Ironically, the internet was far more social before social media arrived.

Went to the cinema with the teen yesterday to see the reissued Akira. What a fine movie to see on the big screen.

Both measures - burning shitloads of tokens / high rework rates - are indicative of poor adoption, inadequate setup, probably a shop with poor standards/practices to start off with, and (likely) high levels of change-pressure from other areas of the business.

Neither metric actually MEANS anything.

Everyone who started knee-jerk-frothing about AI code assistance and "lazy devs" needs to go have a word with themselves.

Good job, Bluesky Team.

Yes, my stance has changed since this post; someone built a tool that was actually fit-for-purpose and enhances the job rather than threatens it, so I adapted my view.

Firing your devs is still a mince-thick move, though.

In summary: managers are still the problem.

Worth mentioning: NatureHike (a budget-friendly outdoors brand from China) make a *very robust tent indeed*. This photo is from AFTER I dug the tent out - it was mostly half-buried when I woke up. It shed the snow well and didn't deform where the snow drifted. This is their CloudUp 2 model.

It absolutely has no place in creative fields though - that I completely agree with. In engineering environments, though... you effectively gain a capable-but-junior side-kick that you can delegate selected stuff to - for a team as busy as mine, that's a boon.

There's also the shallow-success effect at play - it's easy to use an AI tool to build something that *looks* like software, and that behaves like it's 90% complete and ready-for-production. The reality, though - such toys are usually only 10% of the way there, and a professional would *shred* it.

I suspect that most of the criticism comes from people who either don't understand dev processes in the first place, or think that prompting an AI with "make me an app that does X" is the entirety of the job (it very much isn't), or that it's a glorified auto-complete (it's not).

We made a big up-front investment in how we onboarded Claude Code into our workplace, but we're seeing dividends in quality of output - and that's what matters to us the most. We all still do our jobs - we just do them better and more effectively.

All of this has been achieved through actively engaging with the tools, learning how to use and train them, and working to strict standards with clear guards against undesired outputs or behaviours. Our experience has been entirely positive - we're a tiny team with too much to do and it helps a lot.

Rather than "doing our jobs for us", we find that the tools enable us to focus on design elegance, adherence to strong patterns and resilience, rather than on crunching out largely "boilerplate" code by hand. It's even possible to "vibe-code" in a disciplined, highly-engineered way.

We're primarily using it catch common errors, anti-patterns and blind-spots, and to fill gaps that my small team often doesn't have the capacity to fill - unit testing, handover docs, observability, fault-tolerance and so forth.

It needs creative steering to be of high value, and needs to be trained to fit with your specific environment, team and ethos - but the tools to do that are available out-of-the box. I lead my team, and I've not mandated its use - but adoption has been unanimous amongst my team-mates.

Nearly 40 years into my career I *absolutely* "do" and "understand" my job - and I use an AI assistant. Claude Code is an astonishingly powerful R&D tool which, in the right hands and steered by an architectural/disciplined engineering mindset, is capable of producing excellent quality software.

I've become aware of a few threads knocking software developers who use AI tools as "not doing their jobs" / "not understanding their jobs".

I'm calling bullshit on this.

Low shrubbery and tall fir trees, covered in snow, frame a view of sunlit snowy hills and distant mountains, all under a clear blue sky.

A snowy scene. In the foreground, a recently snowploughed road, a wire fence, a field with power poles. Sunlit snow blankets everything except a narrow strip of black road. Beyond, layers of snow-covered hills and mountains recede to the horizon. A blue sky with white fluffy clouds (a promise of more snow to come) hangs above.

Sunday before last - a stunning day in the Highlands.

Blackfold, near Inverness, Scotland

Spent last week in backpacker's hostels in Inverness and Drumnadrochit. Met a number of US citizens, all of whom were deeply embarrassed by and firmly opposed to the current administration.

I can only conclude that MAGA supporters don't travel. It explains a lot.

A clear, cold stream tumbles over rocks, flanked by trees. Snow-capped mountains and a clear blue sky lie beyond

A photo from last week: Dog Falls, Glen Affric, Scotland.

I'm back at work now. Booooo!

The Caledonian Sleeper every time I visit the Highlands.

I'd post something world-changingly witty here, but my pizza's almost ready to come out of the oven so it'll have to wait.

Soz.

Accidentally walked 125km this week.

Personally, I'm not sure I believe it, and you probably shouldn't either.

A cozy Highland lounge. Saggy leather sofas, earth-tone decor, tartan curtains, a coal-burning stove and a nice dark beer. Comfy.

The cozy lounge at Loch Ness Backpackers Lodge, Drumnadrochit

They have guitars and a piano. Both have been abused appropriately.

...and here's the view from the top...

Plodda Falls, nr Tomich, Highlands, Scotland

Slightly iffy video because of spray and trying not to fall over whilst moving about, but here's an absolute beast of a waterfall anyway. The view from that top platform is amazing, too.
Plodda Falls, nr Tomich, Highlands, Scotland

A statue commemorating the creation of the Golden Retriever breed of dog near Tomich in 1868. Good boy.

Went for a walk. Accidentally discovered the source from which all Golden Retrievers flow.

Good boys and girls, every one of them. Never had or met a grumpy retriever.

A green tent, in heavy snowfall. One side has snow drifted to about a third of the tents height.

Accidental camping

Ah, excellent! Glad you found them!

When your kids complain about having to help you with technical things for the billionth time, just remind them who taught them how to use a spoon and how to not shit themselves.

A city scene, taken in Coventry one night last year. A full moon in a cloudy sky hangs above a brightly lit ferris wheel, framed between buildings and shops.

#alphabetChallenge #weekNforNight