Issue 303: To abstract or not to abstract

To abstract or not to abstract? That's the question on our minds this week. Whether you're looking for more transparency or just trying to get your code out the door, we have plenty of stories for you. On the pod, we've got a chat with Graphite's Greg Foster on how to make your AI-generated code more secure. Spoiler: it's by giving humans more context and visibility into the code. We also spoke to Nic Benders from New Relic on the complexity crisis, and how developers don't just need observability, they need understandability. And if your feelings about abstraction and AI aren't complicated enough, make sure you read our blog on how AI is abstracting human creativity, written by our very own Eira May.

All this talk about hidden layers has us wanting to be more transparent, too. We're sharing what's new on Stack Overflow for November—from voting, to anti-spam, to open-ended questions—in our first ever monthly update blog. Being a software developer can sometimes make you feel like you're in The X-Files, which is why one developer from the web is calling software the UFOlogy of engineering, and another is worrying about the death of frameworks because of LLMs' abstraction. But if you're ever worried about too much opacity, you can always go old-school and change your programming language; we have at least one dev in this week's issue who really thinks you should use OCaml if you do.

But one thing hasn't changed: if you don't ask, you'll never know. So we have plenty of questions and answers this week that should give you a little clarity into the abstract. For instance: if something happens and I don't see it, did it really happen? Is a bot's Spotify Wrapped less valid than mine? Are the lyrics, "What if God was one of us?" still applicable if God has no birthday? Unabstract those abstracts in the links below.