People talk about building a harness, but for legacy modernization I think building a "shared brain" might be even more important. It's what me and @selrahcd.bsky.social used to replace a legacy system. 1/4 #legacyModernization #architectureModernization

I suspect that those claiming agents write great tests never had big expectations from their tests, to begin with. If you don't know what makes a test good, how can you tell if what the agent gives you is any good?

It's a tacit admission that harnesses are not, in fact, reusable - that they are sensitive to changes in the ecosystem and what worked for Bill might not work for Ben. It suggests what's really needed is principles and heuristics for harness design that can adapt rapidly to each setup.

July’s rewilding wins have landed 🦅 This month we’re celebrating baby beaver births, two seagrass success stories and white storks spreading their wings in England.  Explore these uplifting rewilding stories👇 🧵1/6

TONIGHT @ 7PM (UK) 😬 @stevesmithtech.bsky.social

TDD with agentic AI: I recently interviewed Nizar Selander about how he's doing this. It's (still) all about confidence. Video: youtu.be/bDLdZIAjH5Y Article: coding-is-like-cooking.info/2026/07/the-...

The Most Important AI Coding Advice You Haven't Heard Yet - Coding Is Like Cooking

This article is also published as a video on the Modern Software Engineering Channel You’ll have heard Dave Farley talking about the benefits of using ATDD – Acceptance Test Driven Development – to sp...

coding-is-like-cooking.info

I might be late to the party but @birgitta410.bsky.social work on harness engineering martinfowler.com/articles/har... is amazing! It is really helping shape the conversations about agentic work in my team

Harness engineering for coding agent users

A mental model for building trust in coding agents through feedforward guides, feedback sensors, and iterative harness engineering.

martinfowler.com

A test name shouldn't contain the word correctly, like in "should do something correctly". The test name is here to describe what correctly means.

Louder for those at the back, Gojko Adzic! 📣

Keith Adams thought AI would democratize software, raise the floor. His dream: a version of Doom where all the monsters have my face. But its been "more of an amplifier of differences in facility than a leveler." Expected a compressor. Got the opposite.

Meanwhile in DevOps No.78 Prompt engineering. #MWID

Can you, as one person, possibly make a difference in whether an unusual, creative, category-breaking book (a book without a marketing department or a budget behind it) succeeds? Yes you can, and I'm going to tell you why it's a hell of a lot more attainable than you think.

Fragments: Second future of software development retreat, ethics of working with AI, censorship via DMCA, reacting to the high cost of tokens, a radical document in 1776 martinfowler.com/fragments/20...

Fragments: July 6

fragments 06 Jul 2026

martinfowler.com

Who's your nice mentor? Mine is Dave Farley & Kent Beck & Kevlin Henney & Emily Bache & Steve Smith & Trisha Gee & Gojko Adzic & Sam Newman & Daniel Terhorst-North 🥰

If you can't recognize better and worse test design, you can't usefully instruct an AI to write tests. If you've never seen well-designed tests, learn what they are first. #harness_engineering

One of the best and most considered pieces on AI that I have seen so far: charity.wtf/p/make-ai-bo... Read it! And follow @charity.wtf

Is it ethical to use AI?

On externalities and engagement, the problem with purity politics, and why we need to make AI boring again

charity.wtf

It's fun to build, not fun to shill. It’s fun to make a feature, not fun to be rejected by a potential customer. But, no marketing, no sales, no company, regardless of what you built. So get out there.

The Code is your Enemy

A short pep talk I delivered to kick off a Three-Day Startup challenge event. And overwhelming confirmation that the lesson is correct.

longform.asmartbear.com

Why do so many software engineering teams see their development speed slow to a crawl? In this week's video, I explore the single biggest challenge in modern software engineering and programming: coupling. Now on @modernswe.bsky.social 📽️ ➡️ youtu.be/grPtnrOTP_4

Software Architecture's Biggest Enemy (Not What You Think)

YouTube video by Modern Software Engineering

youtu.be

With this podcast Hanna and I will try to widen our information diet with a book or paper outside (off course) of our field each week. Listen to the teaser now, wherever you get your podcasts! From next week on we release a new episode each Tuesday!! rss.com/podcasts/com...

Computer Science Off Course | Podcast on RSS.com

rss.com

What *actually* works — right here, right now — to address climate change? Here you go. This is the result of thousands of hours of painstaking research and analysis from the Project Drawdown team.

The heatwave experienced in Europe this week was hotter because of our greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Heatwaves will get hotter until we reach net-zero global emissions. These simple facts still elude being discussed in much of the media coverage.

I love the concept of “semantic zoom” that @lexler.bsky.social introduces in her augmented coding patterns lexler.github.io/augmented-co...

New video and blog post about Harness Engineering - I'm seeing a lot of teams asking for technical coaching around using AI agents effectively, and this is what I'm teaching. video www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiJ..., blog coding-is-like-cooking.info/2026/06/i-st...

I Stopped Coding and Started Architecting Agents (And Why You Should Too) - Coding Is Like Cooking

This post is available as a video on the Modern Software Engineering Channel The focus of technical coaching is the minute-by-minute habits that software developers need to create good quality working...

coding-is-like-cooking.info

I Stopped Coding and Started Architecting Agents (And You Should Too) | @emilybache.com 📅 TONIGHT AT 7PM (UK) Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you NEVER miss an upload ➡️ youtube.com/@ModernSoftw...

When I first learned about XP in 2000, the values of Communication, Feedback and Simplicity were easy to grasp. The 4th value of Courage, though, wasn’t as clear. My recent experiences using LLMs to work with legacy code have helped me understand what Courage actually means! tiny.cc/m025101

Courage

It only took 25 years to figure it out!

open.substack.com

I think AI is the best opening we've ever had to bring our engineering values to the mainstream, instead of the top single-digit-percent of teams it's always been. But nondeterminism will take more engineering discipline. Not less. charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/ai-demands...

AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

If you lived through the shift from handcrafted server pets to immutable infrastructure, you should sense something oddly familiar about what's happening now.

charitydotwtf.substack.com

Using an AI agent to speed up tests. Dropping Mockito helps, but is it a good idea? Nice insights in this article larseckart.com/2026/06/09/t...

This was a really good read. A lot of people are going to focus on specific numbers mentioned in the blog post like "we estimate these 800 API fixes would have taken 4 years", but I recommend reading the whole thing holistically as a write up of how software development processes are changing.

When AI builds itself

Our progress toward recursive self-improvement, and its implications.

anthropic.com

Well, here we are finally - the sound of one door closing and the end of a 17-year journey. codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/06/04/a...

A Car Crash In Slow Motion

Since I’m among friends, I hope I can be open with you. I started Codemanship 17 years ago in my late 30s, as a response to being asked by a recruiter for the gazillionth time “Why are …

codemanship.wordpress.com

I like the concrete measures Ms Lagarde is using at the ECB to help women and others in their careers, described in this article.

Christine Lagarde@president.ecb.europa.eu · 2mo ago

When we talk about women who have gone far up in their careers, our focus is on their achievements rather than on the barriers that made the climb so steep. We need to change how we measure commitment and how we share opportunity. Read my speech www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/da...