kentbeck.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Two fundamental skills in managing complexity: * Partitioning. If I arrange things thus, then I can deal with this while not dealing with that. * Oopsie. Arranging things thus actually makes things harder because I have to deal with this, that, and the partitioning all at once.

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

I've been trying for years to get a decent shot of a bird of paradise flower. I finally got one. Still not perfect but that's what the quest is for.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Coding genies will build giant lookup tables to avoid going to recursion

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Your periodic reminder that consolidating a wobbly design is worse than a waste of time, it interferes with further improvement. Sometimes the best thing is put all the elements in one pile until the fault lines become clear. #AugmentedCoding #GeniesDesignBadly

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

How @KentBeck thinks about AI coding tools and agents: "They're like a genie. They grant your wishes... but not quite how you expect it. Then you tell it that it's not what you wanted. 'Oh, I'm sorry...' The genie is good at apologizing. But it's not good at meaning it."

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

Is anyone connecting a coding genie directly with a language server protocol (LSP) server? Would seem to bypass a lot of the "remote control of an IDE" problems I'm seeing.

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Tomorrow (Thursday) you can join me, Tim O'Reilly, Addy Osmani, Kent Beck, Chip Huyen, Birgitta Boeckeler, Jay Parikh and several other tech professionals giving our take on how AI will change software engineering - but why software engineers won't be "replaced" by AI or "AI sw engineers." (cont'd)

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

I'll be providing 15 minutes of what I've experienced with augmented coding. tl;dr great news for explorers, not so much yet for expanders & extractors.

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

I want a data type bloomean which is like a boolean, except the two values are no and maybe

submitted 16 days ago • 8 comments

Your periodic reminder--if a design change is hard then you haven't worked hard enough making it easy.

submitted 20 days ago • 2 comments

Fun convo about the state of augmented coding (aka vibe coding) circa 2 weeks ago my friend @jessitron.bsky.social & Ken Rimple. So, like, take with a grain of salt. www.heavybit.com/library/podc...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Why write documentation when the reader can ask for documentation?

submitted 21 days ago • 7 comments

If someone says they have “code ownership” it could be anything from #2 to #5. Leaders should make sure the whole company agrees on the model they are using.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Feels like 10 years at least since I RT’d posts like this on test-driven development (been more like 2 or 3 really). Why TDD Doesn’t Lead to Dumb Code by @kentbeck.com tidyfirst.substack.com/p/why-tdd-do...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

There’s time to design if we take the time to design.

submitted 28 days ago • 2 comments

What’s better than a good read during a long weekend? I enjoyed reading @kentbeck.com Tidy First. Full of common sense and good advice, through the prism of a seasoned developer and true craftsman.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

“Performing” teams aren’t teams without conflict. They are teams that have so much practice with conflict they make navigating it look easy.

submitted 33 days ago • 3 comments

This code ain’t gonna vibe itself

submitted 35 days ago • 3 comments

Augmented coding will respond to neither threats nor flattery. It’s yet another shift in costs of technology. Time to adapt.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Spent 10 minutes with a hummingbird in my garden yesterday afternoon. Highly recommended. Hummers make you feel large & vulnerable at the same time. When something extremely agile & pointy hovers 2 feet in front of your eyes, you can't help but focus.

submitted 37 days ago • 2 comments

“The secret to walking on water is knowing where the rocks are” —Bootsy Collins

submitted 39 days ago • 4 comments

Somehow, the future is both going to be a dystopian techno sci-fi hellscape AND we're gonna have coal and measles and robber barons and a permanent underclass. Philip K. Dickens

submitted 42 days ago • 146 comments

People complain about advice that's "too abstract". There's power in Abstractistan--take a real situation, translate it into abstract terms, manipulate it, then translate it back to reality. Sometimes you can do things this way that would be impossibly complex if you were just manipulating reality.

submitted 42 days ago • 2 comments

4/17, join Kent Beck (@kentbeck.com), creator of extreme programming & pioneer of software patterns, JUnit, & TDD, for the #ACMTechTalk "Empirical Software Design: When & Why." Learn how to balance short-term gains w/long-term flexibility in software design. Register (free): bit.ly/3FSTgSl

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

Just typed "One Startling Sentience" instead of "One Startling Sentence" & now I'm thinking hard.

submitted 53 days ago • 1 comment

TDD is a threat in The Desert. Programmers are asked to take responsibility for reliability. They know they will slow down in the short run & be blamed for it. They know they will not be given time, tools, or training. It's just more work & more potential negative consequences. #ForestAndDesert

submitted 53 days ago • 4 comments

Geek empathy

submitted 54 days ago • 1 comment

I’m close to being able to explain why Extract Function is the most-used refactoring. Not sure why I didn’t ask this question for 30 years but here we are. #TidyTogether

submitted 55 days ago • 5 comments

My nails are never better groomed than when I'm supposed to be writing a book.

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

We need a "let me Claude that for you" for lmgtfy.com. lmctfy.ai is available but $1100 for a joke seems a bit much.

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments