Software, AI, Zen, and the human side of building systems with more clarity, trust, and care.
If every individual replacement is an improvement, at what point does the whole stop being yours? We were writing a whitepaper about how development teams can use agents without giving up ownership. It seemed logical to use agents in the writing process itself, with the same controls we recommend for software: persistent context, bounded roles, specialist reviews and a human approval boundary. On…
AI coding agents expose the implicit knowledge your team has been expecting humans to infer. What if our repositories are similar to city architecture and infrastructure? Your AI agent did exactly what you asked. That might be the problem. A software system is like a city. From above, it can look structured: roads, districts, services, routes. But the real system also runs below the surface,…
The daily grind: Running at 100% load with 0% value Imagine the howling fans of a server running continuously at 100% load. The system is overheating, but the application is barely responding, if at all. This is exactly the state many of us log into every single day. Slack notifications are flashing, Pull Requests are piling up, and we try to tick off tickets at a rapid pace while building a new…
In the cyberpunk stories I love, the world is split into two: the “Chromed” (enhanced, fast, inhuman) and the “Ganics” (natural, slow, fragile). For everyone who has seen the show “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners”, you know what I mean! I am an engineer who embraces the “Chrome.” I love the shiny new tools. I use the tooling, the agents and the super-powered IDEs. But lately, I have realised that while I…
Photo by Rainhard Wiesinger on Unsplash I was in the middle of a marriage proposal. My hands were sweating, and my heart was pounding against my ribs. I felt nauseous looking at the golden ring and at my partner, who was down on one knee. I was gasping for air. In that moment, the coach intervened: “Roel, I’m not seeing any of that restlessness. What if you made your unrest three times as large?”…
Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash Every year, I take time to reflect on the past. I use the art of journaling. It’s just me, a keyboard, and an empty document. I give myself one hour and just let my thoughts flow. I look back on what happened, what I achieved, what I learned, and most importantly, what my intention is for next year. Note the word intention instead of goal . Goals are binary; they…
Ever catch yourself clenching the steering wheel at a red light, jaw tight, because you’re mentally rewriting a sentence you haven’t even typed yet? That silent grip is perfectionism taking the wheel long before any real mistake has happened. In my previous blog, Learning to Live with My Inner Critic, I explored how that critical voice in my head often kept me from taking steps forward. Rather…
What happens when the same technology that helps us grow… also starts replacing the things that make us human? Losing ourselves to the machine In my previous article , I explored how working with AI can feel surprisingly human when shaped with care and intention. But there’s another side to this story. AI hasn’t made me passive or disconnected. It helps me think more clearly and create with more…
Becoming more Human, Co-evolving with AI A guide to making your AI collaboration intentional, personal, and human-enriching. Why do we talk to AI but not our fridge Let’s start with something odd. You probably don’t feel the urge to confide in your refrigerator. Or ask your coffee machine for life advice. Yet people around the world are having meaningful conversations with AI. Why? Because unlike…
Making the web more accessible: A Win for AI and everyone A robot navigating the web TL;DR: This article explores how enhancing web accessibility benefits users with disabilities, improves the performance of AI agents, computer vision systems, and overall user experience (UX), and creates a win-win situation for users and AI agents. By aligning with WCAG standards and the European Web…