Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 8h

AI has read almost everything on the internet. Steve Yegge and Gene Kim show how to leverage this in Vibe Coding. Working with ffmpeg? "Extract a 30-second clip starting at 2:15, remove audio, compress to 720p." Stop learning cryptic tooling. Start solving problems.

itrev.io/4mKG15N

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 9h

Despite heavy AI investment in 2024, developers still aren't seeing marginal productivity gains. Adding more tools doesn't solve complexity. Kim's emphasis on systemic thinking over point solutions explains why. The Unicorn Project is the antidote to tool-based thinking.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 12h

Platform engineering's J-curve: boosts individual productivity 8% and team performance 10%, but initially decreases throughput 8% and stability 14%. Kim depicted this transformation challenge perfectly. Organizations that expect instant wins abandon efforts. The prepared succeed.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 13h

Most powerful debugging technique for AI? Copy and paste the error message. Kim and Yegge explain that AIs are remarkably good at understanding errors. Instead of describing what broke, show the stack trace. Let errors speak for themselves. The visual info is all AI needs.

itrev.io/4mKG15N

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 14h

Stop crafting perfect prompts. Gene Kim and Steve Yegge's book Vibe Coding shows why treating AI like texting—not a legal brief—gets better results. When AI makes mistakes, refine and redirect. Your typos don't matter. Getting to working code matters.

itrev.io/4mKG15N

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 18h

Kim's Second Ideal—Focus, Flow, and Joy—moved from fiction to the boardroom. Half of tech managers now measure developer productivity or DevEx. 16% have dedicated productivity specialists.

This isn't soft skills. It's strategic.

And The Unicorn Project predicted it.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 1d

Bill Palmer thought he was making progress. Then the Phoenix deployment spiraled into disaster. The Phoenix Project Graphic Novel Vol 2 raises the stakes: 90 days to transform or face outsourcing.

For anyone leading or living through transformation.

itrev.io/4glAS0S

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 1d

Top dev productivity blocker in 2025: time to gather context (31% cite this).

Gene Kim's Third Ideal—Improvement of Daily Work—is now the foundation of platform engineering. The shift from "ship features" to "improve how we ship" is real. The Unicorn Project showed us how.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 1d

High psychological safety = 50% more productivity, 76% more engagement, 27% less turnover. Yet only 50% of workers say managers create it. Gene Kim's Fourth Ideal predicted this. For complex systems, psychological safety enables the innovation you need.

Now in paperback.
itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 1d

Kim's First Ideal—Locality and Simplicity—reads like a warning we ignored. We rushed to microservices without considering cognitive load. Now we have systems too complex to understand, debugging like archaeology.

In 2025, The Unicorn Project is required reading.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 2d

The AI paradox validates Gene Kim's systemic thinking: 75% of devs report productivity gains from AI, yet DORA shows AI decreases delivery throughput by 1.5% and stability by 7.2%.

Individual productivity ≠ system improvement. The Unicorn Project explained this before AI existed.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 2d

Platform engineering barely existed when The Unicorn Project published. Now 55.84% of platform teams are less than two years old. Platform engineers earn 26.6% more than DevOps roles. Gartner predicts 80% of software orgs will have platform teams by 2026.

Gene Kim called it.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 2d

Gene Kim's The Unicorn Project showed a developer drowning in cognitive overload. It felt like fiction. Today, 72% of orgs report new hires take over a month for their first meaningful PRs. Developers spend only 30% of time coding. Kim wrote a documentary of 2025, five years early.

itrev.io/474GafM

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 3d

Your users aren't lazy, change-averse, or technologically backward. They're intelligent people managing complex workflows where stability matters. They're making rational decisions with limited change capacity.

Build delivery systems that work with them, not against them.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

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IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 3d

Netflix tests thousands of interface variations but users never feel stuck because changes are subtle or easily reversible. When people trust they can explore without getting trapped, they're more willing to try changes. User confidence enables innovation.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 3d

Yassir scaled from 50 to 400 engineers with 140% increase in deployments and 230% boost in employee satisfaction using their "SAUCE" approach: Small, Audience focused, Cross-functional, Enabled teams. That's how you scale right.

itrev.io/423AMqq

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 3d

You can't build empowered teams by copying org charts. Skelton and Pais's Team Topologies 2nd Edition gives you four team types, three interaction patterns, and one critical insight: team cognitive load is your key design constraint.

itrev.io/4nTtkq8

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 4d

GitHub ships hundreds of small changes that are mostly invisible to casual users but meaningful to developers spending all day in the platform.

Meanwhile, major releases are carefully communicated and gradually rolled out.

Multiple speeds for multiple constituencies.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

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IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 4d

Microsoft's "Try the new Outlook" toggle. Google Workspace's separate release tracks. These aren't just beta flags—they're ongoing control over experience.

That's the difference between respecting change capacity and forcing adoption timelines.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 5d

Three strategies:

1) Delegate control to users—let them decide when to adopt features.

2) Design for multiple speeds simultaneously—power users and cautious users don't need the same pace.

3) Build reversible experiences—make experiments safe by making them undoable.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 5d

Paradox: When you respect users' change capacity, you can innovate faster.

Users who trust you won't disrupt critical workflows become more willing to experiment. Users who feel heard become advocates, not resistors.

Progressive Delivery makes this possible.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 5d

User complaints about update pace aren't resistance—they're telling you about their bandwidth for absorption.

Workarounds to avoid new features? Your timing doesn't match their readiness.

Treat this as essential input, not obstacles to overcome.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

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IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 6d

Builder mindset: sees software as LEGO blocks, high change tolerance.

Tool mindset: sees software as a hammer, moderate tolerance.

Survival mindset: works in high-stakes environments, very low tolerance.

Your rollout fails when you misread which dominates your user base.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW

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IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 6d

FAAFO: Fast, Ambitious, Autonomous, Fun, Optionality.

That's what Gene Kim achieved building his video excerpting tool. He considered it too far out of reach to even try. Built it in under an hour. Uses it multiple times a week.

Life-changing is the right word.

itrev.io/3Kq4JuQ

IT Revolution @itrevolution.com · 6d

Adobe did AI integration right. Users choose which model version to use per project. Brand campaign? Stay on Firefly v1 for consistency. Experimenting? Try v3. Same user, different choices based on context. This is radical delegation in action.

itrev.io/3IQlyOW