Archive - Software Design: Tidy First?

“We’re accumulating code faster than we are accumulating trust.” Sometimes a phrase just hits.

Jun 2 • Kent Beck

May 2026

Genie Lessons from Genie Sessions: Prose as a Programming Language

Kent sits down with one of the founders of OpenProse to talk through their method of prose as a programming language.

May 26 • Kent Beck

54:13

Scope Is The Steering Wheel

This stuck in my craw at the time Patrick published it but I didn’t have the energy to respond.

May 21 • Kent Beck

Hey, N00b, We Didn't Hire You to Complete Tasks

May 15 • Kent Beck

Thoughts, Not Thinking?

I saw a post on the changing build/buy/customize tradeoff & thought, “I should weigh in.

May 8 • Kent Beck

Adaptive Radix Tree

Exploring & Explaining a Fast Sorted Map

May 4 • Kent Beck

Genie Sessions: Run, Right, and Fast for the Adaptive Radix Tree

A recording from Kent Beck's live video

May 2 • Kent Beck

59:23

April 2026

Genies give you code that’s a degraded facsimile of the mediocre code it trained on.

Apr 29 • Kent Beck

Genie Lessons: Nobody Wants Agents

Genie Lesson #5 | Tool: Intent (Augment Code)

Apr 23 • Kent Beck

1:01:35

Passing Tests Bore Me

Apr 22 • Kent Beck

Extreme Time Value of Money: Late-stage Career Planning

First published January 4, 2021, just before this newsletter started.

Apr 21 • Kent Beck

Not trying to be subtle here

Apr 16 • Kent Beck

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