I'm a lifelong reader who went through a dry period in my life where I didn't read much. There were reasons why this happened, but here are the things I did to turn that around and become a rejuvenated reader of books.
civic.io/2023/01/04/m...
'Although AI agents are advancing rapidly, human expertise remains essential in software development."
cacm.acm.org/opinion/rede...
#AI is changing the way government teams will practice Agile. Are agencies ready for the change?
civic.io/2026/04/16/i...
See you in there.
Like talking about how AI is changing government software? Interested in legacy system modernization? I built a new community of practice around SpecOps - the spec-driven approach to legacy modernization I've been writing and talking about. Here's the link to join: join.slack.com/t/specopscom...
Me filing my taxes this year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Cz...
Hot take: golf is boring.
Agreed. OSS maintainers need to take appropriate steps to clarify acceptable contributions in the AI era.
In Zoom video setting terms, I am this many years old this month.
NEW POST
Rahul Garg finishes his series on reducing the friction in AI-Assisted Development with a structured practice that feeds back learnings from AI sessions into the team's shared artifacts, turning individual experience into collective improvement.
martinfowler.com/articles/red...
Screenshot of running npx skills add
I really like the "npx skills add" user experience - nice flow to add a skill from a GitHub repo, and it'll install either globally or in your project, for your preferred coding agents.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/skills
I wrote a guest post for @allthingsopen.bsky.social on how open source projects can adapt for the AI coding era.
#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #OpenSource
allthingsopen.org/articles/ope...
Treating #AI instruction files as team infrastructure.
martinfowler.com/articles/red...
Instead of sharing open source software code (or, instead of _just_ sharing code), governments should share open source software specifications.
allthingsopen.org/articles/ai-...
#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #Coding
In this blog post, I demonstrate a hands-on example of using AI tools with a legacy technology system to build the foundation for a modern software solution.
This is the SpecOps method in practice.
spec-ops.ai/blog/posts/r...
Check out Activate, a new open source project for agentic, cross-functional delivery work.
github.com/adhocteam/ac...
#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #Coding
I was interviewed about the SpecOps Method for legacy system modernization on the Civic Tech Chat podcast. Check out the episode here. civictech.chat/episodes/the...
#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini
Worth spending a moment to think about what else all these billions could have been spent on. And worth remembering this example the next time someone tells you a technology is inevitable.
If it helps, here is a post I wrote on what I think a good spec file in SpecOps looks like. Would love any thoughts or reactions. spec-ops.ai/blog/posts/g...
Great question. IMO, this is why having domain and policy experts involved in the process is crucial. These are the folks that need to add the "why" to system specifications. They are the arbiters of correctness in a system. This can be difficult because these folks are sometimes not available.
A new study reveals a troubling pattern in open source projects adopting AI coding tools. The fix, it turns out, may lie in an idea as familiar as a CONTRIBUTING file — but updated for the AI era.
civic.io/2026/03/16/e...
#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #OpenSource
New chapter for Agentic Engineering Patterns: I tried to distill key details of how coding agents work under the hood that are most useful to understand in order to use them effectively simonwillison.net/guides/agent...
Hard agree:
"Simply converting COBOL to, say, Java results in 'JOBOL,' a confusing mishmash that mimics the structure of COBOL but with none of its readability."
The SpecOps Method was created with this problem in mind. Converting old code to new code is the wrong focus for legacy modernization.
There are (sort of) two kinds of coders: those who see it as just a well-paying, stable job, and those who do it on nights and weekends because they love it, and it’s part of their identity. *Both* are under attack from bosses trying to put them out of work... www.anildash.com/2026/03/13/c... ...
The future of software development belongs to those who can best articulate what they want to build and how it should work. The ability to just write good code is no longer enough. Developers will have to write good words as well. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m...
Early day is for this new offering from the creator of Kotlin. But the guiding principle is one that I think is going to fundamentally change the way we create software into the future.
Write specs, not code. Need to change the code, change the spec first. 🏆 👏
codespeak.dev
Screenshot of codespeak spec
CodeSpeak is a new "language" from the Kotlin creator, where you write a spec describing the program, and it generates the program.
https://codespeak.dev/
I can see this working for utilities/pure functions, but I have a hard time imagining it for full-stack app.
Important bit from this recent blog post that highlights both why up front spec development is so important in agentic engineering, and also why its so hard to do well.
www.claudecodecamp.com/p/i-m-buildi...
