London based software development consultant

  • 678 Posts
  • 93 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: September 29th, 2025

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  • codeinaboxOPtoOpensourceTests Are The New Moat
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    2 days ago

    I wonder if we’ll end up in a situation of open source projects with closed source tests. Though I don’t know how that would work, because how would you contribute a new feature if the tests are closed? 🤔







  • What the article is talking about is how AI is a multiplier, and to get benefits from using it, rather than detriments, you need to get your house in order first:

    The Widening AI Value Gap report by BCG found a similar result from a different angle, where 74% of companies struggle to scale AI value, with only 21% of pilots reaching production. The other 5% generating real returns had first built fit-for-purpose technology architecture and data foundations. This suggests that the problem is not AI but the underlying infrastructure to which it is being added.

    AI scales the groundwork; teams that successfully adopt AI typically already have solid foundational practices in place, while those lacking them struggle to get value from their AI investments.









  • The conclusion aligns with my own belief, which is that it’s better to create a minimal context by hand than get agents to create it:

    We find that all context files consistently increase the number of steps required to complete tasks. LLM-generated context files have a marginal negative effect on task success rates, while developer-written ones provide a marginal performance gain.

    When I have got Claude to create a context, it’s been overly verbose, and that also costs tokens.





  • codeinaboxOPtoProgrammingBias Toward Action
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    11 days ago

    There are some really good tips on delivery and best practice, in summary:

    Speed comes from making the safe thing easy, not from being brave about doing dangerous things.

    Fast teams have:

    • Feature flags so they can turn things off instantly
    • Monitoring that actually tells them when something’s wrong
    • Rollback procedures they’ve practiced
    • Small changes that are easy to understand when they break

    Slow teams are stuck because every deploy feels risky. And it is risky, because they don’t have the safety nets.






  • I try to stay well read on AI, and I regularly use Claude, but I’m not so convinced by this article. It makes no mention of the bubble that could burst. As for the models improving aren’t the improvements slowing down?

    More importantly, the long term effects of using AI are still unknown, so that for reason the adoption trajectory could be subject to change.

    The other factor to consider is that the author of this article is a big investor in AI. It’s in his interest to generate more hyperbole around it. I have no doubt that generative AI will forever change coding, but but I have my skepticism about other areas, especially considering the expensive controversy of Deloitte using AI to write reports for the Australian government.


  • codeinaboxOPMtoAI CodingBuilding at the Speed of Thought
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    16 days ago

    I find articles like this about agentic engineering both compelling and anxiety inducing. It’s staggering what people are achieving with agents toiling away in the background. However, it also leaves me feeling insecure, as I have many ideas that I would love to build, and previously my excuse was a lack of time, and now I worry I have no excuse when an agent could potentially build it whilst I sleep.