As coding agents multiply the volume of code you ship, this piece makes the case for deliberate pacing to avoid compounding tech debt and reliability issues — a concrete counterweight to velocity-at-all-costs AI workflows.
An editorial article from The Pragmatic Engineer exploring how AI coding tools are dramatically increasing the volume of code developers generate, and why deliberately slowing down can improve quality, reliability, and reduce tech debt.
Transcript
Scheduling update: this week, there will be a podcast episode on Wednesday and no The Pulse on Thursday. I’m in Budapest, Hungary, this week, for Craft Conference, where I’ll be giving a keynote presentation alongside other speakers, including software engineering legend Kent Beck, who’s been on the podcast , Hillel Wayne, a formal methods expert and the author of ‘ Logic for Programmers ’, and Titus Winters, lead author of Software Engineering at Google . The title of my keynote is “Slow down to speed up”, and I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently. Here are some things I’ve been seeing that I feel are relevant… AI coding tools now used by pretty much all software engineers – that’s fast! Read more
