The Pragmatic Engineer

9/29/2026

It’s only been a year since the e-commerce platform declared it was very happy with React Native, but now Shopify is dumping it – and the reason, unsurprisingly, is AI

9/24/2026

37signals – the creator of Ruby on Rails (RoR) – moves over to agents generating nearly all its code. Also: Amazon and Meta struggle to hire engineers, code reviews will probably also go away and more

9/23/2026

Maggie Appleton on what engineers can learn from designers, working with AI agents, and why human judgment still matters.

9/22/2026

Deepdive into the Windows team’s efforts to make the OS “AI agent-friendly” and win back developers by going all-in on Linux on Windows, local models, GPUs, & more

9/17/2026

Matt Pocock explains how he uses AI coding skills and agents to plan and build software, and why engineering fundamentals matter more than ever.

9/15/2026

A deepdive into how Codex has “taken over” OpenAI, how the frontier lab builds its agentic software factory, and the engineering challenges of one billion users. Details from inside OpenAI

9/10/2026

For compute-intensive services: it’s worth reserving more compute now. Also: growth dreams end for more COVID-era unicorns, engineers losing touch with systems when AI handles incidents, and more

9/9/2026

OpenAI’s Tibo Sottiaux shares how Codex was built and how it’s reshaping software development.

9/8/2026

AI generates more code than devs can track in 2026, so will the code review process have to adapt – or is it doomed? A look into this decades-old practice and the approaches that could replace it

9/3/2026

Cost-saving efforts reveal that moving simpler workloads to open AI models is the easiest way to save ~50% on AI bills. Also: automated software maintenance experience, and more

9/1/2026

As the newsletter reaches its fifth birthday, we reflect on how the publication has changed, and what to expect. Also: the launch of the ‘How Software Engineering is Changing’ essay contest

8/27/2026

We find out why Meta destroyed its standout engineering culture: it feared AI-native startups doing more with less. Also: thoughts on Ramp’s AI infra, GitHub’s load doubles in four months, and more

8/26/2026

Casey Muratori explains why software performance matters, how developers can write faster code, and why he challenges conventional engineering practices.

8/25/2026

A fintech company rejected the easy route and homebrewed its own coding agent – and is now a step ahead of coding agents from frontier AI labs. An in-depth look

8/20/2026

Asana completed a testing framework migration in two weeks, that they would have delayed for years more, and they’re not alone. Also: AI startups could make Gartner much less relevant, and more

8/19/2026

Addy Osmani shares lessons from 14 years at Google and how AI agents are reshaping software engineering, developer workflows, and the skills engineers need to succeed.

8/18/2026

Trend: more CTOs, VPEs, and Heads of Engineering are walking away from their high-status, in-demand positions. There are many reasons, mostly related to AI, and to "founder mode"

8/14/2026

The social media giant is offering $1M+ retainer equity grants to staff who are leaving: and even this is not effective. Also: is Grok Bot the “OpenClaw moment” for managed AI agents?

8/12/2026

In 2025, it was rational to be skeptical about AI. In 2026, it's not, anymore. With Charity Majors, CTO and co-founder of Honeycomb.

8/11/2026

A shift from a focus on latency to building better AI models, owning the full stack from applications to building custom hardware, very different incentives to most tech companies in play, and more

7/29/2026

Hillel Wayne explains why formal methods like TLA+ matter, how they help build reliable software, and whether AI will finally bring formal verification into the mainstream.

7/28/2026

A deepdive on what’s changed in how the leading AI lab makes software. Ever more code review and testing is done by AI, two-pizza teams very much alive, and more. Details from inside of Anthropic

7/23/2026

Also: Chinese open models match closed ones from Anthropic and OpenAI, AWS’s “heart-attack” billing error, and more

7/21/2026

Turbopuffer cofounder Simon Eskildsen on the benefits of longer tenure, using first principles to build durable software – and why founders should be cautious when raising VC money

7/16/2026

Also: engineering leaders concerned about continued increase in code review load, devs at enterprises surprised by high enterprise pricing, and more

7/15/2026

Dex Horthy explains why context engineering is key to building more effective AI-assisted software without sacrificing code quality.

