#alexthuclassics — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #alexthuclassics, aggregated by home.social.
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„If AI writing is pleasing and convincing, however, it is also unoriginal, often inaccurate, or both. People will therefore need their powers of discernment and comprehension more than ever. They will need to know what they think and how to make their own judgments. These are the exact skills that the use of AI threatens to erode. What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If...” 1/
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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„If AI writing is pleasing and convincing, however, it is also unoriginal, often inaccurate, or both. People will therefore need their powers of discernment and comprehension more than ever. They will need to know what they think and how to make their own judgments. These are the exact skills that the use of AI threatens to erode. What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If...” 1/
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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„I haven’t even mentioned artificial intelligence yet.“
… we‘ve seen that one coming, I guess😉!
But I am really interested in what will be brought forward now… 🤓
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„I haven’t even mentioned artificial intelligence yet.“
… we‘ve seen that one coming, I guess😉!
But I am really interested in what will be brought forward now… 🤓
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In exactly this context the following toot by @mcc has indeed aged well (fyi @baldur):
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114321812582398229
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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In exactly this context the following toot by @mcc has indeed aged well (fyi @baldur):
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114321812582398229
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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„… resilient catastrophe machine. Systems can appear healthy by local metrics while globally becoming incomprehensible. Bug reports can go down while latent risk explodes. Test coverage can rise while semantic understanding falls. Changes happen so fast that nobody notices the underlying architecture decaying.
I worry.” /4
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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„… resilient catastrophe machine. Systems can appear healthy by local metrics while globally becoming incomprehensible. Bug reports can go down while latent risk explodes. Test coverage can rise while semantic understanding falls. Changes happen so fast that nobody notices the underlying architecture decaying.
I worry.” /4
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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Well, well... I guess @baldur’s „Out of the Software Crisis" aged well:
https://mstdn.social/@alexthurow/113693205804225403
Now also with AI on top of it. Interesting times.
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Well, well... I guess @baldur’s „Out of the Software Crisis" aged well:
https://mstdn.social/@alexthurow/113693205804225403
Now also with AI on top of it. Interesting times.
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„There’s a moment every engineer knows but rarely talks about. It’s not the one before a deploy, or the one after a pager alert. It’s the moment after you’ve opened your 6th tab of the hour, when your eyes blur, your shoulders instinctively rise towards your ears, and you realise you can’t remember what you were doing just 5 minutes ago. It’s the moment where the work stops being work, and becomes interruption management.“
https://russmiles.substack.com/p/on-the-pain-of-task-switching
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„There’s a moment every engineer knows but rarely talks about. It’s not the one before a deploy, or the one after a pager alert. It’s the moment after you’ve opened your 6th tab of the hour, when your eyes blur, your shoulders instinctively rise towards your ears, and you realise you can’t remember what you were doing just 5 minutes ago. It’s the moment where the work stops being work, and becomes interruption management.“
https://russmiles.substack.com/p/on-the-pain-of-task-switching
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„[…] the mind is not the reliable, neutral instrument we tend to assume. Memory reconstructs rather than records. Bias edits what we remember in self-serving directions. Emotion shapes which memories surface and how we weigh what we find. And the modern habit of constant switching quietly erodes our capacity to think carefully at all. Together, these four themes point to the same practical conclusion – a…“ 1/
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„[…] the mind is not the reliable, neutral instrument we tend to assume. Memory reconstructs rather than records. Bias edits what we remember in self-serving directions. Emotion shapes which memories surface and how we weigh what we find. And the modern habit of constant switching quietly erodes our capacity to think carefully at all. Together, these four themes point to the same practical conclusion – a…“ 1/
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Joseph Pelrine: „#99 - The Myth of Multitasking“
https://ckarchive.com/b/75u7h8h673d5xf6rgg7rlaw4w63oqunhge25w
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Joseph Pelrine: „#99 - The Myth of Multitasking“
https://ckarchive.com/b/75u7h8h673d5xf6rgg7rlaw4w63oqunhge25w
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Faisal Hoque: "There isn’t an AI bubble—there are three“
https://www.fastcompany.com/91400857/there-isnt-an-ai-bubble-there-are-three-ai-bu
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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Faisal Hoque: "There isn’t an AI bubble—there are three“
https://www.fastcompany.com/91400857/there-isnt-an-ai-bubble-there-are-three-ai-bu
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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@ufried’s JAX 2026 slide deck:
„The 7 pitfalls of AI“
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@ufried’s JAX 2026 slide deck:
„The 7 pitfalls of AI“
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“To sum up: There is some level of essential acceleration. However, this perceived ever-increasing speed in IT that exhausts us increasingly is something we created and fuel ourselves. This is what I mean by:
We are our own worst enemies.
