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Going AI-first without solid engineering foundations is a bad idea. It should be foundations first, AI last. Otherwise you'll never find the time to build them, and the engineers who could help won't look at you twice.

We've been doing a little tidying up at 18f.org—a good opportunity to remind folks that the 18F guides and blog are archived on the site for anyone to use. After all, they belong to you!

Black people are giving it these Confederates raw and uncut. This is how it’s gonna be now. You wonder what we’re thinking? It’s this. I believe this is activist Gary Chambers again in Louisiana.

The devs of today will become the ivory tower architects of tomorrow. "AI prompting + human code review" only works if the humans have technical knowledge, which will likely decline if humans are no longer writing code. Discuss. 😄

Antipattern: Control without speed (one size fits all) or speed without control (fragile, not agile) Pattern: Speed AND control. #MinimalViableCompliance. Safety SMEs aligned to value streams. Not one size fits all. Continuous Compliance. The better your brakes, the faster you can go! #BVSSH

Tuesday is THE LAST DAY Virginians can vote on redistricting. If you haven't yet, please make the time! And vote yes too, please.

Wow - that was fast! I only ordered this yesterday and it’s arrived already - very excited to get stuck into this and see how it’s evolved since the first edition. Thanks @ewebber.bsky.social!

Spec-Driven Development is the hot new thing in vibe coding. Write a perfect spec, let the agent work, sit back. Sounds familiar? We called it Waterfall. We hated it. We sucked at it. Why do we think we're suddenly ready for it now?

Wonderfully said by @doctorow.pluralistic.net pluralistic.net/2026/03/02/n...

Let's have a pope who's strong on nuclear weapons. Full 40k, a gilded baroque nuke in St. Peters. Replace that obelisk with an ICBM launcher, and call it the Holy Sword of Azrael. Jesuits with rangefinders. "Transubstantiate this," mutters Leo as he turns the Key of St. Peter. "Fiat fucking lux."

YUP. Terrible scorebug. Not a fan of NBC/Peacock’s either. Original post: zeppelin.flights/@jsnell/1162...

NO KINGS FREEDOM FEST Monroe Park Saturday March 28 @ 1 pm AMAZING LINEUP OF SPEAKERS AND ARTISTS! Bring your best signs for the SIGN CONTEST! Costumes and dancing shoes encouraged! Invite 3 new friends and make sure to RSVP on Mobilize so you are counted! www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

This is why I unapologetically tell the economics students to change their major to something respectable.

Yes, have some.

I was on IRC before I was on the web. Bringing ATproto to IRC is amazing.

It's quite surprising, 3+ years after ChatGPT launched, how many software developers still don't realise that interactions with LLMs are stateless. The LLM doesn't "read" your system prompts once "at the beginning of the session". To an LLM, every interaction is "the beginning of the session".

I'm a big believer in observability in business processes with a significant s/w component. The sooner we know something's amiss, the smaller the impact. But what about observability in software development processes? e.g. How soon would you know that someone on the team isn't running the tests?

Because software engineering is where GenAI is currently having the most visible impact, the AI commentary class have converged on it and are now suddenly experts in SWE productivity, despite little to no experience of actually building and maintaining software.

Had to be at least a decade ago that a NPR show hosted a historian who had published a book on the Stasi and the SS. It turned out the SS et al., had not been the magical intelligence machines at all but had relied almost entirely on neighbors lining up to rat out each other.

Wow.

Rev. Jesse Jackson's "I *am* somebody..." remains one of the all-time great pieces of 20th century rhetoric / agitprop And he could deliver it at a Black separatist meeting, the Democratic National Convention, or on god-blessed Sesame Street (see below 🥹) RIP to the Voice of the Voiceless

Okay cool enough can we do BASEBALL NOW

For the first time, in a very long time, I’ve hit Inbox Zero at work AND have an actionable plan to stay that way.

Prompt ⇾ shortcut gets built for you ⇾ resume session ⇾ improve shortcut. Added full support for session resume to my generative shortcut, which I'm calling Shortcuts Playground. Going to be free, open source, and out soon for everyone on @macstories.net.

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.” That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

Today’s retreat is absolutely an attempt to take pressure off of Congress to rein in ICE so that a funding package can get through. That pressure has been effective. We can celebrate Minneapolis’ win but we need to keep the pressure on. They’re not going to stop forever.

For any elected official who needs to hear this, I impart a lesson learned from the NFL: When the other team is tired and on the back foot, you don’t call a timeout so they can catch their breath. You grind their fucking face into the dirt until the final whistle blows and you’ve won the game.

Still, after all these years, "Can you show me?" remains the most effective bullshit filter in software development.

From Scientific Management To Outcome Leadership #BVSSH

There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there A-telling me I got to beware I think it's time we stop Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down

Mood in minneapolis right now

Dear Democratic Leaders in Congress: Shut it all down. No more votes for funding, no more votes for anything. Face the lies with the sunshine of truth, of the evidence we’re told to ignore. No more. Fucking lead, or fucking retire.

"look to the helpers" THEY'RE MURDERING THE HELPERS

“Everyone should be allowed to carry a gun for their safety but the government can murder you in the street if you have a gun” is an incredible endpoint for the conservative moment

back on my Things That make Me Smile grind with these little decorative bowls picked them up at Costco for $10 and they're great, about halfway between a ramekin and a real bowl, adds a dash of pizzazz to any spread

The world's first known org chart dates from 1855 and has the company directors at the bottom, not the top! It is drawn to represent a plant, a living organism, with the railroad lines representing branches of the organism and people as flowers, or nodes, of the plant.

Christ that's a ridiculous price for the most interesting RPG I've ever played. And those scenario collections hold a shed ton of brilliant ideas. There is probably no adaptation like it? Its beautifully structured to generate fascinating feelings? I cannot wait to play again?

And for all the people thinking. "You can't judge Tolkien by today's standards of wokeness!" Yes I can. Again, Lord of the Rings was published 1 year *after* James Baldwin's "Go Tell it on The Mountain." Baldwin wrote his book, then next year Tolkien wrote about evil dark men threatening the West

Hard to believe a FIFA Peace Prize laureate would do this.

> Given the historic lack of organisational resolve to instil proven practices, it is not surprising that novel approaches for developing and sustaining ever more complex software systems, no matter how effective they may be, will also frequently fall short.

📣 IMPORTANT: "But How Many Have PAID???" Revisited: #ACA enrollment drop-off won't be fully known for months: acasignups.net/25/12/29/how...

This is a great clip. Say no to the future they want. But also actively build the future we want. Honestly, I think that's the part we're really struggling with. In the absence of our own vision to give us direction, we'll still get dragged along with whatever is happening.

Yoooooo! It's Storytime listeners! I narrated Caroline's magnificent "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death" earlier this year. You've told me that you loved it like I did, so I thought you would want to know this.

Unique work is unknowable. The only way to learn is by doing. We need to minimise time to learning and value, to make the unknowable, knowable. We need to have hypotheses and run experiments, which are safe to intelligently fail (cheap, fast, safe).

Retros fall flat when people don’t feel safe being honest. Build safety first, improvements second. #Agile #Scrum #Safety

Antipattern: Control without speed (one size fits all) or speed without control (fragile, not agile) Pattern: Speed AND control. #MinimalViableCompliance. Safety SMEs aligned to value streams. Not one size fits all. Continuous Compliance. The better your brakes the faster you can go #BVSSH