I wrote this post about automating guard rails in Rails and Django, and opening up codebases to newcomers, and focusing code review on the big things, and stopping it with all the gatekeeping. One of those things I thought was obvious, but maybe not? 🤷♂️
https://leftofthe.dev/2026/04/04/guard-rails-not-gatekeeping
@ruralocity “if we make enough guardrails it will be safe for non-developers to ship code.”
This is a POV I have been hearing lately. From your article: linting is a bad example because it does nothing to ensure logic is correct.
One of the reasons that developers exist is not just to speak in an obscure language of computers, but because they are practiced in logic and seeing the implications of making even small changes to systems. I am skeptical we can guardrail ourselves out of that.
Aaron Sumner
Bradley Schaefer