iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 25/09/2026

A good reminder to (re)read No Silver Bullet. Tools shrink accidental complexity; essential complexity remains.

X Quote Repost Screenshot:

François Chollet
@fchollet
I think the "difficulty" of software engineering is essentially constant no matter what abstraction level you move to, because human cognition adapts to new tools until it can fully utilize itself.

Tools are only affordances, not a magic wand that makes work disappear.

Great software engineering was immensely challenging before. It is still immensely challenging now, despite very different workflows.

Quote
Simon Willison
@simonw

The more time I spend working with coding agents, the more convinced I am that they make software engineering even harder

We can do amazing things with them, but unlocking their full potential requires extraordinary discipline and knowledge x.com/gergelyorosz/s…

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 22/09/2026

Learning how to use Ableton (music creation software). It is like being in the cockpit of a space shuttle

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 16/09/2026

This Coxon guy who has managed to get on every major news channel over the last week now saying the risks of global warming have been overstated pretty much tells you everything you need to know

Fox News Twitter, showing screenshot of interview with Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher who says AI will kill us all, eventually:

@FoxNews
"I agree with President Trump's tweet that global warming doomsday scenarios were overplayed."

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon tells
@seanhannity
that past catastrophic warnings have amounted to "fear mongering," but argues AI is different because of how quickly the technology is advancing.

"We won't have time to respond to it before it's too late."

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 12/09/2026

Half my feed is AI doom takes, when the risk most of us actually face in the near future is not a rogue superintelligence.

Anakin and Padmé meme, four panels. Anakin: "AI is the biggest existential risk facing humanity." Padmé, smiling: "Which is why your coding agent is containerised, right?" Anakin stares back, smiling, saying nothing. Padmé, now worried: "It's containerised, right?"

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 10/09/2026

Encona is the only actually reasonably hot sauce I can find in super markets

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 18/08/2026

Have you seen the new report AI slop feature?

Linkedin drop down box option on posts to report: "seems like AI slop"

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 18/08/2026

I go on holiday for a few weeks and we've already moved on from Loop Engineering to Graph Engineering The half-life of a paradigm is getting shorter than my annual leave My prediction: neuro-symbolic engineering by the end of August, at which point we'll have gone full circle and reinvented Prolog

Post on X, Immad reposting Kirill:

@immad
This is a great explanation of Graph Engineering.

People have been writing agents like this for a bit but it’s nice to have terminology and frameworks around it.
Quote
Kirill
@kirillk_web3
·
Aug 15
A Chinese developer just explained the shift from Loop Engineering to Graph Engineering better than anyone.

most people are still building agents the way that's about to be obsolete.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 25/06/2026

I'm definitely having a mid-life crisis and spend all day talking to LLMs.

Screenshot from the movie, Her - Joaquin Pheonix staring at a computer screen

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 31/05/2026

Not an Arsenal fan, my son is. 2 days in North London - going wild night and day. Hundreds of 1000s lining streets today. Not a single hint of any trouble or violence (whilst Paris, on the other hand). But yeah, London is this really dangerous city...

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 17/05/2026

Back in Venice for work Takeaway Aperol Spritz watching the sunset after my now customary chicchetti crawl

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 05/05/2026

Yet more downsizing layoffs dressed up as (at least in part) because of the AIs

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 28/04/2026

According to my Claude-assisted maths (so could be wrong, but I've been round it a few times now), Opus4.7 will cost roughly *$1 per interaction* for GitHub Copilot users when their new model multipliers kick in in June.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 28/04/2026

Seeing a lot of people dunking on PocketOS for this, saying it's their fault for having poor practices. "You're doing it wrong" and "skills issue" vibes. The problem with that is what we're all being sold, what's being marketed, and how so many orgs are pushing to aggressively adopt. 1/4

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 26/04/2026

Listed as Mofusand brand and Amazon Choice. When you click through to Mofusand, the seller information is "Wuhan Septenbo Network Technology Co., Ltd." based in Wuhan, China, which has nothing to do with Mofusand.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 26/04/2026

I bought a plush toy on Amazon for my daughter's friends birthday. It was clearly a cheap fake and left a review as much. According to Claude, Amazon won't let you call products out as fake or counterfeit in reviews. Right...