7/14/2026

There’s talk about loop engineering, but what is it exactly? I looked into it, and found triggers, cron jobs, AI slop & more. Is it a “here today, gone tomorrow” trend?

7/9/2026

A rewrite done in 11 days that would have taken a small team a year to complete, for $165K in tokens. Also: coding LLM “wars” heat up, AI fakers from North Korea still a problem when hiring, and more

7/8/2026

In this AMA episode, Gergely Orosz answers listener questions on AI, engineering, hiring, and careers.

7/7/2026

The market where nobody finds each other, the hottest market for AI-related positions, tough for engineering leaders, and more. Based on details from 50+ hiring managers & job seekers

7/1/2026

Kent Beck reflects on Agile, TDD, and why building trust—not just generating code—will define the future of software engineering in the AI era.

6/30/2026

A peek into where software engineering is headed from inside the sector’s leading AI labs. Agents running in the cloud are a major trend, while coding harnesses are spreading beyond the craft

6/24/2026

NeetCode shares his journey from Amazon and Google to building a startup, and why deep expertise still matters in the age of AI.

6/23/2026

An overview of what’s changed in engineering during the last six months, how various tech companies are changing how they work, and why slowing down could be a sensible strategy

6/18/2026

Also: a follow-up on Meta destroying its own engineering culture, the SpaceX IPO, SpaceX buys Cursor, Cursor’s GitHub competitor, and more.

6/17/2026

Robert Erez of Octopus Deploy joins me to discuss Kubernetes, GitOps, progressive delivery, AI in CI/CD, and the evolving practices behind modern software delivery.

6/16/2026

Leadership at the social media giant has been on an AI-fueled rampage through its engineering org. We report what’s happened

6/11/2026

Anthropic’s new model, Fable, has restrictions many users find unacceptable. Also: a new trend of smart model routing, Coinbase’s core service has no automatic cross-zone failover, and more.

6/9/2026

Deepdive into the tech jobs market with exclusive data revealing AI labs are more attractive than Big Tech, native mobile & frontend roles are declining, management’s “great flattening”, and more

6/3/2026

Kelsey Hightower reflects on his journey from self-taught technician to Google Distinguished Engineer, sharing lessons on open source, Kubernetes, AI, and building technology that serves people.

6/2/2026

Devs are generating twice as much code (or more) than just 6 months ago, which is a problem for quality, reliability, and tech debt. A rational fix is available for these, but who’s acting rationally?

5/28/2026

Top-down and bottom-up efforts to rationalize AI token spend, interesting AI coding stats from Cursor, GCP suspends $2M/month customer without warning, and more

5/27/2026

Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, joins the show to discuss their explosive growth, the limits of AI coding tools, and why engineering judgment still matters.

5/26/2026

A deepdive into today’s tech jobs market, with exclusive data on software engineering jobs, the AI engineering boom, whether AI engineering is “replacing” software engineering hiring, and more

5/21/2026

Negative feedback greets Google’s redesigned AI IDE, why Google’s product ecosystem is so chaotic, Meta cuts 10% of staff as it hits record revenue and profits, and more

5/20/2026

Alice Ryhl from Google’s Android Rust team explains why developers love Rust, and what makes the language so powerful for building reliable software.

5/19/2026

Tradeoffs of AI tooling, why adopting AI at company-level is hard, what’s changed in two years, and more. The third and final part of a series analyzing our 2026 AI survey results

5/14/2026

Also: a look into rising tech job losses, self-reporting 100% AI usage at big companies, vibe coding & agentic engineering merging, and more

5/13/2026

Anders Hejlsberg reflects on building Turbo Pascal, C#, and TypeScript, and shares what AI may change about the future of software engineering.

