Tag: ai coding

Hurting or Helping Devs?

This video features me, a Principal Software Engineer, discussing the impact of AI on software development, the risks of “vibe coding,” and the necessary shifts in engineering practices. Adron argues that traditional manual coding is becoming obsolete and that developers must adapt to a new paradigm defined by systems thinking and AI orchestration.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Dangers of “Vibe Coding”: Adron defines “vibe coding” as the practice of relying on AI to generate code without a deep understanding of the system (0:08:31). This often leads to unmaintainable, “disposable” software—a phenomenon he calls the shinification of software—which can cause significant production issues when systems fail (0:00:46, 0:08:31).
  • Managing AI Agents: To maintain code quality, developers must:
    • Rein in Scope: Avoid open-ended prompts; instead, provide specific, well-defined architectural plans to AI agents (0:05:13, 0:06:01).
    • Diff Discipline: Enforce hard limits on diff sizes (e.g., aiming for ~50 lines) to ensure human reviewers can feasibly audit changes (0:52:37, 0:55:00).
    • Human Gatekeeping: Keep humans as the final gatekeepers for production deployments to ensure security and reliability (0:16:50, 0:57:29).
  • The Evolution of the Developer Role: The junior pipeline is changing; instead of focusing on syntax or pixel-pushing, future developers should act as systemic architects who understand how to orchestrate AI tools and manage complex workflows (0:24:05, 0:26:05).
  • The Industry Reckoning: As VC-subsidized AI adoption faces future economic corrections, companies will need to prioritize efficiency, energy production, and true orchestration over simply generating massive amounts of code (1:02:41, 1:05:00).
  • Future Predictions: Adron predicts that AI will eventually develop its own programming language optimized for machine-to-machine communication, further distancing development from manual human typing (1:09:48).

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  1. Why writing code manually means you are already too far behind.
  2. How to manage the six specific types of AI code changes.
  3. The reason Diff Discipline is the only way to survive vibe coding.

Time Sliced Segments

  • (03:14) Why the junior developer pipeline is imploding
  • (05:13) How to reign in agent scope for better results
  • (08:31) The slow creeping dread of vibe coding
  • (12:50) Moving past communication cycles with prototypes
  • (16:50) Why shipping to production needs a human gatekeeper
  • (20:20) How roles shift when agents handle the workflow
  • (24:05) Why slinging individual lines of code is over
  • (29:47) Bringing a generalist approach back to computer science
  • (34:57) Breaking down the six types of code changes
  • (41:40) Why AI optimizes for plausible output instead of correctness
  • (52:37) Enforcing diff limits to keep human reviewers sane
  • (57:29) Setting up no-fly zones for sensitive code
  • (01:02:41) The coming hundred x shock to the tech industry
  • (01:11:27) What it means to be a coder in 2026

Additive vs. Mutative vs. Destructive Code Changes (and Why AI Agents Love the Wrong One at 2:13AM)

There’s a particular kind of pain that only software developers know.

Not the “production is down” kind of pain.

Not the “we deployed on Friday” kind of pain.

No, I mean the slow creeping dread of pulling the latest changes, running the tests, and realizing the codebase has been “improved” in a way that feels like someone rearranged your entire kitchen… but left all the knives on the floor.

And lately, this pain has been supercharged by AI tooling. Cursor, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT-driven agents, whatever your poison is this week, all share a similar behavioral pattern:

They can produce a stunning amount of output at an impressive speed… while quietly reshaping your system into something that looks correct but behaves like an alien artifact from a parallel universe.

The reason is simple: AI agents don’t “change code” the way humans do. They don’t naturally respect boundaries unless you explicitly enforce them. They operate like an overly enthusiastic intern with root access and no fear of consequences. To understand why this happens, we need to talk about the different types of code changes, and how AI tooling tends to drift toward the most dangerous ones.

So let’s name the beasts.

The Four (Actually Six) Types of Code Changes

Continue reading “Additive vs. Mutative vs. Destructive Code Changes (and Why AI Agents Love the Wrong One at 2:13AM)” →

Staying in Software Dev? Best be able to just do things!

I sat down recently and started reading through some articles. Of all the articles of the 20 or so I was reading, one that stood out from the bunch was something Geoffrey Huntley wrote. In the article “The future belongs to people who can just do things” he brings up some points that I – and I think a LOT of people out there like Geoffrey and I – have been thinking in the preceding months. Let’s delve into a few of those thoughts, paraphrased, and elaborated on.

  • First and foremost, for those coders that have been making a living writing those artisanal, bespoke, hand crafted, single lines of thought out code – your time is nigh.
  • Second, if you’re one of those coders that churns out code, but you don’t care or don’t think about the bigger picture of the product you’re working on, you’re also in for a rude awakening.
  • Third, if you have your environment or your stack that you build with, and don’t explore much beyond that stack (i.e. you’re specialized in .NET or Java or iOS) and rarely touch anything outside of that singular stack, you’re running straight at a brick wall.
  • Fourth, if you’re pedantic about every line of code, every single feature, in a way that doesn’t further progress product but you love to climb up on that hill to die arguing about the state of the code base, you’re going to be left up on the hill to starve to death.

Beyond the developers. If you’re a technical product manager and can’t implement, or coder and can’t product, if you don’t understand the overlap then I’d bet you’ll run into some very serious issues in the coming years. If you’re a manager get ready to mitigate all of the above, and above all get ready to deal with a lot of upheaval. If you still focus on hiring the above focused and inflexible engineers, you’re likely to be falling on that sword for your team. Needless to say, there are very rough waters ahead.

That paints the picture of where the industry is right now and who is at greatest risk. Cast out and unable to realign and move forward with the industry – nay – the world in the coming weeks, months, and years. I’m not even going to mention why, what for, or how we got here. That’s a whole other article. I’m just going to focus on the now and the future.

Continue reading “Staying in Software Dev? Best be able to just do things!” →