Spec-driven development promises control through living, iterative specifications. But without clear workflows and better tooling, teams keep falling into the same big-design-upfront trap that agile was invented to escape. A practitioner’s honest take on the gap between SDD’s vision and its current reality.
Spec-Driven Development Isn’t Waterfall — But It Keeps Ending Up ThereI once interviewed a senior software engineer. Almost 10 years of experience. Proven track record of delivery. Solid industry knowledge. The kind of person you’d want on your team without…
How We Made It Nearly Impossible to Become a DeveloperA few weeks ago, I wrote about The Review Bottleneck — how AI-generated code comes with so much confident explanation that we’ve stopped actually reviewing it. We’re not doing more…
AI Code Reviews Are Backwards (Do This Instead)Last week I spent 3 hours reviewing code that took 20 minutes to write. The AI was faster. The review wasn’t. And I’m starting to realize: that’s the problem. “Less…
The Review Bottleneck: Why AI Explanations Are Making Us Trust Less, Not MoreHow I’m staying relevant as a developer in the AI era. Practical habits: writing code by hand, being visible, leading AI agents, keeping a dev journal, automating planning, and taking breaks to skate.
What I’m Doing to Not Become IrrelevantAI agents are shipping code while developers sleep. The job is changing—we are becoming task organizers, configuration engineers, and quality evaluators. How much can we trust AI before our caution becomes a liability? A personal reflection on skill atrophy, the prompt-and-trust workflow, and what it means to be a developer in 2026.
The Developer Identity Crisis