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robbowley.net
Rob Bowley
@robbowley.net
2.2K followers 1.1K following 5K posts
Product & Tech Leadership Advisor, Consultant, Coach & Mentor Tech, Software Development, Science, History, Economics, Politics https://blog.robbowley.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbowley https://pragmaticpartners.co.uk Manchester, UK
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · Nov 16
Lots of new followers so thought I'd do an intro 🙂

This is me, without hat, in my garden, on a rainy morning in Manchester 🐝, UK

Been working in tech for 25 years - software engineer then various leadership roles. Nowadays I'm a product & tech leadership advisor, coach, consultant.

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Selfi of Rob Bowley on a rainy morning in Manchester with his garden in the background
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 7h
I have seen just as awful code written by humans
robbowley.net
Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 7h
One of my all-time favourite books is Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers, which is all about how to safely get tests around legacy code (defined as code with no tests)

www.oreilly.com/library/view...
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
This book provides programmers with the ability to cost-effectively handle common legacy code problems without having to go through the hugely expensive task of rewriting all... - Selection from Worki...
www.oreilly.com
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 9h
The thing about having e.g.a rules.md file and when it decides to actually follow it...
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 12h
Not weird, me too! When I was more hands on, refactoring messy code was always the bit I enjoyed the most
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 13h
What's galling is hearing AI leaders/boosters brush off overbuild or bubble risks as if they don’t matter

The BoE warns a burst could dry up finance for households and businesses.

When people with power say ‘don’t worry’, what they really mean is ‘we’ll be fine’
Bank of England warns of growing risk that AI bubble could burst
Possibility of ‘sharp market correction has increased’, says Bank’s financial policy committee
www.theguardian.com
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robbowley.net
Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 13h
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Reposted by Rob Bowley
financialtimes.com
Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 18h
BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI on.ft.com/3WqHK5t
BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI
Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble
on.ft.com
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 15h
Refactoring, I love it
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 15h
Only from my knowledge/recall, but I found this article

www.marketingweek.com/ritson-nike-...
Four big strategic mistakes Nike needs to reverse
Outgoing CEO John Donahoe set Nike on the wrong trajectory, thanks to bad assumptions about product and distribution, and an insufficient focus on brand.
www.marketingweek.com
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 15h
I quite enjoy cleaning up crappy code
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 18h
Some reflections on @duncanjbrown.com's recent article "Team dynamics after AI", which is one of the best/most important pieces of writing I've read on AI in a long time
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Reposted by Rob Bowley
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d
NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 1d
From a CTO WhatsApp group I'm in
Message in CTO WhatsApp group: I did a code and architecture review for a company yesterday who had vibe coded their MVP - there were no common classes, modules, functions, etc. every "feature" was a separate file with literally a main method full of all the code required for that one function - no reuse anywhere and loads of bits of code that were declared but never used, variable names that didn't make sense, the same variables defined everywhere, etc. Because they were quite far down this path the tidy-up process is going to be a long and difficult road
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 2d
This is now the favourite thing I've read on AI.

Why the idealistic AI maximalist dreams just do not stack up.

Can't recommend it enough. Long read, so grab yourself 15 mins without distraction.

Sure I'll be coming back to it many times
duncanjbrown.com
Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 5d
Why I don't believe in "small giants": mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dy...
Team dynamics after AI
Small giants and real giants
mechanicalsurvival.com
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 2d
Had me with Ian Mckaye and skateboarding, stayed for to A++ article
robbowley.net
Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 2d
When my brother bought his house in the U.S, it took *2 weeks*
robbowley.net
Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 2d
Long overdue reform.

Sellers should be responsible for surveys etc through and offers should be binding commitments.

Confounded why not been addressed sooner. Is it because means less incentive to sell?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Buyers could save hundreds in new house buying shakeup
Under new proposals, sellers and estate agents will have to provide key information about a property up front.
www.bbc.co.uk
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 3d
I have some failures #cachestampede
robbowley.net
Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
I have not gone further than very very rough calcs so may be well put either way
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
Very roughly: a 500k LOC system is on the order of 5m–10m tokens.

Current LLMs generate 30–100 tokens/sec. That’s ~14–90 hours of straight generation, before retries, validation, or tests. At today’s API pricing ($0.002–0.01 per 1k tokens), that’s easily in the thousands per full build.
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
Sure, thats not the same thing as AI becoming an abstraction layer though (that means you dont have to deal and manage with the inherent complexity and understand code)
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Reposted by Rob Bowley
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
The idea of AI as a new abstraction for software keeps coming back – prompts as the source of truth, code as an artefact.

Why it won't work any time soon, even if things like non-determinsim and hallucination become solved problems.
Why AI won’t work as a software development abstraction | Rob Bowley
blog.robbowley.net
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
What happens when new requirements force those “tiny agents” to change roles or cross boundaries?

Just back with the same problem
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
Good article. I wanted to explore the what if of non-determinism being solved and the interesting thing was even then, it doesn't work, at least not without a ridiculous amount more compute than we currently have or will have anytime soon.
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 6d
The idea of AI as a new abstraction for software keeps coming back – prompts as the source of truth, code as an artefact.

Why it won't work any time soon, even if things like non-determinsim and hallucination become solved problems.
Why AI won’t work as a software development abstraction | Rob Bowley
blog.robbowley.net
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