We are the ones who make our lives worse by reflexively running faster and faster, in directions that others set.”
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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“To sum up: There is some level of essential acceleration. However, this perceived ever-increasing speed in IT that exhausts us increasingly is something we created and fuel ourselves. This is what I mean by:
We are our own worst enemies.
We are the ones who make our lives worse by reflexively running faster and faster, in directions that others set.”
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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„What struck me most is the emphasis on what grows quietly:
Not the visible complexity in the code.
But the erosion of understanding.
The fading of intent.
The slow drift between what we think a system is and what it has become.“
Margaret-Anne Storey about Russ Miles‘ „The Debts That Grow in Silence“
https://www.softwareenchiridion.com/p/the-debts-that-grow-in-silence
#OnModernDev #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuReading
#AlexThuClassics -
„What struck me most is the emphasis on what grows quietly:
Not the visible complexity in the code.
But the erosion of understanding.
The fading of intent.
The slow drift between what we think a system is and what it has become.“
Margaret-Anne Storey about Russ Miles‘ „The Debts That Grow in Silence“
https://www.softwareenchiridion.com/p/the-debts-that-grow-in-silence
#OnModernDev #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuReading
#AlexThuClassics -
"Reading and reasoning about unfamiliar code is among the most cognitively demanding activities developers undertake, which is partly why understanding erosion is so consequential. The psychological mechanism behind this is what Shaw and Nave refer to as cognitive surrender: adopting AI outputs with minimal scrutiny, bypassing both intuition and deliberate reasoning [...]. This is importantly different from…“ 1/
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"Reading and reasoning about unfamiliar code is among the most cognitively demanding activities developers undertake, which is partly why understanding erosion is so consequential. The psychological mechanism behind this is what Shaw and Nave refer to as cognitive surrender: adopting AI outputs with minimal scrutiny, bypassing both intuition and deliberate reasoning [...]. This is importantly different from…“ 1/
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"From Technical Debt to Cognitive and Intent Debt: Rethinking Software Health in the Age of AI"
Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria, Canada, March 27, 2026
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22106
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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"From Technical Debt to Cognitive and Intent Debt: Rethinking Software Health in the Age of AI"
Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria, Canada, March 27, 2026
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22106
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuDisruption #AlexThuClassics
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Yesterday I had a bit of an epiphany:
With refactoring we had - for quite an extended time - a tool at our hands with which we were able to regain our mental models of our code.
We too seldomly used it consequently.
With AI we now have a tool at our hands with which we are able to fully automatically get rid of our mental model.
Quite likely we will use it too often… especially when our time will be running out in any given project.
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Yesterday I had a bit of an epiphany:
With refactoring we had - for quite an extended time - a tool at our hands with which we were able to regain our mental models of our code.
We too seldomly used it consequently.
With AI we now have a tool at our hands with which we are able to fully automatically get rid of our mental model.
Quite likely we will use it too often… especially when our time will be running out in any given project.
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… updated version dating back to 12.11.2025 just got available. Thank you @donaldegray 🙏 ✅!
Related side note: there might be some additions to that mindmap coming up... 🚧 👷♂️
Next thing today:
@swardley mapping session related to:
"Quantum - Supply chain“
( related FYI: https://events.zoom.us/ev/AryXObOoxTeXqE5ciH8AzJJ4jRKBJO8eZV3DWuKUlbO0oxW5AMOU~AjldSZn9FxBal4sEKzXwAQDSWyECSAIKDRfWkvaUXZGLJh2qW871nyZ6SA )
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… updated version dating back to 12.11.2025 just got available. Thank you @donaldegray 🙏 ✅!
Related side note: there might be some additions to that mindmap coming up... 🚧 👷♂️
Next thing today:
@swardley mapping session related to:
"Quantum - Supply chain“
( related FYI: https://events.zoom.us/ev/AryXObOoxTeXqE5ciH8AzJJ4jRKBJO8eZV3DWuKUlbO0oxW5AMOU~AjldSZn9FxBal4sEKzXwAQDSWyECSAIKDRfWkvaUXZGLJh2qW871nyZ6SA )
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"The bottleneck is understanding the problem. No amount of faster typing fixes that."
