Still in the Code
I lead engineering at a Fortune 100 company, and I still ship my own software. Not because leaders need to prove they can code, but because AI is changing the work faster than secondhand models can keep up.
★tag · 17 essays
#ai-coding
All essays tagged ai-coding.
Native Was the Long Way Around. The Stack Wasn't the Point.
I rebuilt a working web app as native iOS and Mac software, not because native was magic, but because the discipline required to make it correct is the same discipline AI agents need to be useful.
★The Frame Is the Bottleneck
My thesis is that as agents get better at execution, the primary constraint for organizations shifts from technical production to the human-led framing of problems.
★Code Review Your Prompts
Viral prompt threads borrow the language of science without the rigor. Here's a four-question code review for any prompt, plus a worked example that shows the gap between sounding authoritative and being right.
Spec, Standards, Specialists: How I Actually Build with AI
The strategy posts say AI software development is a system. Here is the working loop I run inside that system: a refined specification, a layer of standards, and a coordinated set of specialists doing the work.
★Claude Code Is a Build System, Not a Chatbot
After thirteen months of daily Claude Code use, I stopped treating AI coding as a prompt discipline problem and started treating it like an engineering system: configurable, layered, observable, and built to learn.
The Agentic SDLC: Uniting the AI Tool Sprawl
Every tool in your product development life cycle is now an AI agent trying to do everything. Here is how to stop the chaos, draw the right boundaries, and build an orchestrated pipeline that actually works.
★Eleven Years, One Week, and an AI Co-Pilot: Rebuilding TravelTimes for iOS 26.4
A decade-old side project, six major features, one week. How spec-driven AI-assisted development compressed months of work into a focused sprint on a real codebase with real constraints — and where the AI got it wrong.
The Dark Factory Model for AI-Driven Software Development
Most engineers treat AI-generated code like work from a junior developer they don't trust. Simon Willison gave me a better mental model: the dark factory. Here is what it means, why experience is the raw material, and how to build a system that runs.
From iOS to Android in a Weekend: How I Used Claude Code to Build a Complete App Without Writing a Single Line of Code
I took a production iOS app, pointed Claude Code at it, and had a fully functional Android app in eight hours over a weekend. Here's exactly how it worked.
From Caffeine Addict to App Builder: How I Vibe Coded a Pour-Over Coffee App in One Afternoon
My wife started making pour-over coffee. I started building her an app. What used to take weeks of Swift development now takes hours with AI-assisted coding. Here's the story of PourCraft, caffeine dependency, and the moment I realized the game has changed.
The Companies Spending the Most on AI Have the Most to Gain From Convincing You It Will Take Your Job
The AI-and-jobs conversation gets framed as either inevitability or competition. Both frames are incomplete — and both conveniently align with the interests of the companies selling the technology. A third reading of what's actually happening to work.
How I Built a Production Notification System for TravelTimes in One Day with Claude Code
From 'users want commute alerts' to 1,800 lines of shipped, App Store-ready code in a single coding session. A deep dive into architecture, edge cases, and what AI-assisted iOS development actually looks like.
The New Abstraction Layer: AI, Agents, and the Leverage Moving Up the Stack
Andrej Karpathy put words to something many engineers are quietly feeling: we have been handed a powerful alien tool with no manual. Where the leverage is actually moving up the software stack — and what that means for the people writing code right now.
The Year Ahead in AI, Enterprise Software, and the Future of Work
From generative AI as a tool to AI as a strategic partner. Reflections on 2025 and what excites me most about 2026.
My Journey to Trusting GenAI With More of My Code
How my workflow evolved from autocomplete magic to spec driven development, and why trusting GenAI with more of my code has changed how I build software.
From Vibe Mode to Spec Mode: Why I’m All In on Kiro
A hands-on look at how AWS Kiro transforms AI-assisted development from chaotic vibes into structured, spec-driven engineering.