Link: Where's all the shovelware?

A couple of weeks back after the GPT-5 release, I wrote a skeptical post that the fact that the GPT-5 model picker release was botched was something of a bearish sign for llm-assisted programming: Okay, but if OpenAI cannot utilise their own models in coding/dev-ops to avoid a high-profile failure on a very high importance launch, what chance do other companies have? Why hasn’t the A.I. enabled OpenAI to improve their development/deployment strategies to avoid such techincal glitches? ...

September 4, 2025

AI agent programming and files as modules

For a long time I’ve been sceptical that using the file system to denote modules in a programming language is necessary. There are many good reasons to do this as things currently stand, but most of these reasons can, and arguably should, be solved with better tooling. For example from the post linked to above: why would we equate a file to a form of encapsulation? Why, would we wish to divide any application into a bunch of files in the first place. If you ask this question, you get a bunch of answers, but they mostly fall into two categories: 1. some vague notion about organisation and modularising your code and 2. it is easier to navigate whilst coding. I would argue that the first is nonsense, since no one is arguing against modularising code, only that the file system does not need to come into it. The second is potentially true, but rather speaks to a deficiency in your coding environment (text editor/IDE) rather than to the efficacy of using files to modularise a program’s source code. ...

July 3, 2025