iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 3h

There's this notion surrounding AI-assisted coding that the entire process should be infinitely fast. People gnash their teeth and wring their hands because review takes longer than the generation, and testing even more so. 1/5

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

LinkedIn is about to go the way of the telephone, which was destroyed by phone spam. Who answers their phone anymore? LinkedIn makes its money from recruiters. It is, first and foremost, a recruitment site. 1/9

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Adding features (and complexity) makes your program less appealing, not more. Software systems exist to solve a problem. Anything that's not laser-focused on the solution is an annoyance, and building that cruft is worse than money down a hole. It can lose us customers. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I keep hearing from the hypemeisters about getting six months' work done in a week. If you've experienced that, I'd love to hear: (1) Was that work actually delivered to your customers at the end of that week? How many customers? 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

One central aspect of architecture that many just don't seem to get is that, when several teams work on the same product at the same time, an inappropriate architecture will probably bloat development time by at least 10x. All that "10x productivity" that the AI gives you? Gone. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One of the things that AI is inarguably good at is pattern recognition. One of the traditional problems with logging is pinpointing the problem in massive log files. Log files…meet LLM. Log everything, but do it intelligently. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Often, when I report a bug, the company in question wants to turn me into an unpaid test engineer. They'll give me a long list of tasks to perform—an hour or more's work. They won't address the bug unless I do that. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

When we make decisions based on AI output volume alone, ignoring everything else that goes on during product development, we do more harm than good, to the point where the organization may be better off abandoning AI development entirely. 1/11

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I see no good coming from anthropomorphizing LLM behavior. LLMs do not reason. They do not decide, or collaborate, or attack. They do not make decisions. They do not weigh or evaluate. They are incapable of judgment. They do not think. 1/6

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I've been getting a lot of AI-generated job offers on LinkedIn. Typically, there will be an AI-generated initial content letter that summarizes the highlights of my profile. 1/4

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Stellbound: Stellraiser II @antlervel.vet · 20/09/2026

I would simply like to live my quiet little life as a trans woman and buy fruit and sing and walk my dog and wave to my neighbors and watch movies and use restrooms without being the subject of a culture “war” where both political parties agree I’m a disgusting freak who doesn’t deserve civil rights

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I am convinced that analytical thinking of the sort needed in computer programming is closely linked to language skills. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the best programmers I know have degrees in history, comparative literature, and the like. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The problem with any sort of story-storage system, even a shoebox, is that stories age very quickly. Releasing something into the domain changes the domain, and we release into the domain constantly. The stories are based in the domain, so they change accordingly. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'll give you a free product idea. I was reading this morning that one-third of web content is AI-generated slop. That will certainly drive the web the way of the phone. Who answers their phone anymore? Phone spam has effectively killed the technology, and AI will kill the web. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Here's the blurb that Prentice Hall used to promote "Agile Software Development with Scrum" by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle [2001]. That book was the first time that any of us had ever heard about Scrum. XP was dominant at the time, and Scrum was all about making it easier to do XP. 1/6

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This👇 is an interesting question that appeared in yesterday's lead-time discussion [t.ly/zXyhH]. Can you use lead time (measured from discovery to delivery) as a KPI? This is a remarkably bad idea. I once worked at a place that had a CEO who wasn't running on all cylinders. 1/12

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

One of the best metrics I know is Lead Time: The time between when the need for a discrete change/addition becomes known to the organization, not the team, and when that change is delivered to users/customers. 1/2

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YOW! Conferences @yowconf.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Ever tried to introduce a better way of working to a software team? Then you've probably run into some version of Larman's Law. @allenholub.bsky.social joined #YOW24 to look at why org change is hard & what it takes to get people on board. 🎥 Watch it: youtu.be/XwhF_xbVpIQ

youtu.be

Getting Buy-In: Overcoming Larman's Law • Allen Holub • YOW! 2024

YouTube video by GOTO Conferences

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YOW! Conferences @yowconf.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

@allenholub.bsky.social is back at #YOW26 with his 1-day masterclass, Practical Software Architecture for AI And Everything Else. 📍 MEL 3 Dec yowcon.com/melbourne-20... 📍 BNE 9 Dec yowcon.com/brisbane-202...

yowcon.com

YOW! Melbourne 2026

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The LinkedIn people have never been a bastion of good design, but pages like this 👇 drive me nuts. Only 20% of the screen real estate has useful content on it. The rest is just garbage that I'd be happy never to see in any circumstances. I see stuff like this all too often. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

There is no such thing as "Agentic software development" or an "Agentic SDLC." There's just Agentic coding. Big difference. Coding is a small part of the overall process. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This vision of (fake)Agile👇 drives me nuts. Just No. There are no waterfall tracks. I collect just enough information to start, not finish, the work, and I do that just before starting. I write my tests first and run them every few minutes (TDD). 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The oft-stated premise that Agile has replaced Waterfall (and "Agentic" replaces Agile) is simply not true. The vast majority of companies that claim to be working in an Agile way are doing hardcore waterfall. If you want an indicator, look at backlog size. 1/5

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

In amongst all the AI madness, people seem to have forgotten that the point of working in very small increments with very frequent releases is to get feedback sooner so that we can adjust what we're building to best meet our customers' needs. 1/5

