Cassidy Williams
Nice keyboards make me want to write blogs
Writer admits they have no actual content to share but felt compelled to blog just to use their nice keyboard.
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.
#tdd-psychology#ai-code-generation#developer-productivity-metrics#software-testing-culture#programming-dopamine-loops
View all daily digests →Latest Articles - Page 94
Brandur Leach
Eradicating N+1s: The Two-phase Data Load and Render Pattern in Go
A two-phase load and render pattern in Go prevents N+1 query problems by separating data loading from rendering, eliminating lazy loading issues.
Dan Luu
What the FTC got wrong in the Google antitrust investigation
FTC memos from a 2011-12 Google antitrust probe reveal decision-makers lacked basic understanding of the tech industry when closing the investigation.
Cassidy Williams
I rewrote my blog! And website! They are one!
I merged my personal website and blog into a single site.
Brandur Leach
The Notifier Pattern for Applications That Use Postgres
Postgres's listen/notify feature enables pub/sub messaging within the database, but it's often underutilized despite being simple and powerful.
Brandur Leach
Web APIs: Enriched DX By Disallowing Unknown Fields
Go's DisallowUnknownFields option improves API developer experience by catching typos and invalid fields in JSON requests early.
Cassidy Williams
Front-end Design Conference recap
Attended Front-end Design Conference in St. Petersburg, FL as a speaker. Great experience!
Cassidy Williams
Seattle and the internet
The author draws a comparison between the internet today and their past experience living in Seattle.
Luca Palmieri
This month in Pavex, #10
Pavex's March update includes new cookie support (took a month vs expected hours), middleware improvements with mutable references, and ongoing closed beta invites.
Luca Palmieri
This month in Pavex, #10
👋 Hi! "Zero to production in Rust". Pavex, a new Rust web framework that I have been working on. It's time for another progress report on Pavex, covering what has been done in March. biscotti, I thou
Cassidy Williams
Non-traditional push presents
New parents deserve gifts focused on them, not just baby items. Here are some non-traditional push present ideas.
Cassidy Williams
I love reading fantasy again
Brandon Sanderson's books rekindled the author's love for fantasy adventure stories.
Cassidy Williams
Building W-9 Crafter
Built an app that generates Form W-9s for US contractors and freelancers.
Armin Samii
Demystifying git submodules
Git submodules are simpler than they seem - they just track repos differently than regular files, and understanding this makes them easier to use.
Dan Luu
How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
Web bloat now hurts users with slow devices more than slow connections, as CPU performance hasn't kept pace with bandwidth growth.
Luca Palmieri
biscotti, a new crate for HTTP cookies
biscotti is a new Rust crate for server-side HTTP cookie handling with better security, edge case support, and distinct request/response types.
Luca Palmieri
biscotti, a new crate for HTTP cookies
TL;DR biscotti ("cookies", but in Italian) is a new Rust crate to handle HTTP cookies on the server side. biscotti's API strives to be as faithful as possible to the underlying semantics of HTTP cooki
Cassidy Williams
Styling a CSS pseudo-element with JavaScript
JavaScript can't directly target CSS pseudo-elements, but there are workarounds to style them indirectly.
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Airfoil
Explores the physics of airplane flight by examining airfoils—the cross-sectional shape of wings that generates lift through airflow.
Luca Palmieri
This month in Pavex, #9
Pavex, a Rust web framework, released progress updates for Jan-Feb including closed beta invites, public documentation, and improvements to UX and functionality.