Spiky Points of View from 2,000 hours of agentic engineering A few opinions on where software engineering is heading

Wrote a new post about some opinions I've grown so far after immersing myself in agentic engineering.

Does anyone disagree?

arrowsmithlabs.com/blog/spovs-f...

Following old school acquaintances on social media, it's remarkable how many have left the UK. And more keep leaving.

And we're not in our 20s anymore, these aren't backpacking trips. Grown-ups with careers are expatriating for the long-term.

The brain-drain will destroy us.

Visiting the US in 2025 feels like I defected from the Eastern Bloc.

Comrades, the capitalists have driverless cars. DRIVERLESS CARS. Meanwhile in Europe we invent nothing, produce nothing and our economies are still stuck in 2006.

Do you think we might be losing?

my significantly less cool or easy-to-pronounce real name. (It rhymes with “willow”, not “silo” or “kilo”.)

May the next chapter begin. /fin

Anyway, I’ve never tried particularly hard to conceal my real identity, and today I’m dropping the pretence entirely. My business will still be known as Arrowsmith Labs, but I’m officially retiring the name “George Arrowsmith” in favour of 3/

I don’t remember how or why I landed on “Arrowsmith”, but it’s apparently a real name if you google it. And for the Americans who have asked: no, I didn’t name myself after a Bostonian rock band — I didn’t even realise you Yanks pronounce it the same way. Dream on. 2/

ANNOUNCEMENT: “George Arrowsmith” is dead.

A couple of years ago when I started publishing Elixir content, I decided I wanted to keep my online persona separate from my real life, and thus began writing under a pseudonym. 1/

that mediocre devs don’t stand a chance. But the number of QA/tester jobs is going to go up.

Or someone will figure out how to reliably test code as quickly (and cheaply) as an LLM can write it. That person's going to make a lot of money.

you need the reassurance of human eyes on it. And human eyes don’t scale.

In the short term I think that the total number of software engineering jobs is probably going to decline — a small number of ultra-cracked AI whisperers are going to crank out so much code 2/

QA is about to become a huge bottleneck in software development.

AI lets us churn out HUGE amounts of code extremely fast, but you still need to make sure it works. AI can help with testing too, but if you _really_ want to be sure it works, 1/

Elixir friends: tomorrow I will begin the below challenge, using AI to resurrect a large abandoned codebase.

Any suggestions? I'd love to find an Elixir project if there's a good candidate. What does the community need?

Congratulations! Nothing is more rewarding than fatherhood 🙂

What are you talking about?

New testimonials for Learn Phoenix LiveView. Thanks Georgi and Dwight!

Check it out yourself at LearnPhoenixLiveView.com

I don't think it's just contexts' fault. I think it's also too much boilerplate that's needed to achieve basic stuff and LiveView not being part of the framework + its design with views and components being two different things.

It's still the best stack on the planet if you asked me 🙃 (1/2)

What's the Alpha project?

Did contexts kill Phoenix? Posted in r/elixir by u/ThatArrowsmith • 85 points and 115 comments

This one kicked off a big discussion on r/elixir. Read the comments here:

old.reddit.com/r/elixir/com...

Did contexts kill Phoenix? Why didn't Phoenix take off? I ask whether contexts killed the momentum.

Did contexts kill Phoenix?

New blog post:

arrowsmithlabs.com/blog/did-con...

New testimonial for Mastering Phoenix Forms. Thanks Jim!

(Check it out for yoursellf at MasteringPhoenixForms.com, now fully updated for Phoenix 1.8.)

Spoiler:

Phoenix contexts are simpler than you think Beginners are always overthinking yet, but it doesn’t need to be confusing

Phoenix contexts are simpler than you think. My new blog post explains why:

arrowsmithlabs.com/blog/phoenix...

I just pushed an update to *Mastering Phoenix Forms*. The content and code are now fully up-to-date for Phoenix 1.8.

See for yourself at MasteringPhoenixForms.com! Here's some feedback from existing customers:

New blog post: **Numbering nested inputs in Phoenix LiveView.**

This should be a simple feature to add to your nested forms, but it's not obvious how to implement it, and there are complications if your nested inputs are sortable.

arrowsmithlabs.com/blog/numberi...

Elixir Radar 473

Elixir Radar issue 473 is out! 📣

You can read it here: buff.ly/sToO24X

This issue features content from @thatarrowsmith.bsky.social @josevalim.bsky.social , Marcin Ruszkiewicz, Caio Delgado and Dan Schultzer. Thank you!

#ElixirLang

Here's some of the feedback I've received since launching the LiveView and OTP Crash Course five months ago.

(Check it out yourself at liveviewcrashcourse.com. It's free! 😉)

As we're getting ready for the first release candidate of #Phoenix #LiveView 1.1, I want to write about some of the new features and improvements we've been working on. A thread!
#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

Fully agree with this HN comment.

LLMs are the most amazing technology I've ever seen. Why all the hate and negativity?

Nested forms in Phoenix LiveView: advanced tips and tricks Learn advanced techniques for rendering nested forms with inputs_for in Phoenix LiveView

Been a while since I published new Phoenix content!

My new blog post is about how to do some things with nested LiveView forms that go slightly beyond the standard add/remove/sort stuff describe in the docs:

arrowsmithlabs.com/blog/phoenix...

Yes, it should be "jeopardiSing!"

Stupid 'Muricans.

I want an LLM for my email.

“Write a short email to David telling him I’m looking forward to seeing him on Saturday, and ask him what the dress code is. Show it to me for approval before sending.”

Much easier than writing it myself.

Does this exist yet?