Bern CD Content Manager

Test Or Test Not, There Is No Try.

*Content* Manager for Dave Farley's Continuous Delivery Ltd.

[Modern Software Engineering @ModernSoftwareX]

The $1M MISTAKE That Taught Me THIS About Team Culture | @davefarley77

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[Modern Software Engineering @ModernSoftwareX]

It is up to us to hold our industry to a higher standard, not just relying on AI tools to write the future of software, while we passively sit by. It has always been crucial for engineers to evolve their understanding of the fundamental principles and now is no different.

[Dave Farley @davefarley77]

Most software development pain is caused by unclear thinking, weak feedback loops, and systems that make change slow, risky, and expensive.

That’s why I create resources like The Software Developer’s Guidebook.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

A few random notes from claude coding quite a bit last few weeks.

Coding workflow. Given the latest lift in LLM coding capability, like many others I rapidly went from about 80% manual+autocomplete coding and 20% agents in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in December. i.e. I really am mostly programming in English now, a bit sheepishly telling the LLM what code to write... in words. It hurts the ego a bit but the power to operate over software in large "code actions" is just too net useful, especially once you adapt to it, configure it, learn to use it, and wrap your head around what it can and cannot do. This is easily the biggest change to my basic coding workflow in ~2 decades of programming and it happened over the course of a few weeks. I'd expect something similar to be happening to well into double digit percent of engineers out there, while the awareness of it in the general population feels well into low single digit percent.

IDEs/agent swarms/fallability. Both the "no need for IDE anymore" hype and the "agent swarm" hype is imo too much for right now. The models definitely still make mistakes and if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side. The mistakes have changed a lot - they are not simple syntax errors anymore, they are subtle conceptual errors that a slightly sloppy, hasty junior dev might do. The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic. Things get better in plan mode, but there is some need for a lightweight inline plan mode. They also really like to overcomplicate code and APIs, they bloat abstractions, they don't clean up dead code after themselves, etc. They will implement an inefficient, bloated, brittle construction over 1000 lines of code and it's up to you to be like "umm couldn't you just do this instead?" and they will be like "of course!" and immediately cut it down to 100 lines. They still sometimes change/remove comments and code they don't like or don't sufficiently understand as side effects, even if it is orthogonal to the task at hand. All of this happens despite a few simple attempts to fix it via instructions in CLAUDE . md. Despite all these issues, it is still a net huge improvement and it's very difficult to imagine going back to manual coding. TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits.

Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch an agent relentlessly work at something. They never get tired, they never get demoralized, they just keep going and trying things where a person would have given up long ago to fight another day. It's a "feel the AGI" moment to watch it struggle with something for a long time just to come out victorious 30 minutes later. You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work and that with LLMs in hand it has been dramatically increased.

Speedups. It's not clear how to measure the "speedup" of LLM assistance. Certainly I feel net way faster at what I was going to do, but the main effect is that I do a lot more than I was going to do because 1) I can code up all kinds of things that just wouldn't have been worth coding before and 2) I can approach code that I couldn't work on before because of knowledge/skill issue. So certainly it's speedup, but it's possibly a lot more an expansion.

Leverage. LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals and this is where most of the "feel the AGI" magic is to be found. Don't tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go. Get it to write tests first and then pass them. Put it in the loop with a browser MCP. Write the naive algorithm that is very likely correct first, then ask it to optimize it while preserving correctness. Change your approach from imperative to declarative to get the agents looping longer and gain leverage.

Fun. I didn't anticipate that with agents programming feels *more* fun because a lot of the fill in the blanks drudgery is removed and what remains is the creative part. I also feel less blocked/stuck (which is not fun) and I experience a lot more courage because there's almost always a way to work hand in hand with it to make some positive progress. I have seen the opposite sentiment from other people too; LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building.

Atrophy. I've already noticed that I am slowly starting to atrophy my ability to write code manually. Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain. Largely due to all the little mostly syntactic details involved in programming, you can review code just fine even if you struggle to write it.