5/12/2026

Does the noted “No Silver Bullets” paper by the author of a classic engineering book still hold up, 40 years later? Is AI the long-sought single silver bullet – or has one been around for years?

5/7/2026

Also: Amazon finally allows engineers to use Claude Code and Codex, Meta forcefully assigns engineers to data labelling work ahead of layoffs, more small “AI-forward” teams, and more

5/5/2026

How the cloud changes the way we build applications, and why engineers’ ethical choices matter more than ever. Excerpt from the book, ‘Designing Data-Intensive Applications’, 2nd edition

4/30/2026

Also: Anthropic’s speed run to break devs’ goodwill, big price increases from GitHub Copilot, Mitchell Hashimoto on the “building block economy,” and more

4/29/2026

Mario Zechner, creator of Pi, joins Armin Ronacher to explore AI coding’s limits, arguing that human judgment still matters most in an agent-driven world.

4/28/2026

A deepdive with the Canonical team into how AI is changing Ubuntu, why they’re betting on local-first LLMs, and a look into other Linux distributions

4/23/2026

Details from 15 tech companies on the rapid growth of token spend, and their responses to it. Also: AI vendors can’t keep up with demand, plummeting morale at Meta, and more.

4/22/2026

Martin Kleppmann on scaling, his updated Designing Data-Intensive Applications, and what’s next for AI-era systems.

4/21/2026

Steve Huynh, formerly Principal Engineer at Amazon, shares observations from 10+ years of interviewing software engineers, and an excerpt from his new book, Technical Behavioral Interview

4/16/2026

… which will probably be the shortest-lived trend because it’s so wasteful. Also: coding AI agent subsidies could be ending, Cal.com going closed source and blaming it on AI, and more.

4/14/2026

Our AI tooling survey finds concerns about mounting AI costs, more engineers hitting usage limits, and AI tools having uneven effects upon different types of engineers

4/8/2026

David Heinemeier Hansson shares why he shifted to an agent-first AI workflow, and what it means for how software is built and who builds it.

4/7/2026

Parallels between technology shifts in the past decades and what we’re seeing with AI. Also: ways to avoid burnout when working with AI agents, TDD back in style, and more.

4/2/2026

Mark Zuckerberg and Garry Tan join the trend of C-level folks jumping back into coding with AI. Also: a bad week for Claude Code and GitHub, and more

4/1/2026

Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO) on scaling Uber from constant outages to global infrastructure, the shift to microservices and platform teams, and how AI is reshaping engineering.

3/31/2026

Many engineers use inference daily, but inference engineering is a bit obscure – and an area rich with interesting challenges. Philip Kiely, author of the new book, “Inference Engineering,” explains

3/26/2026

Poor availability has dogged GitHub for months and raises questions about its status and focus. Plus, Microsoft promises Windows will not be “Microslop”, a massive LLM supply chain attack, and more

3/24/2026

An interview with an engineer with no public GitHub contributions, setting clear boundaries – and yet not having needed to apply for positions when searching for a job, because referrals found them

3/19/2026

Also: AI-agent generated pull requests cause headaches for large open source projects, OpenAI acquires the creator of uv, a sudden Cursor price hike annoys some enterprise customers, and more

3/18/2026

Jean Lee, engineer #19 at WhatsApp, on scaling the app with a tiny team, the Facebook acquisition, and what it reveals about the future of engineering.

3/17/2026

As more software engineers use AI agents daily, there’s also more sloppy software, outages, quality issues, and even a slowdown in shipping velocity. What’s happening, and how do we solve it?

3/12/2026

Also: new trend of token costs becoming a worry for CTOs, 10% cuts at Atlassian, and more.

3/11/2026

Steve Yegge on how AI is reshaping software engineering, the rise of “vibe coding,” and why developers must adapt to a rapidly changing craft.