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"The bottleneck is understanding the problem. No amount of faster typing fixes that."
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"More code, less understanding. That's not a productivity gain. That's a time bomb with a nicer dashboard.“
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"More code, less understanding. That's not a productivity gain. That's a time bomb with a nicer dashboard.“
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Andrew Murphy: "If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems“
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuClassics #AlexThuOrgDev #AlexThuDisruption
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Andrew Murphy: "If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems“
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuClassics #AlexThuOrgDev #AlexThuDisruption
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„Joy at work seems like such a simple idea - just make everyone happy, right? No! Embracing joy at work means fighting joy's greatest enemy: fear. And unfortunately, leadership based on fear is the status quo for nearly every organization and bureaucracy.“
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuClassics #AlexThuOrgDev
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„Joy at work seems like such a simple idea - just make everyone happy, right? No! Embracing joy at work means fighting joy's greatest enemy: fear. And unfortunately, leadership based on fear is the status quo for nearly every organization and bureaucracy.“
#OnModernDev #AlexThuReading #AlexThuClassics #AlexThuOrgDev
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… my final recommendation:
„Carl Sagan's best speech about humanity and our place in the universe.“
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DEwSVnBCp9A&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD
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… my final recommendation:
„Carl Sagan's best speech about humanity and our place in the universe.“
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DEwSVnBCp9A&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD
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„What we need is an admission of how little we actually know about how to pass safely through the next few decades, the courage to examine a wide range of alternative programs and, most of all, a dedication not to dogma but to solutions. Finding any solution will be hard enough.“
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„What we need is an admission of how little we actually know about how to pass safely through the next few decades, the courage to examine a wide range of alternative programs and, most of all, a dedication not to dogma but to solutions. Finding any solution will be hard enough.“
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"There are so many variations on the “there are only two hard problems in computer programming...” joke that I’m starting to suspect that programming isn’t actually very easy.“
(@natpryce - https://x.com/natpryce/status/1396905452588474376)
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"There are so many variations on the “there are only two hard problems in computer programming...” joke that I’m starting to suspect that programming isn’t actually very easy.“
(@natpryce - https://x.com/natpryce/status/1396905452588474376)
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"That's the main benefit of microservices, you can hate them without having to hate anything else.“
(Richard Wild - https://x.com/richardjwild/status/1396744433954004998)
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"That's the main benefit of microservices, you can hate them without having to hate anything else.“
(Richard Wild - https://x.com/richardjwild/status/1396744433954004998)
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"💬 @tastapod shared a great quote from @samnewman ‚It’s better to have things be consistently wrong than inconsistently anything.‘”
(Craft Conference - https://x.com/CraftConf/status/1400074048198033411)
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"💬 @tastapod shared a great quote from @samnewman ‚It’s better to have things be consistently wrong than inconsistently anything.‘”
(Craft Conference - https://x.com/CraftConf/status/1400074048198033411)
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Some wise words to keep in mind over the next few months (or years):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM2c33qy16U
With the duration to keep them in mind depending on the bubble size that will be preceding the ‚bang‘ - like in @ewolff’s never-forgot Twitter adage dating back to the beginnings of the 2010s:
„I like 'big bang‘ projects; you need to be there when it is *big* - and need to be gone when it makes *bang*."
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Some wise words to keep in mind over the next few months (or years):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM2c33qy16U
With the duration to keep them in mind depending on the bubble size that will be preceding the ‚bang‘ - like in @ewolff’s never-forgot Twitter adage dating back to the beginnings of the 2010s:
„I like 'big bang‘ projects; you need to be there when it is *big* - and need to be gone when it makes *bang*."
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„The reason that structural explanations are so important is that only they address the underlying causes of behavior at a level at which patterns of behavior can be changed. Structure produces behavior, and changing underlying structures can produce different patterns of behavior. In this sense, structural explanations are inherently generative. Moreover, since structure in human systems includes…“ 1/
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„The reason that structural explanations are so important is that only they address the underlying causes of behavior at a level at which patterns of behavior can be changed. Structure produces behavior, and changing underlying structures can produce different patterns of behavior. In this sense, structural explanations are inherently generative. Moreover, since structure in human systems includes…“ 1/