Software Design: Tidy First?

Articles

Augmented Coding: Negative Feedback

1 week ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

If you follow me on social media, you will have seen that I have been doing a lot of vibe coding (which I call “augmented coding” for reasons that will become clear). I have SO MANY THOUGHTS. I’m going to send them out to you folks—the elite, the select, the paying subscribers—raw & unfiltered for feedback. But I’ll try to limit myself to one a day.
One Pile

1 week ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

I listened to ’ interview with Prof. Ousterhout. I have a lot more to say, but for now I’ll leave this one thought—Prof. Ousterhout & I have way more in common than we have differences, but those differences are pretty fundamental. Thank you to new sponsor PostmanBuild Smarter APIs with AI—Join POST/CON 25 in LA, June 3 & 4, 2025Offering APIs is a service & a responsibility. Postman helps you carry this responsibility with testing, deployment, & documentation support.
Social AI Adoption: Lessons from Hybrid Corn

2 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at ShopifyWith these words, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke attempted to reset the behavior of his employees. I say “attempted” because history suggests that (bad news for him) this isn’t how change happens. (Good news) there are predictable, actionable patterns for how change, particularly the adoption of technical innovations, how that change happens.
When Should Visual Design Precede Implementation?

3 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

First published April 2016As a programmer, I hate getting a wire frame and having to reproduce it with code. I never had a good way to be empathetic with those who want to work in that style. I now have an explanation for when it makes sense. Welcome new sponsor Augment! Their CEO (and my friend) Igor Ostrovsky walked me through their chat-based programming assistance & previewed their sexy new agentic tools.
Thinkie Aligning Incentive

3 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

Pattern: You can see that folks are working at cross purposesTransformation: Give them an incentive that will influence their actions towards a common goalWhen I say “incentive”, folks immediately think “money”. While money is a powerful incentive, it also tends to distort behavior, precisely because it is so useful & so personal. Still, “$100 to everyo…
Retrospective Performance Reviews

4 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

First published November 2016I’m hearing many stories about performance review cycles and the incentives they create, but I’m also getting a very reasonable question: what should we do now? Here’s an immediate suggestion. Thanks to today’s sponsor Unblocked. When I was a young programmer we were berated for not writing more documentation, but that documentation always turned out to be useless by the time we needed it.
Tidy Together Scope Trim

4 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

The way I write books is I pick some tiny little scope, I say “there’s no way I can write a whole book about this”, then it turns out to be way too much, I get depressed & stop writing, then eventually I decide “well which half of this is going into this book?”, I trim the scope, then I finish the suddenly within reach scope. Two, maybe 3 rounds of cuts …
Structure Folks & Feature Folks

4 weeks ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

A friend was responsible for the architecture of a large, successful software product. The product needed to handle sensitive information responsibly, so the design called for a single sub-element to have that information written to it but never retrieved from it. The company bought a complementary product whose team was asked to integrate with the origi…
Thinkie Perverse Incentive

1 month ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

Pattern: People are working so as to sabotage progress towards a desired outcome. Transformation: Look at their incentives from their perspective. Change the incentives. The behavior will follow. (Unless you screw up the incentives, which is easy to do.)Sales people are poaching sales from other regions, resulting in lower overall sales for the company. …
Thinkie: Change Tradeoff Curves

1 month ago | tidyfirst.substack.com | Kent Beck

Pattern: You’re stalled trying to make progress changing the outcome of a tradeoff. Transformation: Rather than trying to change the outcome directly, change the shape of the tradeoff curves. Continuous deployment is an example. We’d like to deploy more frequently for lots of good reasons. However, the cost per deployment is killing us.