software-engineering
8 articles
A Deep Defense of 'Slow Down' — A Game Dev Veteran Explains How Coding Agents Are Wrecking Your Codebase
Mario Zechner wrote a sharp critique of how coding agents are being used in production — compounding errors, zero learning, runaway complexity, and low search recall. His conclusion isn't 'stop using agents' but 'slow down and put human judgment back in the loop.'
AI Makes Coding Faster — So Why Are People Saying Engineers Are Doomed?
Dan McAteer's tweet questions a common leap in logic: if AI automates software engineering, software demand keeps growing, and trained engineers are best positioned to ride the wave — how does anyone conclude that engineers are screwed?
Your LLM Isn't Writing Correct Code — It's Writing Code That Looks Reasonable
The author benchmarked system SQLite against an LLM-generated Rust rewrite. Even though it compiled and passed all tests, primary key lookups were ~20,000x slower. The takeaway: define acceptance criteria before you talk about AI productivity.
Deep Blue: Simon Willison Named the Existential Crisis Every Developer Is Feeling
AI writing better code? That "Deep Blue" feeling, coined by Simon Willison & Adam Leventhal (Oxide & Friends), means IBM's chess computer & the color of sadness. It's not just a tech problem, but a psychological crisis for engineers.
Cognitive Debt: AI Wrote All Your Code, But You Can't Understand Your Own System Anymore
Technical debt lives in code, cognitive debt in your brain. As AI writes 80% of code, system understanding drops to 20%. UVic's Margaret-Anne Storey, Simon Willison, & Martin Fowler confirm this isn't a hypothetical future—it's happening now.
Thoughtworks Secret Retreat Leaked: Juniors Are More Valuable Than Seniors Now — Software Engineering's Identity Crisis Is Here
Thoughtworks' AI in software retreat: Juniors more valuable, mid-level devs at risk, source code transient, AI agents on org charts. Humans too slow for AI's speed.
Anthropic's 2026 Report: 8 Trends Redefining Software Development (The Code Writer Era Is Over)
Anthropic published its 2026 Agentic Coding Trends Report, revealing 8 key trends: Multi-Agent Systems becoming standard (57% org adoption), Papercut Revolution for clearing tech debt at low cost, Self-Healing Code with autonomous debug loops, and Claude Code hitting $1B annualized revenue. TELUS saved 500K hours, Rakuten achieved 99.9% accuracy on 12.5M lines. Developer roles are shifting from Code Writer to System Orchestrator.
Inside OpenAI: How They're Going Agent-First (Straight From the Co-Founder)
OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman publicly reveals how OpenAI is transforming to agentic software development internally. By March 31st, agents should become the first resort for all technical tasks. Includes six concrete recommendations, including 'Say no to slop' on code quality.