Why I let an AI write code but never merge it
I let an AI agent write a large share of the code I ship. It's fast, it's seldom as tired as I am, and most days it's genuinely better than me at the boring...
The Law Can't Keep Up
In The Uncomfortable Parts I worked through the things about AI-assisted development that I benefit from and haven't resolved, and the training-data question...
The one-line shell setting that's caught the most bugs
I'm trying a slightly different format today. The longer posts earlier in the week are where I want to work through the bigger arguments properly, with the...
Silent Failures
The most expensive bug is not always the one that crashes. Crashes are rude, but at least they are honest: they interrupt you, they make noise, and they...
Pulling Up the Ladder
When I wrote about the uncomfortable parts of building software with AI two weeks ago, one stat sat with me longer than the others. Stanford's analysis of...
Why I Govern AI Like I Governed Production Systems
I spent the better part of two decades doing IT governance and cybersecurity work in South Africa, first at PwC, then as one of a small handful of IT...
The Uncomfortable Parts
In my first post on this site I said there were several uncomfortable aspects of AI-assisted development that each deserved more than a paragraph. I named...
Test welcome
This is a test.
Welcome to Building in Public
Hi, Thanks for subscribing. I'll keep this short because nobody wants a five-paragraph welcome email. I'm Ian — I build software products (medical billing,...