AI to help you build software professionally, has your organisation provided any training? If so, what did it cover? What was missing? If not, why not?

Software Engineers - need a project for the weekend? How about building your own LLM powered chatbot? codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/c... Or one of the 80+ other real-world projects you can build to level up your coding skills: codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/i...

If you code with AI, and don't do Test-Driven Development, have you tried or are you going to try doing Spec-Driven Development? What is the attraction? What do you see as being a blocker to doing it?

Why do people feel the need to post stuff like this: "So far only the uninformed and b-players are using LLM" LLMs are way over-hyped, but attacking people is a weak argument.

If you use AI to develop software, do you vibe code or do you do AI assisted engineering?

In today's Coding Challenges I used Augment Code to develop a project in Gleam: codingchallenges.substack.com/p/using-ai-t...

If this doesn't look like an AI bubble, what does?

There aren’t enough good software engineering managers in most companies. And this problem is getting worse. The biggest, hardest and most common problems we have with software delivery are not technical, they're people problems. AI won't fix that.

In software engineering, “it depends” often sounds like a smart answer. But if it’s the only answer, it’s useless. It suggests enough experienced to know that context matters, but not enough to be able to articulate why. Next time you are tempted to say “it depends”, complete the sentence.

“If someone was a very good communicator but a terrible software engineer would you hire them?” This is a false dilemma. To be a good communicator, you need to understand the domain that you are communicating about. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

The hardest part of software engineering has always been writing good clear requirements in a natural language. Using current AI requires we do more of the hard bit to automate the easier bit of writing code.

I’ve met many tech executives frustrated that their software teams were failing to deliver. In each case they’ve been advised by their software engineers that the answer was to rewrite all their software with some awesome new approach, technology, language, library, platform or architecture. 🧵👇

Is anyone using Zig in production? If so, what and why did you pick it?

31 things I’ve learned writing 91 coding challenges over the last 27 months: 1. You can build some amazing software in less than 8 hours of focused time. 2. Breaking projects down into steps is a skill that many software engineers don’t have. 3. And one that many want to learn. 🧵👇

Software Engineers - need a project for the weekend? How about building your own Monkeytype? open.substack.com/pub/codingch... Or one of the 90+ other real-world projects you can build to level up your coding skills: codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/i...

Networking tip: lead with curiosity, not your job title. Curious leaders ask better questions, build stronger relationships, and spot opportunities others miss. That’s where the good stuff starts. If you’re a senior engineering leader, I’m building a community — DM me if you’re curious.

Software Engineers - need a project for the weekend? How about building your own ELIZA chatbot? codingchallenges.substack.com/p/coding-cha... Or one of the 80+ other real-world projects you can use to level up your coding skills: [https://codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/intro](t.co/jZPvdDtBt1)

Networking tip: just talk to the other awkward person at the event.

If you say you can’t prioritise a bug fix over a feature because “features generate revenue,” what you’re really saying is: you lack the judgment, experience, or data to prioritise effectively. Here’s how you do it:

Q: How do you find open source projects to contribute to? A: Use Google to find a site that covers issues marked "good first issue" then look through those to find a project that interests you.

Who do you turn to when you're the most senior engineering leader in the room? When your team looks to you for clarity, vision, and direction, but you aren’t sure what to do. It can feel like there's no one you can turn to. That’s why I’m building a peer community of engineering leaders.

What are the leading communities for software engineering leaders?

Why is 13+ years of experience in engineering all of a sudden in every job ad?

Yesterday’s coding challenge was to build your own strace. Even if you don't build it, do please read the challenge and learn about and use strace. You'll learn a useful tool and skill gain an insight into the system calls and levels of abstraction in something as simple as a Hello World program.

9 tips for building high-performing software development teams. 1. Create a shared vision for the team to believe in and be inspired by. 2. Present the vision in terms of a concrete roadmap. 3. Promote communication – software is a team sport!

If you’re looking for work as a software engineer in a tech company and struggling to find one then consider applying for related roles. Use them to get your foot in the door. It worked for me, though not quite in the way I expected.

Old school programming this evening! I implemented quicksort and mergesort for the first time in years! No I’m not prepping for a DSA interview, it’s some new material for Coding Challenges!

“It is hard to describe how much you learn by actually doing — by carefully considering all factors, making a decision, and then taking responsibility for the outcome. Unlocks wisdom that cannot be arrived at any other way.” Greg Brockman What happens if we stop doing and start blindly trusting AI?

Who else is enjoying listening to Sleep Token’s new song Emergence as they go about their weekend?

There are so many engineering fails in this post.

Too few software engineers understand this simple fact. We are not paid to write code. We are paid to solve problems. We often solve with code, but not always. Those who fail to recognise this, neglect the skills needed to be software engineers. They are the ‘coders’ who will be replaced by AI.

Software Engineers - need a project for the weekend? How about building your own Time Zone Converter? codingchallenges.substack.com/p/coding-cha... Or one of the 80+ other real-world projects you can build to level up your coding skills: codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/i...

It's been a pleasure being on Coding Chats podcast with @johncrickett.bsky.social We talked about a LOT of interesting topics, especially how to grow beyond Senior Engineer and thrive in a lead role (Team Lead, Tech Lead (Staff), Engineering Manager).

I saw another post saying AI is getting better and it really does understand what we ask for. So I asked for a picture of a left handed guitarist to see if it was better than last time I tried. Spoiler, nope it's not.

What’s stopping you writing code like this: ``` ++++++++++[>+>+++>+++++++>++++++++++<<<<-]>>>++.>+.+++++++..+++.<<+++. ``` If you’re having trouble following the code I’ll give you a clue, it’s written in the Brainf*ck programming language.

18 computer science books - that you can get for 5% of the cover price right now! I’m excited by Nora Sandler’s Writing a C Compiler and Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe! 👉 Writing A C Compiler 👉 Data Structures The Fun Way 👉 Computer Architecture 👉 Dive Into Systems 👉 Effective C 👉 Code Craft

If you have a behavioural interview coming up do yourself a favour and watch this week's Coding Chats. Austen McDonald explains on how to prepare for behavioural interviews and why they are so important in the hiring process.

For those who write C regularly and do TDD, what unit testing framework do you recommend? I haven't written C for over 20 years but last night after the session on my current Coding Challenges live course I decided to build a demo of a parser for Redis serialisation protocol in C.

7 tips to improve how you interview software engineers: 1. Put as much time into preparing for them as you expect candidates to. 2. Have a clear definition of what a good candidate looks like. 3. Don't base technical tests on your ego.

Elon Musk’s email to US federal employees caused quite a stir over the weekend. And rightly so, it is a terrible way to manage people. But writing down and sharing your accomplishments is something everyone should do for themselves. 🧵⬇️

I just received an email asking me to complete an exit interview, for a role I left a year ago:

Only people who don't know how to do something, think it can't be done. Next time think something can’t be done, pause and ask yourself: “How could it be done?” That’s how you grow. As a software engineer. As an manager/leader. As a person.

Today's Coding Challenge is now available: codingchallenges.substack.com/p/coding-cha...

So present (the go presentation tool) looks useful. But it looks horrible. Is there a set of nicer themes anywhere? I've looked without much success.

Beware: LLMs have enabled the rapid creation of technical debt at scale. Remember: code is always a liability, only sometimes is it an asset.

Who apart from Grammarly is using Lisp in production these days? And what for?

"fatal error: stack overflow" Wow been a long time since I've seen that! Better get debugging.