Focus on concert hall, instead of the podium
The "AI Conductor" metaphor is everywhere right now, and it's wrong. The real opportunity isn't standing at the podium, it's building the hall well enough that anyone can make amazing music.
acmConsulting
A personal blog in a suit. Engineering leadership, AI, and assorted tangents.
Latest posts
From VS Code (and friends) to Zed
A practical migration guide. What to install, configure, and expect. Covers extensions, settings, git, AI agents, and keyboard shortcuts.
Do little things well
Marco Pierre White, Colin Powell and Vincent Van Gogh all agree on one thing. And it's worth remembering in the age of rampant complexity and AI.
Code is the Idea, Not its Execution
... and what is an idea worth? Not much without great execution.
lint-staged is a hack (that you no longer need)
lint-staged exists because ESLint is slow. But what if your linter ran your entire repo in under a second? Time to ditch the hack.
Agentic maturity models focus on the wrong thing
Every AI maturity model measures autonomy. YOLO mode, parallel agents, building your own orchestrator. But that's only part of the picture and an answer to the wrong question. The better question is - are you ready?
Tequila vs Agentic AI
Mitch Ratcliffe said computers let you make mistakes faster than anything except handguns and tequila. In 2026, agentic AI just pushed tequila into third place.
Your Context Budget
Humans and AI can only hold so much in their head. So what do you spend your budget on? Its very easy for teams to end up in debt and paying heavy interest.
Weaponising Jevons Paradox
Making things easier doesn't just save time, it can increase frequency. Here's how to use that to your advantage.
How to Become an AI Whisperer
You can speak 2.5x faster than you type, and AI can now transcribe perfectly on your local device. The fastest and best way to communicate with AI isn't typing, it's talking.
AI Broke the Automation Payback Calculation
AI means we can now afford to ask question "can I make this easier?" instead of just "how do I solve this problem?"
Pair Planning = Enthusiastic AI Development and Team Happiness
Your AI agent agrees with everything you say, always answers when you call, and that's causing problems.
Full Stack Isn't Enough Any more. You Need to Be Full Team.
Now you need to be Full Team. AI can transforms you from a single developer into a one-person ai-powered team
FOMO-driven AI adoption sucks
Adoption by mandate (unsurprisingly) doesn't work. But what does?
AI is going to improve your documentation... but not the way you expect
"AI can read the code" feels like the new "code documents itself". It's wrong. Very very wrong.