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Issue 304: Are you ten times more productive yet?

Feeling like AI makes more work than you expected? You're not alone. If your promised 10x productivity has not yet been realized, that's okay. We have the stories you need this week to help you get just a little bit closer. Secure Code Warrior's CTO Matias Madou was on the pod to preach the good word on the lost art of critical thinking, and what developer training will look like in the age of AI.

Benjamin Klieger from Groq also joined us to talk AI agent infrastructure, so your agents can be faster at making you faster. We've also got a Leaders of Code episode for you with the VP of Platform Engineering from JP Morgan Chase & Co., Ramprasad Rai, on how enterprises are balancing AI productivity with compliance, so your 10x productivity doesn't get you into any legal battles.

In a world of evolving technology, the people of the internet are evolving along with it. We have a story on web programs becoming more needy, a brutal(ist) look at programming languages, and one dev's insurmountable challenge to humanoid robots: be able to use a doggy bag.

So, let's just circle back...are you ten times more productive? While you ponder the answer to that one, we have plenty of other questions for you. How old are trees? How deep can Leet speak go? Can you cancel that Venmo request you've been avoiding if the person owes you money in return—legally speaking? Those answers and more in the links below.

From the blog

The fastest agent in the race has the best evals

Ryan welcomes Benjamin Klieger, lead engineer at Groq, to explore the infrastructure behind AI agents, how you can turn a one-minute agent into a ten-second agent, and how they used fast inference and effective evals to build their efficient and reliable Compound agent.

One thing enterprise AI projects need to succeed? Community.

Discover how leveraging an intelligent, community-driven knowledge layer is the key to grounding probabilistic tools, preventing AI hallucination, and validating high-quality code.

AI code means more critical thinking, not less

Ryan is joined by Secure Code Warrior’s co-founder and CTO Matias Madou to discuss the implications of LLMs’ variability on code security, the future of developer training as AI coding assistants become more popular, and the importance of critical thinking—especially for junior developers—in the age of AI.

AI that turns to-do’s into PRs, starts with Jira

Let the new AI-powered Jira automate code reviews, triage issues, improve code quality, and clean up your backlog. Spend less time on busywork and more time building – now that’s a team changer. Check out the new AI-powered Jira.

Interesting questions

Do trees have epigenetic clocks?

If a tree ages in a forest with no one around to see it, did it really age at all?

What is this obfuscation method called?

Your secret language shares something in common with teens trying to talk in code online: it's all just Leet.

Can one debt cancel another debt?

The law does not have an official way to say, "I got you this time, you get me next time."

Frustration with students and deadlines

"No" is a complete sentence.

Links from around the web

Needy programs

When did the internet start to feel like a clingy ex?

A challenge to roboticists: my humanoid Olympics

How many robots does it take to turn a sock inside out? A lot, apparently.

Heartbeats in distributed systems

Hopefully the constant beating of all the nodes in your distributed system won't turn you into an Edgar Allen Poe character.

A brutal look at balanced parentheses, computing machines, and pushdown automata

Taking "software architect" to its most literal interpretation.


Software engineering is evolving faster than ever — and the developers who adapt will define the next era of innovation. Watch our CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar's recent fireside chat with OpenAI on how AI is reshaping the software engineering role from the ground up.