On one end, the Anthropic team is a massive user of AI to write code (80%+ of all code deployed is written by Claude Code). They ship amazingly fast.
On the other hand, seeing these beyond terrible reliability numbers suggests there might be a downside to all this speed:
If you love #ExtremeProgramming and you see a rare opportunity to be hired specifically for that, you might jump at the chance. I do. I did.
Maybe in your case it’ll be what it sounds like. I hope so. But beware.
If you repeatedly fail to perceive or appreciate what reputable #ExtremeProgramming coaches are accomplishing in your org, maybe you’re a great leader who doesn’t know yet what specifically to look for.
If you do this while claiming to be an #XP expert, that’s clownshoes.
More than 320 GitHub users had their accounts hacked and used to push a malicious GitHub action onto their projects that stole secrets from CI/CD pipelines.
GitGuardian says the attackers compromised over 810 GitHub repos and stole more than 3,300 secrets.
blog.gitguardian.com/ghostaction-...
I see several folks from the XP and Crafting communities leading the way in using GenAI effectively as augmented coding. It seems like the path to amplifying our skill set.
YOW! 2025 keynote speaker Kent Beck Sustainable Augmented Development A caucasian man with a sandy blonde beard, wearing a navy hat and blue bow tie, smiling as he looks into the distance
We’re proud to announce our 2nd #YOW25 keynote speaker: @kentbeck.com!
His keynote “Sustainable Augmented Development” explores how we can keep development velocity high without sacrificing long-term sustainability.
🎟️ MEL 4-5 | BNE 8-9 | SYD 11-12 Dec
yowcon.com
Was a nun eaten in Nuneaton?
Tonight I am mourning the children who died, those who were injured, everyone who has been affected by the shooting in Minneapolis, and all of the school shooting survivors in America.
Guns are tools, built to hurt and kill. They should be regulated.
* sticks hand up * Oh, oh, I know this one!
There are no vibe-coding teams.
Every optional, every nullable, every if statement, every try/catch you don’t need make your software harder to maintain.
Find ways to not write that code. Use a null value, map things you don’t need to the point you are not mapping anymore, let your queue system handle retry…
If you use genAI to write your thoughts, your comedy punchlines, your hiphop rhymes, your video game art, your PhD, who are you cheating really?
Creating and honing your craft, that's the fun bit. Teaching and convincing others by the quality your of thinking and writing is a live well lived.
I'm not a fan of Scrum Retrospective meetings. My two main issues are that they don't happen often enough, and they often follow some ridiculous formula.
Addressing the first issue, I'd rather follow Kaizen principles. Improve every minute of every hour of every day.
1/6
If you're interested in having me speak, run some training, consult, etc., please get in touch. There is a small chance I may be able to fit you in this year, but things are pretty booked up. Better to get in touch now for something early to middle of next year than leave it until the last minute.
Looking ahead to next month, you can find me in Kongsberg running a full-day workshop on unit testing (Program with GUTs) and giving the locknote at @ndcconferences.com TechTown (The Past, Present and Future of Programming Languages):
ndctechtown.com
Workshop tickets available, but selling well!
Bridging September and October, I'm at GOTO Copenhagen running a full-day masterclass on simplicity (Keeping It Simple), giving a talk (Ye Cannae Change the Laws of Physics) and, with @boicy.bovon.org, a keynote (The Way the Future Was):
gotocph.com/2025
Tickets still available, but selling well!
Are we forgetting build in IDE functions for refactoring or what?
If your most effective management skill is insisting people work 80 hours a week, you might want to consider learning some new management skills.
In times of uncertainty, the virtue of craftsmanship holds even greater significance.
It is ironic when someone steps into a new cultural or organizational context and uses models derived from studying a completely different group to classify and manage the people they now lead.
"Generative AI is porn for execs and growth investment — threat actors are very aware that now is the time to launch attacks...."
Recent UK ransomware attacks
doublepulsar.com/dragonforce-...
There are no product owners, no QAs. Truly impressive. This is the kind of setup most companies would dream of.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet a team of eight incredibly humble developers. They're handling petabytes of data flowing in at a non-trivial rate, managing their entire infrastructure, including self-hosted Cassandra and Kafka clusters, alongside 70 microservices.
This has been on my mind lately -
The volume and speed at which a generative AI produces code make it hard for me, as a human, to keep up with the review. If I intentionally slow it down to match my pace, do the productivity gains justify the investment, or does that make me the bottleneck?
To understand what a test does, start by trying to rename it in a way that clearly conveys its intent. Follow that by refactoring small sections to reveal what each part is doing.
The very act of renaming helps shift your mindset into the right state to truly grasp the test’s purpose.
After trying out their custom creations and following a few of their recommendations, I’m more convinced than ever that the Kinesis Freestyle 2 is still the best keyboard on the market.
Over the past few weeks, I've been chatting with a bunch of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. Some are so deep into it that they’re sourcing individual components from different vendors just to build their dream setups.
