Software-Development

Published: Apr 8, 2026 After I published Two problems blocking autonomous AI coding assistants, I got some responses. And a pattern emerged. For every problem I raised, someone had the same answer: “We’ll solve that soon.” Verification is manual? Don’t worry, AI-generated tests are getting better. Code review doesn’t scale? Give it six months, the tools will summarize changes for you. The non-determinism problem? Next-gen models will be more consistent. ...

Published: Apr 8, 2026 This is the third post in a series. The first was about two problems blocking autonomous AI coding assistants. The second was about the asymptotic promise of agentic coding. In those posts I talked about non-determinism and the feeling that real autonomous coding stays just out of reach. I think I’ve figured out why. The trade-off nobody talks about If you want an AI coding agent to be really efficient, you have to let it loose. Give it access to your file system. Let it run shell commands. Let it make decisions without asking you first. The more freedom you give, the more it can do for you. ...

This is the fourth post in a series about agentic coding. The first was about two problems blocking autonomous AI coding assistants. The second about the asymptotic promise. The third about the freedom-risk curve. I think I’ve been circling around something in those posts without naming it. When we talk about AI agents, there are actually two very different things going on. Mode 1: The agent writes software. You ask it to implement a feature, write a script, build a component. It produces code. You run the code. The code is deterministic — same input, same output, every time. The problems I wrote about before still apply: you need to verify the code and understand what changed. But once the code works, it works. ...

Published: Mar 30, 2026 So I’ve been using AI coding assistants daily for a while now. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex - I’ve tried them all. And I keep running into the same wall. Every time I use agentic coding, I end up doing two things manually: First, I verify that the code actually does what I expected - running tests, checking behavior. Second, I read through the changes to understand how the shape of the codebase changed. ...

Published: Feb 10, 2021 Sometimes we have to do really boring work as software developers. For instance today we are working on moving a domain from our internal DNS servers to AWS route53. This domain has been in our hands for 25 years - we have a lot of DNS records. We naturally have to make sure every record exists in the new DNS - otherwise people can’t receive mails or other important stuff. ...

If humans do stuff that computers can do, computers gather at night and laugh at the human Published: Feb 10, 2021 Source: https://khebbie.dk/if-humans-do-stuff-that-computers-can-do-computers-gather-at-night-and-laugh-at-the-human/ Sometimes we have to do really boring work as software developers. For instance today we are working on moving a domain from our internal DNS servers to AWS route53. This domain has been in our hands for 25 years - we have a lot of DNS records. We naturally have to make sure every record exists in the new DNS - otherwise people can’t receive mails or other important stuff. ...

Published: Dec 26, 2017 Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? Brian Kernighan from The Elements of Programming Style, 2nd edition, chapter 2 “Simple doesn’t mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does.” - Paul Krugman Have you ever worked with a piece of that that made you think: “The person who created software was really smart - like a lot smarter than me”? ...

Are you smart enough to debug your code? Published: Dec 26, 2017 Source: https://khebbie.dk/if-you-write-your-code-so/ Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? Brian Kernighan from The Elements of Programming Style, 2nd edition, chapter 2 “Simple doesn’t mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does.” - Paul Krugman ...

Published: Dec 20, 2017 “One of the best programming skills you can have is knowing when to walk away for awhile.” - Oscar Godson “Sometimes it’s better to leave something alone, to pause, and that’s very true of programming.” - Joyce Wheeler “Best ergonomics advice is ‘stay hydrated’” Michael Feathers When working in a factory it is pretty easy to see if you are doing work if you are standing by the assembly line and do manual work of some sort - you are probably working. Many people, even software developers, believe that writing code is what we do. But I would state that thinking is what we do. ...

One of the best programming skills you can have is knowing when to walk away for awhile. Published: Dec 20, 2017 Source: https://khebbie.dk/one-of-the-best-programming-skills-you-can-have-is-knowing-when-to-walk-away-for-awhile/ “One of the best programming skills you can have is knowing when to walk away for awhile.” - Oscar Godson “Sometimes it’s better to leave something alone, to pause, and that’s very true of programming.” - Joyce Wheeler “Best ergonomics advice is ‘stay hydrated’” Michael Feathers When working in a factory it is pretty easy to see if you are doing work if you are standing by the assembly line and do manual work of some sort - you are probably working. Many people, even software developers, believe that writing code is what we do. But I would state that thinking is what we do. ...