iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 30/09/2026

Peter Mattis has quite the history in shipping large-scale, production sw: he created GIMP, built Gmail’s original backend, shipped Google’s Colossus distributed backend stroage system, and is the cofounder and CTO at Cockroach Labs, the makers of CockroachDB. A convo on distributed DBs: (cont'd)

1352

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 27/09/2026

Very much enjoying this “GPU glossary” mini-book by Modal I got from Can Duruk when stopping by at Modal’s NYC office. I don’t know if the physical books can be purchased, but the book has an online version, as I learned; with the same contents: modal.com/gpu-glossary

3635

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 25/09/2026

Oh WOW. I was going through my "outdated" (aka old) books and look what I found: the TypeScript book I bought in 2019 to get up to speed with the language. Only now realizing who the author is: Boris Cherny, widely known as the creator of Claude Code. Was a great writer + educator before :)

3892

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 24/09/2026

That DHH saying out loud that the age of writing code by hand is over for the industry, and causing such an uproar is a bit interesting, given this was clear enough since ~January for most of us using the models + paying attention. Removed paywall: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/when-ai-wr...

7673

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 23/09/2026

What can us, engineers learn from design engineers? Turns out there’s lots, based on talking with one of the best design engineers in the industry, @maggieappleton.com • YouTube: youtu.be/KZSzF0KEFRg • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1gdA... • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

0675

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 23/09/2026

I am a sucker for good books, and so especially O'Reilly books. Here's one that is WIP, but in return, it is free, thanks to @antithesis.com It's for CTOs / eng leaders who want to get AI to deliver *business value* which is... tricky. Get it here: pages.antithesis.com/oreilly-scal...

2577

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 22/09/2026

A look into how the Windows team is integrating AI into their OS: eg adding agent identities, akin to that of a user. It's the first opinionated approach I see for AI agents at the OS level - and surely other OSes will do sg similar. Deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/windows-an...

1253

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 20/09/2026

Checked my spam folder Saw emails from Instinct's AI bot Closed my spam folder Cold email is increasingly dead, and tools like Instict will speed it up even more

9261

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 17/09/2026

Why is the “grill-me” skill so popular, and why does its creator swear by the importance of software fundamentals? We cover this & many more w @mattpocock.com YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dhc... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3pLP... Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

1541

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 16/09/2026

Fresh data from GitHub: Agent-generated PRs have exploded in size. 9x the last 8 months (!!) No signs of slowing down. This is why everyone is rethinking code reviews, deploys, possibly even o11y thanks to the GH team for sharing this data with me! (Slide from my talk yesterday)

65613

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 15/09/2026

Here's what OpenAI's agentic software factory looks like, today. It's surely not token efficient, but eg agents "babysitting" releases to prod is something new, and an interesting approach. Details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/openai-sof...

6556

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 11/09/2026

A couple of trends I'm seeing across the industry. Which ones are you observing that I missed?

2120017

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 09/09/2026

How was Codex built, why is it open source, how is it used inside of OpenAI, and how has it changed software development within the company? Tibo Sottiaux was on the team that started Codex & now heads it up: • YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLST... • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

2171

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 06/09/2026

What’s the problem w using LLMs to write stuff you want other people to read -emails, articles, posts- and why are people (like me!) so incredibly hostile that they will block you/mute you/block your domain, to never read anything from you again? Bryan spells it out. Read it:

1120030

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 03/09/2026

Write about how software engineering is changing inside your company / team / project. Don’t use AI. Win $10K and get published in The Pragmatic Engineer. You have a month: submit by 4 October. Details: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/how-software...

