Daily Digest
Why TDD and AI coding tools exploit the same psychological flaws
Drew DeVault draws a provocative parallel between Test-Driven Development cults and GenAI adoption, arguing both exploit developers' psychological need to feel competent while potentially undermining actual code quality.
- TDD's hidden influence on architecture: While ensuring test coverage, TDD shapes codebases to be "testable" rather than well-designed, and provides no guarantee that passing tests verify the right behavior for actual user needs.
- The dopamine trap of development metrics: Both TDD's green test suites and AI's rapid output create addictive feedback loops through coverage percentages, CI badges, and productivity metrics that make developers feel competent regardless of actual code quality.
- AI coding agents as the new performance theater: GenAI tools let mediocre programmers experience the rush of 10x developer productivity, building "cathedrals" quickly that have beautiful test coverage but rotten foundations underneath.
- The psychological cost of shortcuts: Developers chase these tools despite knowing the externalities (environmental costs, job displacement) because the feeling of finally being "great" at programming overrides long-term concerns.
Latest Articles - Page 39
Keep calm and use (Rust) monorepos
Use monorepos My very unscientific analysis of the Rust ecosytem has come to the conclusion that Rust developers are wasting way too much time managing packages and dependencies. Whoever has
CSS vs. JavaScript
There are a bunch of JavaScript animation libraries out there, and you might have wondered whether there’s a performance cost compared to traditional CSS transitions and keyframe animations. In this b
Clanker: A Word For The Machine
In my last post I used the word “clanker” as an alternative to “agent” quite consistently and probably excessively. That choice ended up attracting a lot more attention than I expected in the Hacker
Web Summit Vancouver 2026: AI and the next generation of engineers
AI isn’t killing engineering. It's making it less meditative. There’s a lot of talk about AI killing engineering jobs. Some jobs will change, and some will disappear. But we’ve been automating enginee
Distributing LLM inference in DwarfStar
High end NVIDIA cards, and the server and power needed to run them, cost a lot of money, especially if you plan to reach enough VRAM to run massive models. The alternative, so far, has been Apple hard
The problem with Rust for backend services
Rust is not bad for backend services. I'm currently working on a large backend service in Rust and I enjoy it (and a few other smaller). The compiler-enforced correctness and
Crypto in 2026: Oh, This is the Bad Place
Crypto in 2026: Oh, This is the Bad Place Open your favourite Doom News App any morning in 2026 over your morning coffee, and the only honest phrase that should come out of your mouth is, "Oh, this is
The Pulse: Forward deployed engineering heats up again
Massive demand for the role at Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The latest version of the FDE role looks like the consultant / solution architect role done by many early-junior engineers.