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 21/04/2026

Programming. It's called programming.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 19/04/2026

If you ever go to Venice, I can highly recommend a Chichetti crawl along Fondamenta degli Misericordia

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 19/04/2026

Back in Venice for work. Chichetti (Venetian version of tapas) by the canal for dinner. Am I bragging? Yes, I am

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 02/03/2026

Claude is down is the new GitHub is down

Claude Status page showing things are currently broken

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 02/03/2026

Case in point. Good software engineers and good SWE teams understand and care about user needs ffs. What do you think we all did before product mgmt as a discipline came along?

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 27/02/2026

Even the usual AI Optimists are skeptical

@emollick post on X

Two things:
1) Given that effective AI tools are very new, and we have little sense of how to organize work around them, it is hard to imagine a firm-wide sudden 50% efficiency gain
2) CEOs with vision who hired well should also use AI for expansion & augmentation, not decimation

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 27/02/2026

Claude Code you are so buggy. Crashing constantly at the moment for me...

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 23/02/2026

So much for Claude Cowork's new legal skill which sent markets into a panic re: it being Legal SaaS killer. I tried it out just now on an MSA I needed to review...

Screenshot of conversation with Claude Cowork using the Claude Legal Skill:

Me: Are you getting mixed up? Clause 5 is rights ot termination

Claude: You're right to call that out - let me go back and re-read the contract properly rather than relying on my initial pass.

Extracted and processed MSA PDF document text content
Extracted and processed MSA PDF document text content
Fair point - I got the clause numbering wrong. Let me read the full extracted text properly to get the actual structure right before redoing the review.

Read DocuSign Master Services Agreement document
Read DocuSign Master Services Agreement document

Right, I apologise - I clearly got the clause numbering substantially wrong throughout the review. Now I have the actual text extracted, the correct structure is:

Clause 5 = Expiry or termination of Agreement (as you said)
Clause 11 = Intellectual Property Rights
Clause 14 = Limitation of Liability
Clause 10 = Charges and Payment
Clause 9.3 = Non-solicitation (6 months, not 12)
I also had several factual errors - the liability cap is 150% not 100%, late interest is 3% not 4%, and the consequential loss exclusion is unilateral (protects only the Supplier), not mutual. Let me redo the review properly with the correct details.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 21/02/2026

Power looms and Jacquard looms at the Manchester Science Museum today. Automation of skilled work, protests against new technology... "How do you think you would react to technology replacing your skilled work?"

Photo of Power Loom at Manchester Museum of Science and Indsutry

Photo of description of Power loom

Power loom
T. Larmuth & Co., Manchester, around 1860
By the early 19th century, new machines like this power loom could make cloth more quickly and cheaply than people. Groups of angry handloom weavers raided cotton mills at night. They burnt and broke power looms to protest against the new technology.
How do you think you would react to technology replacing your skilled work?

Photo of ribbon loom with Jacquard head at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

Text of description of Ribbon Loom with Jacquard head:

Ribbon loom with Jacquard head
T. F. Wilkinson Ltd, Coventry, 1900
At the top of this loom is a programming system. Cards with small, punched holes programmed the loom to weave different designs. It made woven patterned cloth much easier and cheaper to produce.
The punch card system inspired the invention of the earliest computer.
Weavers using Jacquard looms, 1900.
Past Pix / Science & Society Picture Library

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 18/02/2026

Someone doing god's work on LinkedIn

Screenshot of a comment chat on LinkedIn:

Rafat Sarosh
AI for Enterprise, Relentless Optimist, and Practical Builder.
11months ago

Matthew Skelton haha ..you may be giving me a escape hatch. But truthfully, code cost is falling to zero faster than we all are grasping ... yes, yes engineering system is much more than code. Agree, but I think every engineering team should be cut by 60% by next year..

Sonja Lorscheidt

1h ago

Rafat Sarosh and has it been? Just wonder. 🤔

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 12/02/2026

A quick look at his own X thread posting it shows him making basic technical overclaims, for example asserting that newer models no longer hallucinate, with plenty of practitioners correcting him in reply. x.com/mattshumer_/...

