Spec driven development existed long before AI assisted coding. It solved a problem of communication between humans. Now it helps us to communicate with AI agents.
When an agent works on code, a separate source of truth (the specs) protects against unwanted changes.
“Debug with AI” still mirrors old workflows.
Instead with specs, observability, tests, and any kind of guardrails we move to become coaches on the sidelines.
With the software world changing so fast, it is even more important to be profitable ASAP, ideally from day one. You can't bet on things not to change.
20 years ago my teacher said: “Writing code is only 10% of software engineering.” Then he focused on teaching the other 90%.
I was looking for a course to watch while doing chores. Didn't find what I was looking for in terms of, say, "sharpness". Later I went to read the documentation on the thing and got so much traction immediately.
Again.
Read the docs! Don't wait for someone for create a course.
Who uses GitHub Copilot or Copilot in VS Code and is NOT associated with Microsoft in some way? What makes you choose it? Please burst my Claude feed bubble.
You can and need to practice both:
- lock in and focus even if exhausted
- fully let go when you play with your children
What if agentic coding only works as well as it does because libraries contribute a significant deterministic part of the code?
Imagine you had to code your operating system from scratch every time you wanted to run a new project. Sounds ridiculous!
So where’s the line?
Will a chat with AI ever be enough to explore a code base? Code is the ultimate form of software specifications. How much text in English language do you need to catch all that a particular method does, i.e. what ratio? Maybe it will still be easier to just look at the code.
Who will eventually be left to be required to understand actual code? Maybe cyber security? And people developing the low level stuff?
Abstractions are hard. Sharing between many projects requires much more effort. AI generated code can focus on one thing instead.
It seems like AI coding relies a lot on doing things from scratch, or highly custom, except using big frameworks. Why haven't we seen the same velocity with customizable building blocks (packages, component libraries etc.)?
Why haven't we seen significant deterministic code generators before we got AI? We barely got WYSIWYG editors to produce usable HTML.
Was that Cloudflare, maybe?
Page not found, and blog home page gives a TLS error 👀
My son: holds up a toy car, excited: „Look, they have a REAL fire truck!“
Content creator: „In this video we’ll build a FULL … clone FROM SCRATCH!“
What do you recommend for pretty docs for developers? Markdown, code snippets, syntax highlighting. Ideally Vue/Laravel based.
I’m already biased towards Mago because speed.
Although maybe it will need time to integrate well with Laravel features. But I have to explore that ASAP.
To leverage the AI coding assistant for learning while you work on an actual task, ask: „Suggest three alternative ways we could approach this task“, and study them critically.
What The Alias, my fun Rust project, is coming along:
Today I actually needed to look up an alias I couldn't remember. So here's search now in v0.2! 🥳
github.com/michapietsch...
Whenever AI generated code is hard to understand, the task is often more complex than I initially thought.
With reports of AI agents wiping some people's disks, it would be overkill to isolate and virtualize everything. Regular backups go a long way.
Find my little WIP Rust shell alias trainer here:
github.com/michapietsch...
It’s the first time I’ve really noticed the possibility to use Notion for blogging. I like this idea, not to over-engineer it, but get started.
I read “content-heavy” and immediately thought CMS. 😅 Markdown sure is less overhead. And will accumulate, too, over time! 🙃Putting Astro with Markdown onto my explore list. 👍🏻
I see, sounds great! Do you use some headless content source with it?
Please clarify: What kind of “typing code” is one supposed to do in their free time without thinking about or understanding any of it? Can’t see actual nor entertainment value in that. You make it sound as if there are programmers who just type up what someone dictates. 😅
So it’s about actual typing, not the authoring? About getting it from your head into a file?
When did we not need to go beyond? 👀
What makes Astro great for this, from your experience?
Sounds like a great investment into local community 😊