Recent content on Scale X
A couple of months ago I published a small browser game : you play the human-in-the-loop for an AI coding agent, approving or denying its commands under time pressure. Some commands are routine ( git status , npm test ) and some other commands indicate your agent has been possessed and is sending your secrets to a remote server ( cat ~/.aws/credentials ). More on the threats associated with agents…
If you’re using claude code, this prompt will look very familiar to you. Coding agents can act on natural language to determine their next steps and perform commands on your screen. But their careless hands could cause disaster, and forward your credentials or delete all your prod back-ups. As human-in-the-loop, you’re the last line of defense. How well can you tell dangerous commands…
After 2 years, we decided to end our journey with the Shape-Up software development methodology. We hoped the longer cycles would help us ship projects faster, but ultimately we found the rigid structure wasn’t the right fit for our evolving needs. Here are my takeaways on why it was no longer a good match and what I learned from the experience. Why we tried Shape-Up At Customaite, we were…
Four years into building Customaite.ai , we made the decision to migrate away from reactive programming. Here’s why, and how Java’s Virtual Threads made it possible without needing to trade-off performance. Recently I gave a talk on how the new Java Virtual Threads feature allowed us to simplify the codebase at Customaite. I spoke about our journey from migrating away from a reactive…
Behind the curtains of any application there’s a team of on-call engineers keeping the lights on. A bad on-call experience for any team could become a strong driver for employee unhappiness and churn, and result in increased downtime. Here follow some lessons I’ve learned from the trenches in small start-ups and larger engineering teams, to improve your on-call shift experience and remediation…
How do you come up with the best software solution for a problem and pitch that choice to both your technical and non-technical peers in your organization? And what are some common pitfalls in comparing your options? A simple framework that has worked well for me for all kinds of technical decisions is prioritizing a set of criteria and mapping the possible solutions to them in tiers. Here’s how…
Four years ago we embarked on an innovation project within bpost, the Belgian post group. You can send parcels through the mail, but what about items which do not easily fit in a small box such as bouquets, ping-pong tables or bicycles for your family trip at the beach? Could we bring these people into contact with drivers who would like to perform these services for a fee? Enter bringr, a…
This week I attended the software engineering conference QCon in London. Like last year , I noticed a further trend in moving away from more shiny tools! towards how to more effectively guide teams to deliver value (using whatever tools). Here are my main take-aways on the themes which resonated with me the most: building resilient systems for humans, building high performing teams and whether or…
Creating an automated parking attendant As our company has been growing over the years, the parking lot has gotten more crowded. If it’s full you’ll need to back out and drive to the new building, located down the street. As you are driving you may wonder, ‘Should I head to the second lot straight away, or take my chances with the main parking lot?’ Wouldn’t it be nice if we could pose this…
If you want to achieve security by design in your project and mitigate cyber threats before they hit your applications, you will need to discuss these risks with your team and plan ahead. If you don’t know how to get started to get security from an afterthought to a feature, this guide is for you. By the end you should be able to organize your first threat modeling session, to get to a shared…
Craft Conference 2019 took place last week in Budapest, and I had a blast. It’s a conference focused on software craftsmanship; with several talks, meetups and discussions taking place over two days in a lovely train museum. Here are my takeaways from the stories discussed at Craft, divided into three themes: the new face of software architecture and technical leadership, choosing the right layers…
Firebase is an application platform from Google which offers many useful services to get your mobile or web app project started up quickly. To authenticate your users, the Firebase Auth service offers registration screens and authorization functionalities. You can link Firebase Auth with a public sign-in provider (such as Google or Facebook log-in) but unfortunately Firebase auth does not support…
The QCon Software Development Conference took place this week in London. Three days of interesting talks left me with a lot to digest, here are my takeaways on the recurring themes of the conference. How to use your shiny new toys right The organizers of the event, InfoQ, choose to focus the content on the topics they consider to be in the Innovator and Early Adopter stages of the software…
Organizations often possess a lot of data that’s being stored in unstructured formats. Most of the time, this involves data that people were able to enter as free text, such as e-mails, call center logs, presentations, manuals etc. In this example, I show what I used to parse resume and CV documents and extract the skills listed by my consultant colleagues at AE. This helped us move from manually…