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 12/02/2026

"Code health determines whether AI accelerates delivery or amplifies defects. Large-scale studies show that AI-generated changes fail significantly more often in unhealthy code, with defect risk rising by at least 30%. In the AI era, healthy code is no longer optional."

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 10/02/2026

Also see Claude status page

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 12/01/2026

Work can take you to some interesting places!

A photo looking across a jetty in venice over a canal with a coffee cup in the foreground

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 02/12/2025

OpenAI's "Code Red" Traffic down 6% since Google launched new Gemini and Banana models

A chart showing OpenAIs traffic declining 6% since Google launched new Gemini model and Banana

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 26/11/2025

- HP has margin pressure now. - HP expects tougher conditions ahead. - HP needs to reduce operating expenses significantly. - AI provides a socially acceptable and market-friendly framing that shifts attention away from the fact the core business is struggling.

Business Insider: HP puts a number on how many jobs it'll cut due to AI

Bloomber article: HP announces job cuts as profit outlooks fall

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 14/11/2025

AI use isn't exploding. The latest Similarweb data shows growth in a few tools like OpenAI and Claude, but most AI categories are flat or falling. www.similarweb.com/corp/wp-cont...

Screenshot of Similarweb AI Global Sector Trends on Generative AI report 10th Oct 2025

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 06/11/2025

Duolingo share price now down 63% since May. TBF it doesn't seem to (now) be down to user perception re: their AI first disaster. They're still growing and revenue matched targets. More seems investors want payback and CEO wants to focus on growth

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 31/10/2025

Been using more of Claude recently. One thing that's stood out is how unreliable it is (down at the moment) status.claude.com

Screenshot of Claudes status page showing lots of downtime and instability across all its services over the last 90 days

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 28/10/2025

AI-assisted coding is like the blind men and the elephant. Everyone's experiencing it from different vantage points. Makes it genuinely hard to know whose experience is worth learning from. Sketched a graph to illustrate & wrote about the patterns I'm seeing. blog.robbowley.net/2025/10/26/y...

Line chart illustrating different perspectives on AI coding tools across experience levels.

Y-axis indicates perception of AI coding tools usefuleness/engineering population

X-axis shows progression from Beginner through Mid-level/Mediocre, Experienced, to Expert. Three lines: (1) Yellow - perceived usefulness of AI coding tools, peaks high at beginner and mid-level, drops significantly into negative for experienced engineers, then rises again at expert level. (2) Blue solid - actual distribution of engineering competence in the population, forms a left skewed bell curve peaking at on mid-level and roughly 20% in experienced or expert. (3) Green dashed - self-perceived distribution of engineering competence, is shifted to the right vs the blue lin. The gap between blue and green lines illustrates overestimation of expertise in the industry if you went by what people said they were.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 14/10/2025

A conference with Eliyahu Goldratt memes is my kind of conference #TheoryOfConstraints #FastFlowConf

A slide showing Eilyah Goldratt next to a signed - Warning Local Optimisation Ahead

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 07/10/2025

From a CTO WhatsApp group I'm in

Message in CTO WhatsApp group:

I did a code and architecture review for a company yesterday who had vibe coded their MVP - there were no common classes, modules, functions, etc. every "feature" was a separate file with literally a main method full of all the code required for that one function - no reuse anywhere and loads of bits of code that were declared but never used, variable names that didn't make sense, the same variables defined everywhere, etc. Because they were quite far down this path the tidy-up process is going to be a long and difficult road

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 04/09/2025

AI is the latest diet plan fad Most AI adoption is failing, who could have possibly imagined? The ones seeing any benefit are focusing on org change too. Yet "AI first" is the battle cry. Top down mandates measuring success on AI usage and output, not whether its creating any value 🤦 4/7

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 04/09/2025

In a client's office. This doggo has absolutely made my day. Massive floof ball, does stand up human cuddles.

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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 31/08/2025

It is 2 am in the morning..we have just had our final (of 13) course of beetroot soup. I have never drunk so much vodka.

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