💻 Kent Beck: software engineering in the age of AI
The recording of the one-hour talk "Software Engineering in the Age of AI" from the Prodacity 2026 conference in Nashville has gathered more than 85,000 views. The author is the creator of Extreme Programming and the first signatory of the Agile Manifesto: he calls generative models a "genie" because plausible code is not the same as working code.
🌍 He criticizes spec-driven development as "waterfall in a new wrapper", shows how Goodhart's law distorts premature metrics, and proposes the "effort — output — outcome — mission" framework. Tools, not a forecast of "AI will change everything".
👤 Do you write code with Claude or Copilot? This is 52 minutes from a TDD pioneer and signatory of the Agile Manifesto: iteration instead of one-shot, caution with metrics, and an assessment of the limits of formal methods with Lean.
Source 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8fBgDCf2Y4 Source 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948040