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I just read that code inspection is going the way of the dodo in AI-assisted dev shops. Some shops don't inspect at all. Some have one LLM inspect the output of another. Yet others mix in varying amounts of manual review/inspection. I'm curious how exactly you do code inspections. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Tools like Jira are bureaucracy-management tools, not Agile tools. You don't need a backlog at all to get work done—a handful of index cards or stickies work just fine, and more than a couple of weeks' work in that pile is too much. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Does an AI write better code than a human programmer? Not in my experience. Does it, with sufficient guidance and guardrails, create good-enough code faster than a human? Absolutely. The question is all about cost and quality, not, as some would contend, about the code itself. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

There are three sorts of Scrum: 1) Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide—the official definition, but hardly anybody's read it & it's horrifically badly written. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If you didn't measure productivity before you started using AI, a current claim that AI improved your productivity has no legitimacy whatsoever. And even then, how did you measure productivity? That's very hard to do.

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

OH: "That works fine with a startup, but it won't scale." Most people assume that as an organization grows, you must replace effective ways of working with a bureaucratic command-and-control, phase-gated (waterfall) system. You don't. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Many people have heard about the Dunning-Kruger effect: people don't know what they don't know, so they inaccurately assess their own competence. Everybody puts themselves in the 99th percentile of good drivers, great programmers, or AI users, even though that's statistically impossible. 1/10

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The notion of an MVP has gone the way of Agile. 1/11

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Software Architecture Gathering @sagconference.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🌟 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗔𝗚 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗞𝗲𝘆𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀! 🌟 We’re incredibly excited to welcome 6 outstanding speakers to #SAG2026 in Berlin: 📅 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟳: @bjschrijver.dev, @allenholub.bsky.social & Sam Newman 📅 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟴: Aino Vonge Corry, Radia Perlman & @randyshoup.bsky.social 👉️ t1p.de/3xyd5

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I just had a conversation with a wide-eyed idealist programmer who was working alone (using an AI, but that's still alone) creating an app. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Today's Pragmatic Engineer newsletter [t.ly/ltiYl] was talking about Meta's misguided attempt to fire everybody and replace them with AI. Zuch was evididently thinking (if you can call it that) that mass layoffs would make them look more like a startup. 1/9

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

<rant> I came across yet another person today blathering about "collaborating with an AI." I'm sorry, but collaboration requires real intelligence, creativity, judgment, reliability, emotional intelligence, and a host of other qualities that no AI has. You collaborate with an equal. 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

If you are "writing a user story," you're already in trouble. A "user story" is exactly that, the user's story. They're the ones who "write" the story, not you. A user story is not a code word for a waterfall up-front specification. A "story" describes your user's work, not yours. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

When a customer or user asks for a specific new feature or change, the first question to ask is "why do you need that?" or, better yet, "what work are you doing, and how would that feature make your life easier?" 1/2

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If the first time you get feedback is in your "Sprint Review" or "Demo," your Sprint has probably failed. Your goal is to deliver the most valuable thing. If the review feedback tells you that you need to make a change, then you have not delivered the most valuable thing. 1/3

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I keep hearing people whine about customers changing their minds. That's our customer's job! Nobody knows what they want until they have something in their hands (including us). 1/4

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YOW! Conferences @yowconf.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Join our #YOW26 Masterclass with @allenholub.bsky.social: Domain-Focused Component Architecture for AI-Assisted Development 📍 MEL 2 Dec yowcon.com/melbourne-20... 📍 BNE 9 Dec yowcon.com/brisbane-202...

YOW! 2026 Masterclass promotional graphic for Allen Holub’s “Domain-Focused Component Architecture for AI-Assisted Development: A Hands-On Workshop.” The graphic lists Allen Holub as the instructor, with sessions on Wednesday 2 December at Cliftons Melbourne and Wednesday 9 December at Cliftons Brisbane, alongside his portrait.

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I get sick to death of hearing people say that customers don't know what they need. That's nonsense. They know exactly what they need. They need solutions to their problems, and they need tools that make their lives better. It's _our_ job to collaborate on the details of how to do that.

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The only measure of productivity that has any meaning at all is the ratio of money spent on the work to revenue created by that work. I couldn't care less if AI made you "10x faster." If that work didn't increase revenue, your productivity hasn't increased. It may have gone down, in fact.

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Productivity is a systemic measure, not something you can isolate to a team or department. If "more productivity" in engineering creates a release that makes tech-support expenses go up, you are not more productive. Sorry.

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

One hallmark of a lousy app is that it's chock full of features. A good app does one critical and necessary thing well. A pile of features typically does nothing but add clutter and make the app harder to use. 1/12

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

It seems like every time I look for something on the App Store, I find a huge pile of apps, none of which are any good. They are bad because they were not built with customer collaboration and feedback. They don't actually solve anybody's problem. 1/4

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Back in the 1980's, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, people defined programs as data flowing between multiple processing units or functions, each manipulating or otherwise using the data as it passed through. Languages like COBOL supported and amplified this thinking. 1/14

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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

When it comes to APIs, most people get things backward. The best way to create an API or any other interface is to start with the code that uses the interface. 1/4

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

"Scientists" believe life began in underwater hydrothermal vents 4 billion years ago. I believe it began at the Denny's off the interstate in Toledo Ohio in 1956. I don't make fun of their theory and yet they constantly ridicule mine. And that's what's wrong with our so-called elites

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