Essays on AI, engineering and Rails
Honest takes on code, AI, and what actually works
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Latest ·
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6–10 minutesI Still Miss Writing Code
Read essay →: I Still Miss Writing CodeThere is a specific kind of quiet I have been thinking about lately. It is late. The office is empty, or the house is finally asleep. There is a problem on the screen that refuses to be solved, and for…
Recent essays
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Evaluate: Why Human Judgment Is Non-Negotiable
We have arrived at the phase of ADD where the most important human skill comes into play. You have written a specification. You have generated code using appropriate context and patterns. Now…
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Prompt Patterns Catalog, Part 2: Iteration, Verification, and Persona
In the previous post, I introduced three foundational prompt patterns: Decomposition for breaking complex tasks into manageable units, Exemplar for teaching by example, and Constraint for defining boundaries. These patterns address the…
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Prompt Patterns Catalog: Decomposition, Exemplar, Constraint
Software developers are familiar with design patterns. The Gang of Four cataloged reusable solutions to recurring problems in object-oriented design. You learn patterns like Strategy, Observer, and Factory not because they are…
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Generate: The Art of Effective AI Collaboration
Generation is where the visible work happens. You provide input, and the AI produces code. This is the moment most developers think of when they imagine AI-assisted development. It is also where…
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Specification Templates: A Practical Library for AI Development
In the previous post, I made the case that specification is the highest-leverage skill in AI-driven development. A precise specification produces better output, requires less iteration, and surfaces ambiguity before it becomes…
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The Quiet Builders: A History of Introverts in Engineering and What AI Means for the Future
Throughout human history, there has always been a place where the quiet ones could excel. A domain where deep thinking mattered more than small talk, where careful analysis outweighed charisma, and where…
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Specify: The Most Important Skill in AI-Driven Development
If you take one thing from this entire series, let it be this: the quality of AI-generated code is bounded by the quality of your specification. No amount of model capability, prompt…
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From Waterfall to ADD: Why AI Demands Its Own Methodology
Software development methodologies do not emerge from academic theory or conference talks. They emerge from pain. Practitioners encounter problems that existing approaches cannot solve, and they develop new disciplines to address those…
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The Unstructured AI Problem: Why Most Teams Are Using AI Wrong
Every developer I know uses AI tools now. Copilot suggestions appear mid-keystroke. ChatGPT tabs stay permanently open. Claude conversations stretch across multiple projects. The adoption curve was vertical, faster than any technology…
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