Software Design: Tidy First?

Forest & Desert

Tools Aren’t Here to Make Us Feel Good

But feeling bad is a sign something is wrong

Kent Beck's avatar
Kent Beck
Oct 07, 2026
∙ Paid

I just gave the first two versions of a talk about how our augmented coding tools are making us feel bad & how they should be reoriented around human needs instead of technical capabilities. This is a similar argument to one we made in favor of XP. I’m anticipating an objection: are tools aren’t here to make us feel good.

Agreed. They call it “work” for …

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