The State of Software Engineering 🔨 — with Kent Beck

Today’s guest is Kent Beck, original signer of the Agile manifesto, creator of Extreme Programming, and all-round programming legend!

With Kent we had the unique opportunity to talk about the big picture. I inquired him about the state of the software engineering craft today, discussing things like:

• 👑 Agile vs Power Structures — why Agile seems to have lost part of its meaning.

• 🌊 The Return of Waterfall — why Waterfall represents a fatal attraction for many engineering teams.

• 🔥 Extreme Programming & TDD — why good engineering is an exercise in human relationships.

• 🔄 Feedback Loops — keeping them short and minimizing wasted motion.

• 🔍 Code Reviews & Stacked Diffs — beware, hot takes inside!

• 🤖 AI for Writing and Engineering — Kent’s own experiments and how AI is changing our jobs

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🎙️ Episode

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Or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, Overcast, or your podcast app of choice.

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🙏 Thank you

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See you next week! 👋

Luca