4427

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/09/2026

Finally, Entire. What would "GitHub, but for agentic code" look like? This is what Thomas Dohmke (GitHub's last CEO) && team are building. Today, Entire mirrors your repo with a click (so when GH is down, you keep working). It's built for agentic scale, and lots more to come 🔥 entire.io

090

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/09/2026

Clearly, Linear needs no intro: thrilled to have them on! Uncompromising, cares about speed, craft, and helping teams + agents develop delightful products. Hard to name a startup that doesn't use them: and larger companies are starting to move over, too. linear.app/pragmatic

250

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/09/2026

I love and use WorkOS, a longtime sponsor - auth, SSO, SCIM and fine-grained authorization (FGA). Designed not just for humans, but also built to fit how agents operate. Anthropic, OpenAI, Cursor, and Perplexity (and many, many others) all use it. workos.com

120

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/09/2026

Antithesis remains our season sponsor: A radically new approach to finding bugs: Antithesis wraps your system and runs it inside a hostile simulation. It finds (most) bugs, and gives perfect repro steps. And did I mention the multiverse debugger? Mind-blowingly magical. antithesis.com/pragmatic

110

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/09/2026

Excited to share the amazing companies sponsoring The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast the fall: turbopuffer is our presenting sponsor. How the company started is epic: founder Simon Eskildsen told Cursor he can reduce their database bill by 95%... and he did (!!) turbopuffer.com/pragmatic (cont'd)

1111

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 01/09/2026

Five years ago, almost exactly to the day, I launched @pragmaticengineer.com Back then, it wasn't clear that there'd be demand for a publication written by a software engineer, for software engineers. Turns out, there was, and far more than I could have ever imagined. Thanks for your support!

41408

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 26/08/2026

Few people care more about performant code than @cmuratori.bsky.social. Casey is a down-to-earth programmer, game dev, performance nerd. A refreshing episode about why the basics (still) matter, and why learning to read Assembly remains useful for anyone who cares about performance: (cont'd)

5687

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 26/08/2026

Well this is damning and explains SO MUCH about why Meta is losing its best engineers; why morale is rock-bottom; and why an engineering culture built up in 20 years was destroyed overnight. Zuck + execs wanted to lay off ~60% of staff. When the business does better than ever.

713733

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 19/08/2026

If you’ve ever opened Chrome DevTools, or optimized a page for Core Web Vitals, you’ve used software built by @addyosmani.bsky.social. We start from when he built a web browser from scratch, at 16, through his 14 years at Google, to what he sees working (and not working) building software with AI:

3384

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 14/08/2026

This is such a cool list, published by Brex, based on startups' newsletter spending patterns. The Pragmatic Engineer one of the most frequently expensed newsletters, and it was, indeed, massive growth within startups over the last year: Thank you to everyone reading and supporting!

4441

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 13/08/2026

In 2025, it was rational to be skeptical about whether AI would change the future of software development. In 2026, it's not, anymore: We talked about this with @charity.wtf, one of my favorite voices in tech. We get into a LOT of things: • YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC8T... (cont'd)

2467

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 13/08/2026

What I'm hearing from ~3 such stories: Meta went too far firing people. They are now doing MASSIVE counter-offers like to those handing in resignations. Some accept it, most just use it for more $$ at New Job, desperate to get out. It was such a predictable outcome btw:

412915

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 12/08/2026

I’m used to AI slop on LinkedIn, but not to AI slop by folks with impressive professional background. Saw a fully AI-written post from an ex-VPE at Microsoft (15 years there) and decided to say what many think when they see AI nonsense, but usually just scroll by.

91165

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 11/08/2026

Bought a new Dyson fan, set it up connected to the Wifi, and then it suddenly turned off for minutes, unable to turn back on. Turns out, it was spontaneously updating itself. This is not how a household appliance should update, I’m sorry… why do we accept such sloppiness?

15601

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 10/08/2026

If you work in tech, you'll want to read the ~40-page short novel, Profession, by Isaac Asimov. If the availability of intelligence was instant, and learning things the "hard way" was considered a waste: what would the things most valued by society be? Hard to believe it's a 1957 novel.

4722

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 09/08/2026

Google Workspace's ads for paying customers could not get any more annoying I DO NOT USE AI AT ALL and I get upsells to "expand my AI access" WTH. I want ZERO Gemini for my Workspaces suite, this is some bad joke. Even if you pay you get ads, just so maddening with Google

2522422

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 09/08/2026

My page created in 2021 "coaches and mentors for engineering leaders" is seeing both an increase in traffic, and folks listed here are pinging me about getting more business through this channel (as well!) blog.pragmaticengineer.com/coaches-and-...

