Like always, I am sharing my best findings for the week. Under "Culture," you'll find content worth reading and sharing with others; you'll need others' help to pull it off. Under "Peopleware," you'll find content that can help you approach situations differently with new perspectives and frameworks.   

 

This Week's Favorite

The Heart of Software Engineering Still Beats
6 minutes read.

Such a beautifully written take on software design: "Design isn’t a step we move past - it’s how we evolve our representations. It’s how we learn what we missed, or overcomplicated, or misunderstood. And it’s deeply satisfying. There’s a quiet joy in realising you’ve found a better way to shape something. That your system is more robust, more elegant, more humane because of it. Sometimes that shift is architectural. Sometimes it’s a single line. The devil might be in the details - but so is the beauty. And that’s where the craft lives too." and then how it affects the new world where software is co-written with AI "It’s not about being a prompt whisperer. It’s about structuring what the tool sees. Giving it the right framing. Guiding its attention. Helping it learn from the materials we’ve already shaped. In other words, we’re still designing systems. Still modelling complexity. Still shaping abstractions. [...] Today, AI handles more of the syntax. More of the scaffolding. But the architecture - the imagination behind it - is still ours to hold. The abstractions we shape. The intent we encode. The representations we choose. And maybe now, with these tools beside us, we can go further. Be bolder. Imagine more ambitious castles. Explore stranger terrain. Spend less time typing - and more time thinking. Designing. Modelling."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
 

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Culture

Hard Times -> Great Memes
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Duolingo's $7B AI Disaster: Enterprise Lessons for AI Implementation
8 minutes read.

It's fascinating to read how different companies consider adopting technologies to create new levers to shift the organization into a new paradigm. The struggle is real, and it often opens up learning opportunities. Pitfalls are real and can drive panic. Given that we haven't yet found the perfect solution, it's more important to iterate and discover the areas where value resides. This won't happen with poor leadership with a strong conviction in empty statements.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Introducing AI Development Patterns
5 minutes read.

Paul Duvall shares a github repo that captures all his lessons learned and invites us to join and share insights that work for us. What a great way to build a Collective Intelligence we can work on together and learn from each other.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


2x
7 minutes read.

Read the "What am I doing so far?" section and Darragh Curran to think about what you can do to make your team more effective (and over time more efficient) to create a bigger impact and more value for your customers. It's incredibly hard for me to be a manager today and not be experimenting with the tools and being fully immersed in them. Finding a different balance will be key for me, and I believe, for many managers who want to better support our teams.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Peopleware

Career Advice, or Something Like It
4 minutes read.

I love it: "find the yes, and communities, and spend time there. Find the people doing cool stuff you admire, and spend time with them. Find the people doing the work you want to do, or living the life you want to live, and find ways to learn from them. You’re not going to find them in #things-used-to-be-better. Spend your energy at work doing great work. Spend your energy outside of work taking time with the people you love, doing things you enjoy, and showing up for your community."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Can You Learn Taste?
3 minutes read.

How can you develop taste? A pragmatic approach and a few resources that you might appreciate. I've added "A Pattern Language" and "Dressing the Man" to my reading queue. Nivi defines it well: "Taste is the ability to judge the quality of solutions. It develops through repeatedly seeing the long-term consequences of decisions. This makes taste closely related to wisdom. [...] Finally, having taste requires an intolerance to merely adequate or sufficient solutions." -- What's your answer to learning to develop a good taste?

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


How to Vibe Code as a Senior Engineer
6 minutes read.

Alex MacCaw shares what works for him to Vibe Code as a very experienced engineer (he's the guy behind the great app Reflect): "Contrary to popular belief, I believe Vibe coding is most effective for senior engineers. If you know what you're doing, have a deep understanding of the frameworks and libraries, and a clear idea of the way you like to do things, Vibe coding is like adding Nitroglycerin to your productivity. And it’s fun. Genuinely fun. I don’t think I’ve had this much joy coding in 20 years."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
 

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@harris: Work with interesting people. On interesting things. That’s the goal.

@reidhoffman: Sometimes the problem is that you are not optimistic enough.


p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️



Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.