We’re living through a fascinating time in software development. AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Codex CLI, and GitHub Copilot have become powerful tools that can generate code, explain complex algorithms, and even debug issues.
I’ve watched developers embrace these tools with varying degrees of success, and there’s a clear pattern emerging: the developers who truly benefit from AI are the ones who already know how to code well.
There’s a dangerous narrative floating around that we’re approaching the end of programming as we know it.
Claude Code fell off a cliff these last few weeks. Anyone actually using it felt the drop: dumber edits, lost context, contradictions, the works. No, we weren’t imagining it.
Well, Anthropic has finally spoken and said what many of us already knew weeks ago. From their incident post on September 8:
Investigating - Last week, we opened an incident to investigate degraded quality in some Claude model responses. We found two separate issues that we’ve now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for any ongoing quality issues, including reports of degradation for Claude Opus 4.1.
Scrum had a moment. I lived through it, ran it, defended it, and tried to make it work in teams that had no business running two–week theater. In 2025, I do not need another ceremony calendar, another points debate, or another sprint “commitment” that collapses the first time reality shows up.
Scrum is not modern. It is a ritual from a different era that now gets in the way.
Scrum solved a 2001 problem, not a 2025 one Scrum came from a world of colocated teams, quarterly releases, and product owners who sat ten feet from the developers. That world is gone. Today I have:
I have lived through a few waves of tooling changes. If you write software long enough you get comfortable with the ground moving under your feet. The latest shift is vibecoding: pointing a capable model in roughly the right direction and steering it with context, examples, and taste. Tools like Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Gemini Code make that feel effortless. This post is less about what the tools are doing and more about how to use them without losing your engineering brain.
Look, I’ve built on a few different blockchains over the years, and I’ll be straight with you: most of them are a pain in the backside. Gas fees that’ll bankrupt you, smart contracts that feel like you’re programming with your hands tied behind your back, and consensus mechanisms that move slower than bureaucracy. But then there’s Hive, and it’s a completely different beast.
Hive is hands down the easiest blockchain to build applications on. Not because it holds your hand or abstracts away complexity, but because it gets out of your way and lets you actually build things. Here’s why it’s become my go-to platform for blockchain development.
This isn’t my first air fryer, but it’s the first one that feels like it could replace half my oven. The Ninja XXXL FlexDrawer is massive. It takes up so much bench space that it could probably apply for its own postcode. Moving it is a two-hand job, and once it’s on the counter, that’s where it lives. But here’s the thing: the size actually makes sense when you start cooking with it.
I finally wrote the book I kept threatening to write for a few years on and off: Why Developers Code In Dark. It is out now on Leanpub. You can grab it here: https://leanpub.com/whydeveloperscodeinthedark
This book looks at a thing many of us quietly do, shipping code late at night, and asks a simple question: why does working in the dark work for so many developers? The answer is not just “no meetings”. There is psychology, physiology, and culture in the mix, plus trade offs that deserve an honest look.
I like good tools as much as anyone, but the last couple of weeks around Anthropic’s Claude 4 family have been a reminder that you can’t build your working life on shifting sand. Models change, limits move, and entire features wobble without much notice. Useful? Absolutely. Dependable enough to be your only plan? Not even close.
What changed If you’ve been anywhere near Claude lately you’ve probably felt the turbulence. Some days are fine; other days you’re staring at elevated errors, partial outages, or features that feel half-broken.
For a long time this site hasn’t had comments. When I moved from WordPress to a static site generator, the old commenting system didn’t come along for the ride. The result was simple pages, fast builds, and a very quiet comment box that no longer existed.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether to bring comments back. Most days I enjoy the focus of writing and publishing without worrying about moderation. Other days I miss the conversations that used to happen underneath posts. I’ve had emails and DMs that would have been even more useful as public threads, where other readers could add context or correct me when I get something wrong.
I write software for a living, often as a freelancer/consultant. My faith doesn’t make me louder; it makes me clearer. It’s the thing that nudges me toward honesty, courage, and high‑quality work when nobody is watching.