Martin Fowler

NEW POST I see AI and LLMs as bringing a mix of boons and banes, but one feeling dominates: not just are they pretending to be a person, but the kind of person I don't like. https://martinfowler.com/articles/2026-dont-like-llms.html

Sensible Defaults: do these practices, or do better, and be prepared to explain why you've chosen some other way. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SensibleDefault.html

Fragments: two worrying explanations around the RubyGems hack, agents aren't so much super-intelligent as super-persistent, Uncle Bob's harness is obviated, regulation of AI and competition with China https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-09-16.html

When slides earn their place they work as a visual channel that complements the speaker rather than replacing them - Sumeet Gayathri Moghe sets out the resulting principles. https://martinfowler.com/articles/never-send-slides/slide-principles.html

Fragments: agents make programming harder, creating a breakaway agent needs super-persistence, AI needs a conscience more than consciousness, theses on AI regulation https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-09-29.html

Fragments: the risk from AI is wiring it into everything, colorful syntax highlighting impedes comprehension, what Forward Deployed Engineer should mean https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-09-24.html

NEW POST Human collaboration improves with feedback, but not obvious to do well. Anuja Karnik and Sumeet Gayathri Moghe pass on a bevy of tips, based on the principle that both praise and criticism should be seen as positive. https://martinfowler.com/articles/healthy-peer-feedback.html

Fragments: walking the same path as the Krell, Ola Bini banished, interviewed at DDD Europe with Eric Evans, future of reading code, latest Google model knows less, but pretends less https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-10-04.html

Naresh Jain compares coding agents with and without a harness. He found it made a frontier model more expensive in tokens for little gain, but make a weaker (and cheaper) model more effective. https://martinfowler.com/articles/are-harnesses-worth-the-cost.html

Bliki: One of the curses of the growth of AI is the amount of LLM-Voice I read on the web https://martinfowler.com/bliki/LLM-Voice.html

Fragments: widening perception gap of LLMs, notes from Foocamp, today is 1997, a shift to supervisory control, Eric Evans keynote, Thoughtworks's token sourcing strategy https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-10-28.html

Slide design is based on choices of colors, fonts, and layouts. Sumeet demonstrates how to think about these, and why the best layout is usually a blank one. https://martinfowler.com/articles/never-send-slides/build-your-slide-template.html