On the GOTO Convention in Copenhagen in 2025, Kent Beck and I spent a while on stage speaking and answering questions from the viewers – a format I discuss with as “two outdated geezers on a park bench”. We discuss our experiences with LLM-augmented programming (at that time – October 2025), we present our frustration that issues we’ve been saying for thirty years nonetheless have to be mentioned, we are saying how something like a manifesto reunion must be led by a youthful technology, and opine on what junior builders must be specializing in of their profession.
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Ian Johnson has written a sequence of posts about restructuring a gnarly codebase
The story follows an actual Laravel + React codebase over ~3 months and ~258 commits from a legacy monolith with no checks to a well-structured utility with automated high quality gates, a React SPA migration in progress, and an AI agent that reliably ships manufacturing code with minimal supervision.
The sequence covers the steps in respectable element, and his strategy follows the sorts of steps I’d use. First get every little thing below the management of respectable characterization checks, add static evaluation, introduce the best patterns to make issues circulation simply.
With all of this, is his use of AI, which modified throughout the train:
For the primary two months of this mission, I used Claude Code with auto-approve turned off. Each file edit, each terminal command, each change… I reviewed it earlier than it executed. […] The outcomes have been good. The code was clear. However I used to be doing a lot of the considering and half the typing. The agent was a flowery autocomplete with higher strategies. I wasn’t getting the leverage I’d hoped for.
I learn an article about “on-the-loop” versus “in-the-loop” human-AI collaboration. The framing clicked instantly […] I used to be micromanaging as a result of I didn’t belief the agent to do the best factor. And I didn’t belief the agent as a result of there was nothing forcing it to do the best factor.
His early steps put in checks, static evaluation, and the best architectural patterns. With these in place, he might let the agent do extra work.
My function shifted from author to curator. I don’t write a lot of the code anymore. I Outline the patterns […] Evaluate the take a look at specs […] Evaluate the output […] Replace the harness […] Make strategic choices […]
He finishes the sequence with conclusions about how he’d generalize his expertise to different circumstances.
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Again within the land of my start, there was some notable groans when the Nationwide Well being Service determined to shut practically all of their Open Supply repositories, supposedly to the safety menace of LLMs. Closing repos like this isn’t an efficient counter to LLM-augmented attackers. I think it’s no coincidence to see GDS (Authorities Information Providers), the highly-regarded IT enablers within the UK authorities publish their place
Transferring code from public to personal as an alternative choice to funding in secure-by-design supply, possession and remediation is a warning signal as a result of it reduces sharing and scrutiny, can sluggish coordinated enchancment throughout authorities and suppliers, and doesn’t take away the underlying weaknesses in a working service.
Terence Eden memorably sums up his view on this:
Throughout the UK’s Civil Service you often hear the expression “being invited to a gathering with out biscuits”. It implies a reasonably frosty dialogue with none of the well mannered niceties of a traditional assembly.
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I’ve seen a couple of circumstances the place these builders who’re most concerned in working with LLMs discover they’re working into an issue with cognitive endurance, Adam Tornhill has joined this group:
One of many large wins with brokers is that they allow us to stick with the higher-level downside for longer. We get much less sidetracked by particulars, dependency cleanup, and related secondary duties that used to interrupt focus.
However there’s a value we’re nonetheless underestimating. Agentic coding is mentally costly.
I can normally maintain the tempo for a few hours. Then I want a break. The tempo is just too intense. And primarily based on conversations with different engineers, I don’t assume I’m alone in that.
He explains that working with The Genie means we’re making extra choices in much less time, this improve in determination density is tough on the mind.
He responds by retaining agent duties small, automating every little thing he can, and accepting that he received’t know each line of code so long as he has good verification mechanisms in place.
Notably, he has not gone within the path of doing his work with swarms of brokers that he coordinates. As an alternative has one long-running process that he babysits and one focus process
That final level is vital given the running-twenty-agents-in-parallel hype. I can not even take into consideration twenty significant issues to construct, and even much less so concerning the ensuing cognitive tax of the probably interruptions. It’s precisely the fallacious factor to even contemplate. At the least for people. (And sure, I perceive sub-agents and machine parallelisation. That’s not what I’m objecting to. It’s the parallelisation of human consideration that doesn’t scale).
I appreciated that he included some ideas about what of us can do in time exterior this intense programming time. Not simply “have a espresso” (though he consists of that) but in addition about studying concerning the area that the software program helps.
