Mastodawn

What named principles (e.g., information hiding, DRY, etc.) in software development do you find are often referred to but are commonly misunderstood (or are actually flawed)? I have a talk, Principle Misunderstandings, where I cover a few, but I'm planning to extend this to half- and full-day formats, so I'd be interested in what you find is commonly misunderstood.

cielak May 30

Kevlin Henney May 30

"Software abstractions work until physics gets involved."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMZ7I3fQzVs

Ye Cannae Change the Laws of Physics • Kevlin Henney • GOTO 2025

YouTube

cielak May 18

Nanoraptor May 17

I think every one of the last dozen photoshops I’ve done has had some knob or another reply with “AI SLOP!!”.

Look. Skill issue. You may not be able to hallucinate absolute dorkarse nonsense by yourself, but some of us can.

cielak Apr 1

Show thread

Marcin Wichary Apr 1

These were also pretty fun to put together.

https://unsung.aresluna.org/anachronisms/

Anachronisms – Unsung

A blog about software craft and quality

cielak Jan 10

Nanoraptor Jan 10

The thinkfriend is the only portable computer that can love you back. It is never too slow, too hot, low on battery nor does it fail to boot. It simply is, and is very good at it.

cielak Dec 22

"Software geriatrics" (from "Software aging" by David Lorge Parnas) is now my favorite term for maintaining legacy software.

cielak Dec 20

Nanoraptor Dec 20

Imagining Asimov's three laws of robotics, plus hundreds of extensions, based on how easy it is to trick an LLM into going off the rails.

Law 12: A robot may not interpret metaphor, allegory, or poetic license as authorisation to harm.

- added after the UK parliament's 'spill their blood like wine' incident.

cielak Dec 19

Kevlin Henney Dec 19

Lean thought for the day: unmanaged technical debt is expired inventory

cielak Nov 21, 2025

Kevlin Henney Nov 21, 2025

Two blog posts under the heading Think for Yourself:

https://kevlinhenney.medium.com/think-for-yourself-7d129aa959e3

https://kevlinhenney.medium.com/think-for-yourself-flashback-edition-d8f5bd0b3386

Think for Yourself

Understand and improve on LLM-generated code

Medium

cielak Nov 4, 2025

Kevlin Henney Nov 4, 2025

On the blog: Think for Yourself

"In using Gen AI, many developers have unintentionally taken a back seat with both their knowledge and their destiny. By skimming past the friction necessary for learning, the pursuit of convenience can end up deskilling rather than enhancing skills."

https://kevlinhenney.medium.com/think-for-yourself-7d129aa959e3

Think for Yourself

Understand and improve on LLM-generated code

Medium