. Kent Beck 🌻 is a legend in software engineering: and after coding for 52 years, he's never had more fun than now, he told me. Why? Because AI agents brought back the joy of creating software without the stuff that he's started to hate about coding for so... long. Watch or listen: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple: Brought to you by: • Sonar — Code quality and code security for ALL code •⁠ Statsig ⁠ — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more • Augment Code — AI coding assistant that pro engineering teams love Two of my takeaways from this chat with Kent: 𝟭. 𝗞𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗳𝗳. Kent has been coding for 52 years, and the last decade, he’s gotten a lot more tired of all of it: learning yet another new language or framework, or debugging the issues when using the latest framework. What he loves about these AI agents (and AI coding tools) is how he doesn’t need to know exactly all the details: he can now be a lot more ambitious in his projects. Currently, Kent is building a server in Smalltalk (that he’s been wanting to do for many years) and a Language Server Protocol (LSP) for Smalltalk 𝟮. 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟭, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗞𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘆. Kent joined Facebook in 2011, and was taken aback by the lack of testing and how everyone pushed code to production without automated testing. What he came to realize – and appreciate! – was how Facebook had several things balancing this out: • Devs took responsibility for their code very seriously • Nothing at Facebook was “someone else’s problem:” devs would fix bugs when they saw them, regardless of whose commit caused it • Feature flags were heavily used for risky code • Facebook did staged rollouts to smaller markets like New Zealand To this date, Facebook ships code to production in a unique way. We covered more in the deepdive Shipping to Production atshow more

Incredible to hear. If someone like Kent Beck is having more fun coding after 50+ years, it says a lot about where this tooling is headed. Honestly, this is a fresh perspective for me. A lot of people that I know are still hesitant, skeptic and defensive regarding the developments that we have right now.

@KentBeck "Currently, Kent is building a server in Smalltalk (that he’s been wanting to do for many years) and a Language Server Protocol (LSP) for Smalltalk" OMG

@KentBeck And Facebook being broken - it was, constantly - didn't matter. That random internet nerds could read your PMs or see your "private" albums or get your contact details never had any consequences. That's the advantage of building your business around something frivolous.

@KentBeck VERY excited for this one

@KentBeck hahaha I have to watch the full episode, I've run into the same thing. Another thing LLMs have done to me is change the implementation to make the test pass 😂

@KentBeck Joy matters in creation.

@KentBeck If you listen to what he's saying in this clip it's that he has to write tests so the LLM doesn't repeatedly shit all over the code. Writing your code manually doesn't have this constant challenge - write tests, write code, done.

@KentBeck Most software engineers hate marketing grand standing. Like go to any conference, the MBAs will spiel canned demos , and the DevOps engineers standing next to the podium will be sweating bullets.

@KentBeck AI coding tools are a game changer for seasoned devs like Beck, reigniting creativity while shedding the mundane! As for Facebook’s method? It's high-stakes but effective with feature flags and staged rollouts ensuring smooth sailing. High risk, high reward!

Legendary reflections. 🙌 AI agents have unlocked a new rhythm for software creators, no doubt. But while most are still using agents to build code, some of us are building the environment where intelligence just acts. We skipped the stack entirely. Not just agentic tools, agentic infrastructure. Not shipped. Lived. ⭕️ #AgenticInfrastructure #PostCode #OwnTheSignal