After 6 months of heavy-use and evaluation of AI coding assistants, I've gone back to a non-AI neovim and VSCode setup. Even after a week I feel more productive. I've learned a few topics deeply by reading docs, didn't feel like I was wasting time going in circles and it honestly feels like a weight off my shoulders.

I've also learned where the checks and balances need to be in our CI system to mitigate work that may be written in part by AI tools.

I can't see any future in using AI to write code. Due to the nature of LLMs, it's never going to be able to produce code that doesn't require as much time to review as it does to write by hand.

I still occasionally use ChatGPT to ask questions but I've noticed my usage of DuckDuckGo has returned to almost normal levels too as a side effect.

I have to do these things as part of my job is to guide and advise our engineering teams. I need to be in a position to talk about these things from a perspective of experience. But it's been a tough 6 months. Glad it's over.

https://thenewstack.io/red-hat-ansible-and-hashicorp-terraform-will-be-coming-together/
The unholy matrimony between Ansible and Terraform will result in an offspring that is Terrible

VISSOFT 2025 seeks bold research in:
• Software visualization
• Maintenance & evolution
• AI/ML in SE
• Empirical studies
Journal-First (Jul 11) | Posters/Demos (Jul 11)
Details: vissoft.io/2025/submission.html
#AcademicChatter #IEEE #ICSME #SoftwareEngineering #VISSOFT

#softwareEngineering #computerScience #programming #commonLisp #history #essay #reading of Whither Original Thought #transcript from @kentpitman
https://screwlisp.small-web.org/show/kmp-whither-original-thought/
with a link to its beginning in the interview.

I chose to hand-transcribe it to remove (and probably introduce) discontinuities.

A central theme is the tyrannies of programming libraries and the question of having exhaustive knowledge of your increasingly numerous dead forebearers.

Read it yourself (and/or listen finally).

The Copilot Delusion - by Jj

https://deplet.ing/the-copilot-delusion/

Pure poetry!

LIVE NOW! Questions about #DevOps, #SoftwareEngineering, #SystemAdministration, or something like that? My weekly Office Hour is where you can ask me them. Join me for a chat!

https://monospacementor.com/live-stream/

Don't force software developers into using and producing #AI tools. If you want prompt engineers, get prompt engineers, not software developers—these are two vastly(!) different professions (for a reason!).

Otherwise, the industry will beg for coders in a decade, if even that far into the future—mark my words. Because they will either have quitted, unlearned or ever learned coding.

New to programming/software development?

Can I help?

I can walk us through using git, a popular source control tool. I can demo how use an IDE (integrated development environment) for debugging and writing code.

Live, now and for next 4 hours from this post. DM me.

Over 20 years experience here and wanting to give back. Free, just wanting to lessen the ick in the world.

A thing to remember about #SoftwareEngineering: read the docs before doing anything. Read the docs while you're doing anything. Doesn't work as expected? You guessed it right, read the docs!

One more push: I am hiring 1-2 PhD students to research the use of LLMs to augment human-written test suites.

Interested? Apply here: https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/work-with-us/vacancies/?rmpage=job&rmjob=13877&rmlang=UK
Reach out if you have questions!

Applications due May 15!

#softwaretesting #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #LLM #AI #PHD

@seresearchers

I just discovered I got blocked by somebody whose opinion and posts I highly value.

Since can't imagine (or remember) which interaction might have triggered this course of action, I tried to reconstruct our last interaction(s) from web searches, and discovered the following:

(a) This is practically impossible to find past interaction with specific accounts.

(b) A couple of other accounts *I* have been following formerly which now block me without me remembering any untowards interaction with them.

This all makes me unexpectedly sad.

I think I'll put in another Mastodon moratorium for an indeterminate length of time.

Looking back, Mastodon did not really work for me, with what I'd term "meaningful" connections. This is very likely the way my mind works.

If anybody can recommend communities related to #lisp, #agile, #softwareengineering or #infosec, I'd appreciate if you could reply or DM. I am still missing connection there (after 2.5 years of Fedi, which should tell me something).

Some colleagues and I are curious about potential biases that can affect review activities during #SoftwareDevelopment. If you do code, document, or other reviews, please take 5-10 minutes to fill out this survey: https://forms.office.com/r/GhMDKy9s9Y #SoftwareEngineering @seresearchers

It's weird how many people believe that in five years, all software will be written using AI or Vibe Coding. If writing and deploying software were so easy, we wouldn't be operating 50-year-old COBOL programs anymore.
#softwareengineering #AI #vibecoding

VISSOFT 2025 submission deadlines are approaching!

Research, NIER, and Tools tracks close on May 23rd.

Submissions have already started arriving—join the conversation in software visualization and maintenance!

More info: https://vissoft.io/2025/submission.html
#SoftwareEngineering #AcademicChatter #OpenScience

I built my first computer when I was 9. Stopped doing that around 12, but I never stopped tinkering with hardware and software.

This week, I found an old laptop with Windows on it.

I had been wanting to use Linux for the longest, so here we go.

Any tips or tricks for a new Linux user?

Hey #ICSE2025 participants:

Do you read and write commit messages?

Do you have 5-10 minutes to answer a survey about rationale practices in commits?

We would love to hear from you!
https://sites.google.com/view/rationale-in-commits/survey

And help us spread the word!

#Software #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareRationale @seresearchers #seresearchers #icse25

#introductions I'm Stephan, originally an English Philologist and Linguist, now a #SoftwareEngineering researcher at the German Aerospace Center's (https://social.bund.de/@dlr) Institute of Software Technology in #Berlin.

I'm a 2018 Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute (https://mastodon.social/@SoftwareSaved), founder and lead of the #CitationFileFormat (https://citation-file-format.github.io/) and co-founder of de-RSE (https://mastodon.social/@de_rse).

I work on #ResearchSoftware, #SoftwareCitation, #SoftwarePublication, #SoftwareIntelligence, #SoftwareSustainability, #EmpiricalSoftwareEngineering.

Said this to a colleague in work Slack just now:

"I do have to say (if we can pause to pat ourselves on the back here) that I think you and I (and [x]) have done a really good job at designing things to be simple, only adding complexity when really necessary, and also fighting like hell to *avoid* adding complexity."