Slopacolypse. I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. We're also going to see a lot more AI hype productivity theater (is that even possible?), on the side of actual, real improvements.

Questions. A few of the questions on my mind:
- What happens to the "10X engineer" - the ratio of productivity between the mean and the max engineer? It's quite possible that this grows *a lot*.
- Armed with LLMs, do generalists increasingly outperform specialists? LLMs are a lot better at fill in the blanks (the micro) than grand strategy (the macro).
- What does LLM coding feel like in the future? Is it like playing StarCraft? Playing Factorio? Playing music?
- How much of society is bottlenecked by digital knowledge work?

TLDR Where does this leave us? LLM agent capabilities (Claude & Codex especially) have crossed some kind of threshold of coherence around December 2025 and caused a phase shift in software engineering and closely related. The intelligence part suddenly feels quite a bit ahead of all the rest of it - integrations (tools, knowledge), the necessity for new organizational workflows, processes, diffusion more generally. 2026 is going to be a high energy year as the industry metabolizes the new capability.

[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

‘Jez Humble & @davefarley77 get asked whether they would make any changes to their award-winning software engineering book Continuous Delivery.’
https://t.co/XgbAIJlaLB
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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

Test Driven Development (TDD ) allows us to make progress in small steps, taking fewer risks and evolving our system incrementally, learning as we go. But how do you do this for a real problem?

https://t.co/4LnOcFmCi6

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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

‘What works better than PRs and bypasses the downsides of delays, asynchronous and box-ticking, low-quality, reviews?’

https://t.co/kNwoD0wBNf

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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

@davefarley77 defines a checklist of 14 markers that if you are achieving them clearly state that you are indeed practicing CD and building better software faster:
https://t.co/CMnyRf1iw9
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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

Why do many developers seemingly hate Test Driven Development?
https://t.co/lbpxVl0dYr
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[Bern CD Content Manager @CdContent]

Patreon Members Preview of this week's #MSE video from @emilybache @ModernSoftwareX @davefarley77
https://t.co/obM4njcK2V

[Bern CD Content Manager @CdContent]

https://t.co/bJvzn9C3ws

[Dave Farley @davefarley77]

WELCOME @samnewman to the Engineering Room 📣

LISTEN:

Apple - https://t.co/1LVTbCvlht
Spotify - https://t.co/xJibDlHqOI
Audible - https://t.co/iA5fmKP7TR

Sam shares insights from his upcoming book on building resilient distributed systems, emphasising his core philosophies...

[Dave Farley @davefarley77]

As engineers, our job remains fundamentally anchored in two core activities: managing complexity and optimizing for learning. New AI tools are seductive, frictionless, and incredibly convenient, but we must apply them strategically to augment these engineering skills.

🧵 1/6

[Dave Farley @davefarley77]

Join Me for the "Modern Software Engineering" Webinar this December! 📢

This webinar will explore the core ideas of Modern Software Engineering, focusing on the two strands of activity that I believe are essential to our craft.

Find out more HERE ➡️ https://t.co/OFPzjkzqfw

[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

In software development, what is the relationship between “Code” and “Design”?

https://t.co/2RkJm1ICmc

@davefarley77
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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

‘Mob Programming... is it really as crazy as it sounds, or does it really improve the quality & efficiency of the work & help teams to learn more effectively, as teams that practice it claim?'
https://t.co/NDWjkiaEMk
@davefarley77
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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

‘Gregor Hohpe, author of "Enterprise Integration Patterns", talks to @davefarley77 about Reducing the Cost of Being Wrong.’
https://t.co/0B6mlOLoFg
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[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

'What makes a software development team great?
Is it about software engineering roles, and the correct distribution of rockstar contributors, or is it about their ability to wield the latest and greatest tech?'
https://t.co/5rZzLCFj4n
@davefarley77
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@ModernSoftwareX

[Mob Mentality Show @mob__mentality]

What is SAFe?
Is SAFe safe?
https://t.co/KDTZxaHBE6
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[Bern CD Content Manager @CdContent]

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