Future Of Software Development
The VibeSec Reckoning
“Vibe coding” - the practice of non-technical citizen builders using generative AI tools to rapidly develop applications, this has significantly accelerated software prototyping. However, because AI agents naturally prioritise the path of least resistance, they frequently recommend insecure configurations, creating systemic security exposure across industries. To combat this we need to write a sec
Agentic Programming
Vibe Coding
Interrogatory LLM
Mythical Man Month
November Inflection
Architecture Decision Record
Host Leadership
Agentic Email
Excessive Bold
Some thoughts on LLMs and Software Development
I’m about to head away from looking after this site for a few weeks (part vacation, part work stuff). As I contemplate some weeks away from the daily routine, I feel an urge to share some scattered thoughts about the state of LLMs and AI.
Expansion Joints
Who is LLM?
Is an LLM a stubborn donkey, a genie, a slot machine, or Uriah Heep?
LLMs bring new nature of abstraction
Say Your Writing
Social Media Engagement in Early 2025
Comparing engagement on two dozen recent social media posts
Forest And Desert
My 2024 thoughts on the state of social media
I see a continued fragmentation of social media as people leave X(Twitter).
Cycle Time
Strangler Fig
Instead of restricting AI and algorithms, make them explainable
Using Footnotes
How I use, and render, footnotes
2024 Analysis of Traffic to martinfowler.com
Periodic Face-to-Face
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration is a software development practice where each member of a team merges their changes into a codebase together with their colleagues changes at least daily. Each of these integrations is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Teams find that this approach reduces the risk of delivery delays, reduces the effort of in
Legacy Seam
Software And Engineering
Test Driven Development
Diff Debugging
Catalog of Patterns of Distributed Systems
Distributed systems provide a particular challenge to program. They often require us to have multiple copies of data, which need to keep synchronized. Yet we cannot rely on processing nodes working reliably, and network delays can easily lead to inconsistencies. Despite this, many organizations rely on a range of core distributed software handling data storage, messaging, system management, and co
Team Topologies
Two Pizza Team
What Does a Technical Author Look Like?
Asking Stable Diffusion for "portrait of technical author"
An example of LLM prompting for programming
My account of an internal chat with Xu Hao, where he shows how he drives ChatGPT to produce useful self-tested code. His initial prompt primes the LLM with an implementation strategy (chain of thought prompting). His prompt also asks for an implementation plan rather than code (general knowledge prompting). Once he has the plan he uses it to refine the implementation and generate useful sections o
Timeboxed Iterations
Continuous Flow
Slack
Exploring Mastodon
With the current uncertainty over Twitter, I'm starting to explore using Mastodon
Conway's Law
How I use Twitter
The things I do to make Twitter useful and avoid the time-traps
On the Diverse And Fantastical Shapes of Testing
There are arguments about whether a testing portfolio should be a pyramid or more like honeycomb. My second biggest issue with this argument is that it's rendered opaque by the fact that it's not clear what people see as the difference between unit and integration tests.
Muted spaghetti line charts with R's ggplot2
How I plot a muted-spaghetti chart with R, including facets.
Bitemporal History
It's often necessary to access the historical values of some property. But sometimes this history itself needs to be modified in response to retroactive updates. Bitemporal history treats time as two dimensions: actual history records what history should be given perfect transmission of information, while record history captures how our knowledge of history changes.
Refinement Code Review
Pull Request
The Lies that can Undermine Democracy
Recent events highlight our need to take serious measures to counter lies that are undermining democracies.
Computational Notebook
Should social media dampen uncertain stories?
When a news story of dubious provenance appears, should social media use a temporary block to slow its spread?
Thoughts writing a Google App script
A google sheets script is a handy way to share a short script for non-programmers.
Don't Compare Averages
In business meetings, it's common to compare groups of numbers by comparing their averages. But doing so often hides important information in the distribution of the numbers in those groups. There are a number of data visualizations that shine a light on this information. These include strip charts, histograms, density plots, box plots, and violin plots. These are easy to produce with freely avail
Patterns for Managing Source Code Branches
Modern source-control systems provide powerful tools that make it easy to create branches in source code. But eventually these branches have to be merged back together, and many teams spend an inordinate amount of time coping with their tangled thicket of branches. There are several patterns that can allow teams to use branching effectively, concentrating around integrating the work of multiple de
Feature Branch
Keystone Interface
Dark Launching
Humble Object
Domain Driven Design
Pair Programming
How to do effective video calls
Get good audio, use gallery view, mute if not talking, and welcome the cat.