2026-08 - W4
AI Coding will Prevent Expertise | Lars Faye
Really good essay.
If a developer wants to become an expert in programming, they should largely disregard the pure code generation capabilities of these models, and instead use them for interactive documentation, dynamic tutorial generators, and Socratic exercises. … Choosing this slower, more deliberate path is the best way to grow expertise, but I’m aware of how hard that is when the surrounding ecosystem is actively working against it.
And its sibling essay: Agentic Coding is a Trap | Lars Faye.
Agentic Engineering at Zalando: a snapshot
Interesting take of the changes made in their engineering teams.
In the pursuit of protecting lead time to merge for PRs, we built a risk-based PR approval tool, triggered at PR creation stage. Each PR is evaluated for its rollout risk: low, medium, high. 33% of our PRs are low-risk and are auto-approved by the bot. The author of the PR can thus choose to merge the PR, which in our case reduced PR lead time by 20-40% (when compared with all PRs). It also greatly accelerated individuals building prototypes or taking care of internal tooling who would have otherwise needed to interrupt one of their colleagues to rubberstamp their changes.
That’s interesting, it incentivize agents/people to create really small PRs, and not 1k+ changes PRs. Still skeptical for long term impact…
Your Open Source Model Could Have a Hidden Time-Release Backdoor | Morgin.ai
Ouch!
Keep AI Out of Your (Obsidian) Vault
For sure interesting to see what comes out, but I wouldn’t recommend it for your “second brain” where you develop your thinking and YOUR ideas.
VimTricks - Concise Vim Tricks Reference
Really great wiki!
TIL :only to close all other windows. Neat!
What We Tell AI
Anonymous handwritten notes about people’s relationship with AI — an anthropological art project documenting its growing presence in the most intimate details of our lives.
Git at any scale · Cursor
Great technical post!
20 Lessons From 20+ Years in Tech - by Dr Milan Milanović
Yet another list!
- Nothing you own owns you back
- Your kids are watching you
- Focus on what you can control
- Stop waiting for permission
- You’re not paid to write code
- If you stop learning, you stop living
- Comfort is expensive
- Simple is better than clever
- Your body keeps the receipt
- People first, always
- A good boss matters more than a good company
- Most “emergencies” aren’t real ones
- Nobody counts your hours
- You get what you negotiate, not what you deserve
- You’re not behind
- Say less and ask more
- Teach people. It makes you better
- Challenge everything
- Consistency beats talent
- Some things don’t resolve. Just walk anyway
Use Your Brain: Engineering Standards in the Age of LLMs - P. Galeone’s blog
Use your brain
Well said.
Calibrate Before You Accelerate: The Smart Way to Bias Toward Action in a New Role | Joshua Tucker
None of this is about moving slowly - it’s about making sure that when you do move, you’re pushing on something that actually needs pushing.
So, the next time you find yourself in a new environment, fighting the urge to fix everything on day one: take a breath. Put down the sledgehammer. Pick up the blueprints. The real work will still be there when you’re actually ready to build.
Some grammatical voices for use in scentific writing
Your coding agent got the onboarding your developers never did - The New Stack
Three People Is a Team. Seven Is a Committee with Zero Decisions. Klaus Breyer
Before any meeting, any shaping session, any framing discussion, ask: what is the smallest group that has all the context to make this decision? Start with that group. If they discover they are missing context, they can pull someone in. But the default should be small, not large.
Condensing Twenty Years of Wisdom in One Markdown — by Konstantin Gredeskoul
There’s no such thing as Just a Tool | deadSimpleTech
Interesting essay: our tools change how we perceive and interact with the world.