We work hard, we mean well, we still end up doing software wrong
Our repositories have stopped being just a safe home for our codebase, they have become a noticeboard. Markdown files have appeared everywhere, each one containing another set of instructions for the agents now wandering through the project like contractors on their first day, nodding confidently while having no idea what they are doing. Look at any modern code repository and there they are.…
Most developers have become pretty good at using AI, some reluctantly. We paste in an error and ask for an explanation. We ask for unit tests, a regex we will immediately regret, or a slightly less deranged version of a comment we wrote at 11:47pm while bargaining with a build pipeline. And it works. The model helps. The developer moves on. Everyone feels faintly productive, like something…
The productivity bit is real Recently, I had one of those deeply suspicious moments in my software career where something starts working so well you immediately stop trusting it. Not in the dramatic sense. Nothing caught fire. Nobody sent an email that made me feel nauseous. There wasn’t even a keynote involved, which already puts it ahead of most modern technical revolutions. It was just the…
I had a moment this week where I genuinely considered becoming a Luddite. Not in a dramatic, delete-all-my-accounts way. In a proper, roll-up-the-sleeves, gather-the-villagers and smash the machinery sort of way. Because I realised something slightly unsettling. I am in a new Industrial Revolution, and I am the one weaving the textiles. Last time I wrote here, I was still comfortably speculating…
There’s been a weird tone creeping into all my conversations lately. Not loud panic. Not screaming. Just… a moderate, constant hum. The kind you notice when you stop and realise everyone around you is talking a bit faster than usual. Friends ask how work’s going, but they don’t really mean it. Colleagues phrase things like questions that are actually stress tests. People who’ve been calm for years…
Sometimes there is that person in a meeting - the one whose Miro board is a web of arrows and sticky notes like a detective’s evidence board - who announces that the reason everything is on fire is because we are not following The Process™ . If you have ever been part of a development team you are probably familiar with the moment. Everyone else is staring at the floor, wondering if now a good…
I was trying to build a survey form. Just a text box or two, a dropdown maybe, and a button. Nothing crazy – no fancy gradients, no animations that make buttons behave like they are auditioning for a Pixar film. Just a boring, run-of-the-mill form with a button that says “Submit”. Five minutes of work, I thought. Maybe ten if I forgot how HTML works again. Many hours later I had installed a CLI, a…
There’s a new phase in the corporate lifecycle - somewhere between “we need to modernise” and “someone please find the person who owned this spreadsheet” - where an executive suddenly sits up, eyes glowing with the confidence of someone who has not read a single technical document since 2009, and declares: “We need AI.” It’s said with the certainty of a man spotting a new cordless tool in…
I didn’t start my career thinking I’d one day be yelled at by a stranger because a button didn’t do what they expected. Or that I’d have managers calling me demanding to know why someone’s data had "f%$ked off into the ether”, as though the system had achieved sentience and developed a personal grudge. But here we are. If you’ve never supported software, you probably imagine an inbox with a few…
There’s a particular moment in every software project where someone leans back in their chair, exhales deeply and says, “Well. It’s done.” It’s said with the confidence of someone who has not yet opened their inbox the next morning. The idea that software becomes “complete” the moment it goes live is weirdly persistent. It’s held by people who should know better and people who definitely don’t,…
