#kentbeck — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #kentbeck, aggregated by home.social.
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The Cost Yagni Was Never About – By Kent Beck
https://newsletter.kentbeck.com/p/the-cost-yagni-was-never-about
#HackerNews #YAGNI #KentBeck #SoftwareDevelopment #Agile #Principles #Programming
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The Cost Yagni Was Never About – By Kent Beck
https://newsletter.kentbeck.com/p/the-cost-yagni-was-never-about
#HackerNews #YAGNI #KentBeck #SoftwareDevelopment #Agile #Principles #Programming
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In my previous post, I mentioned Kent Beck's (@kentbeck.com) new Still Burning series. There is another line from that first episode that I keep coming back to:
You can implement anything, but you can't implement everything.
Kent goes on to say that "the skill of picking which ones to explore, that suddenly has much more leverage…"
We have had relatives of this thought around for a long time — "the most important word for a product manager is 'no'." The old framing: software development is slow, so pick your bets carefully because you can only build a few things. The new framing: software development is fast, so pick your bets carefully because you can build almost anything.
The interesting word is explore. It echoes Lean thinking: what is the cheapest, fastest way to validate or invalidate an idea? And here there is a real shift.
Building software has gotten dramatically cheaper. But many of the other forms of validation have not fallen in cost nearly as quickly. Recruiting five people for an in-depth user research session — and actually running it — is still likely hours of work. The prep and synthesis may be faster now, but the core activity remains stubbornly human.
In other words: the cost of building has fallen faster than the cost of many other forms of exploration.
So, rationally, we should expect more exploration through building.
“Just build the thing” used to be expensive advice. Increasingly, it is simply a reasonable way to learn.
#ai #kent-beck -
In my previous post, I mentioned Kent Beck's (@kentbeck.com) new Still Burning series. There is another line from that first episode that I keep coming back to:
You can implement anything, but you can't implement everything.
Kent goes on to say that "the skill of picking which ones to explore, that suddenly has much more leverage…"
We have had relatives of this thought around for a long time — "the most important word for a product manager is 'no'." The old framing: software development is slow, so pick your bets carefully because you can only build a few things. The new framing: software development is fast, so pick your bets carefully because you can build almost anything.
The interesting word is explore. It echoes Lean thinking: what is the cheapest, fastest way to validate or invalidate an idea? And here there is a real shift.
Building software has gotten dramatically cheaper. But many of the other forms of validation have not fallen in cost nearly as quickly. Recruiting five people for an in-depth user research session — and actually running it — is still likely hours of work. The prep and synthesis may be faster now, but the core activity remains stubbornly human.
In other words: the cost of building has fallen faster than the cost of many other forms of exploration.
So, rationally, we should expect more exploration through building.
“Just build the thing” used to be expensive advice. Increasingly, it is simply a reasonable way to learn.
#ai #kent-beck -
I first heard Kent Beck state his two rules of AI a while back, and they have stuck with me:
- Nobody knows.
- Always ask the genie.
Kent has now started a video series called Still Burning. The introductory episode is titled, fittingly, "Nobody knows."
#ai #kent-beck -
I first heard Kent Beck state his two rules of AI a while back, and they have stuck with me:
- Nobody knows.
- Always ask the genie.
Kent has now started a video series called Still Burning. The introductory episode is titled, fittingly, "Nobody knows."
#ai #kent-beck -
Ah, Martin Fowler strikes again with his latest installment of "Words, Words, and More Words" 🤯. This time, he treats us to an endless stream of #buzzwords and self-promotion, while somehow managing to turn a conversation with Kent Beck into a 30-minute #snoozefest 💤. Apparently, #AI is the new black, but Fowler's still wearing last season's #jargon. 👔🔄
https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-04-14.html #MartinFowler #KentBeck #HackerNews #ngated -
Ah, Martin Fowler strikes again with his latest installment of "Words, Words, and More Words" 🤯. This time, he treats us to an endless stream of #buzzwords and self-promotion, while somehow managing to turn a conversation with Kent Beck into a 30-minute #snoozefest 💤. Apparently, #AI is the new black, but Fowler's still wearing last season's #jargon. 👔🔄
https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-04-14.html #MartinFowler #KentBeck #HackerNews #ngated -
Great refactoring quote: "First make the change easy, then make the easy change." - Kent Beck.
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Great refactoring quote: "First make the change easy, then make the easy change." - Kent Beck.
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Kent Beck's tale is a thrilling ride through the riveting world of... cognitive decline? 🤔 Apparently, his brain needed an exoskeleton because aging is hard, folks. But don't worry, the magic of augmented coding is here to save him from the existential crisis of using a computer. 💻✨
https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/me-an-algernon #KentBeck #CognitiveDecline #AugmentedCoding #AgingTech #ExistentialCrisis #HackerNews #ngated -
Kent Beck's tale is a thrilling ride through the riveting world of... cognitive decline? 🤔 Apparently, his brain needed an exoskeleton because aging is hard, folks. But don't worry, the magic of augmented coding is here to save him from the existential crisis of using a computer. 💻✨
https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/me-an-algernon #KentBeck #CognitiveDecline #AugmentedCoding #AgingTech #ExistentialCrisis #HackerNews #ngated -
I confess to have never written a single line of code using AI (and only used it for proofreading a couple of times).
Having read what Kent Beck has written regarding his experience with “augmented coding” using the “genie” there’s an interesting case to be made.
When your brain becomes less willing to put up with the boilerplatey part of coding but you still very much love doing it maybe AI will help bring the joy back.
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“What’s a leader to do, if you can’t “hold them accountable”? As I said above, be a person. Tell stories. Listen, empathetically but critically. Set an example. Read the room. Create skin-in-the-game situations, not by giving cash (another distorting move) but by making sure, for example, that folks play the game they’re writing or their kids do or their parents do.”
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“Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.” #KentBeck https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/report-humane-ai-pin-did-7-million-in-sales-wants-to-sell-for-1-billion/
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“Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.” #KentBeck https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/report-humane-ai-pin-did-7-million-in-sales-wants-to-sell-for-1-billion/
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"The value of 90% of my skills just dropped to $0. The leverage for the remaining 10% went up 1000x."
- Kent Beck on ChatGPThttps://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/90-of-my-skills-are-now-worth-0?sd=pf
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Which #agile gurus and big brain people are already on mastodon? I was sad to see that #kentbeck hasn't switched yet. I'd love to follow some of my heroes from #domaindrivendesign #extremeprogramming #leanstartup and others on here
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🎂 Auguri a #KentBeck, nato il #31marzo 1961, creatore della metodologia di sviluppo del software Extreme Programming (insieme a Ward Cunningham e Ron Jeffries) e del test driven development.
È stato uno dei firmatari originali del Manifesto Agile e pioniere dei design pattern e dell'applicazione commerciale di Smalltalk. Assieme a Ward Cunningham ha proposto le carte di Class Responsibility Collaboration, mentre con Erich Gamma ha creato il principale framework di unit testing per Java, JUnit. -
Wow... this instructor thinks #Refactoring was written by #KentBeck... might explain why his description of refactoring was off -- I'm sceptical he actually read it.
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Wow... this instructor thinks #Refactoring was written by #KentBeck... might explain why his description of refactoring was off -- I'm sceptical he actually read it.