1111

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 02/08/2026

A senior software engineer identifying as a “creator” working at an e-commerce company sent an AI-written email, asking to recommend their Substack. I checked out a few articles. All are… slop. Stuff that feels like it was output from ChatGPT. It’s all AI. My response:

111323

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 29/07/2026

There’s a popular theory that AI will finally make formal verification mainstream because mathematical proof of correctness will be needed when machines write most or all of the code. But will this happen? Hillel Wayne is one of the best people to answer: • YouTube: youtu.be/KSkcgIYQy0U (cont'd)

4372

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 27/07/2026

Meta's performance review culture is becoming very problematic for its engineering culture. I said this a month ago in @pragmaticengineer.com (screenshot #1), and Semi Analysis said the same last week (screenshot #2). Engineers at Meta are world-class at optimizing for PSC...

6736

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 22/07/2026

OK this made my life easier: my backend (for my admin portal) had an error popping up, and Sentry was bugging me about it. Sentry now built an AI agent (called "Seer") that can analyze the root cause, make a plan to fix, draft a fix, then open a PR. Just pushed it to prod after review!

4250

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 21/07/2026

These Google Workspace ads (for *paying* customers!) are driving me crazy I don't know why I would need a "virtual receptionist", what "Voice Standard" is, who "my callers" are, and why I would need to "guide them automatically" Is Google Workspace losing its mind? What next: proper ads?

4558163

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 17/07/2026

My kids keep pointing out how so many ads involving kids are AI-generated. This is one example from a government agency. It’s in so many other places as well tho with kids’ posters Kids that look more like adults, have 4 fingers…is this the “modern” advertising? All AI?

5261

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 16/07/2026

The current state of Spotify's publisher's page. Comments stopped loading, everything stopped loading, links point to dead pages... a truly fascinating case study of a product falling apart

2351

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 16/07/2026

All of this comes after Spotify was bragging how they use AI for software development, publish a massive number of PRs to prod per day. But reliablity has been going down for me. To the point that today this is what my portal looked:

2549

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 16/07/2026

The last 7 weeks, Spotify had 4 outages when publishing my podcast episodes (!!). After outage #3, I asked the Podcasts team to share how they are improving reliablity. They didn't share - and it just got worse. So I am no longer publishing video podcasts on Spotify, but redirect my audio RSS.

47715

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 15/07/2026

Knowing how LLM contexts work and how to work around context limitations – aka “context engineering” – is becoming more important for software engineers working with LLMs. Dex Horthy coined the term "context engineering," and shares practical details on it: YouTube: youtu.be/Usufn8IQJgw (cont'd)

2280

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 14/07/2026

The amount of AI writing on OpenAI's docs makes me sick. Filler sentences for nothing. Mannerisms and phrases humans would not write. Has a human even read this? And all of this will change how other docs are written, and how we all talk-for the worse IMO. 🤮 developers.openai.com/cookbook/exa...

1319614

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 10/07/2026

I did my first-ever AMA episode. Your questions, my answers! Watch or listen: • YouTube: youtu.be/cSIMVYjVF28 • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1fqJ... • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

1190

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 01/07/2026

There are few people who have impacted the software engineering industry like @kentbeck.com has. He'd never before told his career story from start to today in one sitting - until now. What a treat: • YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQ... • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3M6h...

2529

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 01/07/2026

Tomorrow on The Pragmatic Engineer podcast - with a legend, @kentbeck.com

0873

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 29/06/2026

Naming and shaming a founder who has outsourced their complete business to AI, resulting in AI slop, noise, and me not wanting to ever talk to them. I am not even sure any more if this is a real person or just a fake persona an AI bot is using. AI slop like this is terrible.

2896

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 28/06/2026

Google removed my article about the shameful collapse of events tech company Pollen (employees lied to by CEO Callum Negus-Fancey, salaries unpaid, a seemingly deliberate $3.2M customer double charge manually initiated by CTO Brad Wright). This island will be important: (cont'd)

311020

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 28/06/2026

WTH Pollen (the events tech company that did not pay salaries of staff for months, founded by Callum Negus-Fancey) is filing a copyright claim to remove this article from Google: Go to hell. This my article, and there's zero copyright claim to be made on it blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pollen/

312614