14 articles
Tests, legacy code, debugging, review, refactoring and SQL: what I ask the AI for in each, what I watch for, and how I check it in minutes. And the three decisions I never hand off, with a real case from this month that shows why.
Developer job postings are rising again, but not for everyone, and interviews are dropping algorithm puzzles. What October's data shows, what was debated this week, and six skills you can start practicing tomorrow.
What a language model's context is, why it fills up without you noticing, and four simple habits so the agent doesn't forget what you asked. Nothing to set up: it works from your next conversation.
What should run on its own every time you push code, in what order, and what is better left out. A complete example and the rules that keep automatic deployment from being scary. It takes an afternoon to set up.
The anatomy of a specification, the five EARS templates for writing requirements with no gaps, and why plan mode is the cheapest way to start. The practical side of working with specifications.
The specification as the source of truth and code as a derived artifact. How the workflow actually looks, the real problem it attacks, the three traps teams hit with it in production, and the size of change where it stops paying off.
Why the agent hands you code it never verified, and the six things about the repository to fix so it can check its own work. None of them is a rewrite and none takes more than an afternoon.
What changes when the migration of a Web Forms app —or any other legacy— to a modern stack is done with a coding agent: the seven steps I would not skip, the most expensive mistakes, and how to avoid ending up with a new legacy written in a newer language.
Almost nobody commits a password on purpose. They leak through four routes that do not look dangerous, and one of them leaves the key visible even after you delete it in the next commit.
Nobody has time to test everything. But there are four kinds of test that give you almost all of the benefit for very little effort, and several that get written constantly and are worth nothing.
The screen takes four seconds and the server is not under load. It is almost always the same problem, it has a name, and it is fixed by changing one line. How to spot it without special tools.
You deleted a commit, something broke and you do not know when, or you need to undo something you already pushed. Five commands almost nobody uses until they need them, explained with the exact situation that calls for each one.
It compiles, it passes the tests and it looks tidy. That does not mean it is right. Six concrete things worth checking, in the order the real problems show up.
A user reports an error from two hours ago and there is no way to find their requests among millions of lines. Three changes that turn your logs into something you can query, without switching tools.