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A few pithy quotes from social media
“Metaphor debt” is when your entire metaphors contain the idea of “debt” as a result of you may’t consider some other metaphors anymore.
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If a vegan crossfit fan is utilizing Claude to write down Rust, which factor do they let you know first?
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Karl Bode reacts to audio system getting booed when mentioning AI throughout graduation addresses. He factors out that youthful of us are more and more sad with the tech oligarchy and their fruits.
The factor is the children aren’t silly. They see the sphere clearly. They see the distinction between what’s being bought to them by tech firms, the press, and graduation audio system, and what they’ve repeatedly seen with their very own eyes.
They’ve watched tech oligarchs spend the final decade mired in scandal after scandal, hype cycle after hype cycle, steadily enshittifying every little thing they contact alongside the best way.
[…]
The share of Gen Z that assume AI’s advantages don’t counterbalance the dangers now sits round fifty %, up 11 proportion factors in simply the final yr. Eight out of each ten consider that utilizing AI makes the method of precise studying tougher.
He sees younger individuals saddled with the notion of getting into a worsening world –
which leads them to rage in opposition to this newest fruit of the tech oligarchy. A rage
that’s simple for folk like me
– with a snug retirement off-ramp – to correctly admire. A rage that would have marked political and social penalties.
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Related to those considerations are a few gadgets in final week’s Economist newspaper. The newspaper argues that traditionally main technological advances haven’t led to important unemployment or drops in wages (paywalled article). The closest was the unique industrial revolution in nineteenth Century Britain. There was a stagnation in wages throughout this era, however there was additionally an enormous improve in inhabitants, from 4½ million to 12 million.
It additionally factors out that we’ll in all probability solely perceive the complete penalties of all this when a recession hits, as that is when most unproductive jobs are usually flushed out of the system.
A second article (additionally paywalled) signifies that AI is having some impact on graduate hiring. They did an evaluation of surveys of current graduates, trying to see if employment diverse relying on a job’s publicity to AI. The least uncovered quintile of topics noticed employment charge fall by 1.5% during the last couple of years, whereas probably the most uncovered quintile’s drop was 6.6%.
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Lawfare isn’t impressed with the newest efforts by the US Authorities to manage AI.
On [last] Wednesday, the White Home invited leaders of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and Microsoft to the Oval Workplace for a signing ceremony the next afternoon. President Trump was to signal an government order on AI and cybersecurity—the administration’s most formal effort but to ascertain a voluntary course of for reviewing frontier fashions earlier than their launch. However roughly three hours earlier than the ceremony, when some firm executives have been already within the air to Washington, the White Home known as it off.
They see the proposed rules as gentle, and together with some worthwhile measures to harden defenses in opposition to cyber threats.
Nevertheless it’s price underscoring the implications of suspending (if not outright canceling) this order, which, by its personal phrases, was about as modest a frontier-AI intervention because the federal authorities might placed on paper: voluntary, centered on the federal government’s personal defenses, and explicitly barred from turning into a licensing regime. The objection isn’t a lot about authorities coercion as concerning the authorities having any settled function in any respect. Voluntary, in different phrases, isn’t the ground of frontier AI coverage on this administration; it’s the ceiling.
It is a questionable place on condition that the considerations animating this draft order will probably develop within the close to future. It is usually self-defeating for individuals who applauded the order’s delay or demise. Removed from resolving the danger of presidency meddling in AI, killing the order simply leaves in place what Ball has described because the “opaque and primarily lawless” various: authorities entry occurring by way of again channels, on phrases set case by case, with no steady guidelines in any respect.
One of many issues here’s a distinct lack of governmental experience, both in AI or in software program usually. An excessive amount of is being determined on the whims of the tech oligarchy, there isn’t any try to interact within the broader points at hand. That’s not totally a nasty factor, attempting to manage one thing that’s nonetheless evolving so quick is normally a idiot’s errand – however the issue right here is the affect of AI is so large that there’s actual hazard in being too far behind.
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Which leads me to a uncommon factor, an endorsement of a candidate for political workplace. If you’re voting in congressional district MA-06 (North Shore of Massachusetts), I’d significantly take a look at Beth Anders-Beck, who’s working for congress in that district. Beth has a protracted background in software program improvement (together with creating the notion of Forest and Desert), so would introduce experience that Congress desperately wants. I’ve identified Beth for many years, and have a excessive opinion of their intelligence, judgment, and talent to work with others. Congress doesn’t deserve Beth, but it surely does want her.