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Double Takes

TDDing with Claude is like having a pair that removes all the failing assertions every time you go to the bathroom.

Steve Jackson

State machines are the answer for those seeking determinism in the era of AI agents.

Dave Mosher

A Slack conversation left Doc reflecting on what bug bashes say about the systems we work in.

Doc Norton

Test-driven development is to programming what double-entry bookkeeping is to accounting.

Neal Lindsay

The fundamental character flaw of the software creator is not the misguided belief that they can solve any problem with software. Instead, it is the belief they can understand how their own software works before they create it.

Steve Jackson

We may need a SaaS appendix for Zawinski's law:

Any SaaS platform attempts to expand until it is a social network.

Matt Jones

A warm, sunlit desk is arranged with a closed laptop, notebook, headphones, coffee mug, open book, hiking map, plants, and a small Test Double-themed rubber duck. A large open space in the center of the desk symbolizes the breathing room created when technology helps people reclaim time for thinking, rest, and life beyond work.

Developers

AI Should Give Us Our Lives Back, Not Fill Them With More Work

What do you do with the time saved using AI? River Bailey explores multiple threads while exploring the possibilities.

River Lynn Bailey

Software tooling & tips

ai-ml

communication

culture

productivity

professional-growth

Illustration of distributed process ownership: a person untangling a knotted ball of workflow threads into four clean, separate strands flowing to individual professionals working at desks, representing decentralized task management and team accountability

Leadership

Distributed process ownership eliminates team bottlenecks

Process ownership concentrated in a few hands creates invisible organizational drag. When distributed across the team, it eliminates bottlenecks, improves delivery, and frees leaders to do higher-value work.

Sukhraj Singh

Communication & teams

communication

culture

leadership

process

teams

Dark illustration showing a tangled gray scribble labeled "AI" resolving into a glowing green line that climbs upward through icons for code, systems, communication, and metrics before reaching a glowing star labeled "The Plot (Again): Meaning. Impact. Direction.

Developers

Software engineering and AI: Finding the plot(again)

Is "clean code" still the point when an agent writes it? River Bailey unpacks quality, tech debt, and what it means to be a product engineer.

River Lynn Bailey

Communication & teams

ai-ml

communication

professional-growth

tech-debt

quality

An airy bridge with complex structural foundations deep in the ground

Developers

Why quality software is expensive (to build)

Quality software is expensive because the parts users notice least often require the most work: usability, reliability, security, compliance, testing, and long-term maintenance.

Shawn Rinehart

Maximize software investment

budgeting

efficient software

regulatory-compliance

security

software-purchase

Leadership

AI amplifies everything (including what's broken). Start there.

Is your organization clear enough to benefit from the speed AI delivers? AI doesn't create dysfunction—it amplifies whatever patterns already exist, including the broken ones.

Jen Tedrow

ai-ml

leadership

strategy

teams

Agentic trainer Dave working on Ride with Dave

Developers

The moat is made of people

Foundation models are getting better and cheaper every quarter. Coding agents can replicate almost any app from a screenshot. So what's left to build a defensible product on?

Jed Schneider

ai-ml

dev-experience

efficient software

process

productivity

Work desk neatly arranged with architecture systems diagram showing stylized legacy hardware on one side and modern cloud systems on the other

Leadership

How I'd start a legacy modernization project now

What leadership needs when they’re considering a legacy modernization initiative is a scored diagnosis: every finding rated on how bad it is and what kind of problem it is.

Mike Doel

Legacy modernization

legacy-modernization

ai-ml

assessments

efficient software

scaling-challenges

Product development when the rules keep changing, agentic trainer Dave working on Ride with Dave

Leadership

Outputs are cheap. Being wrong isn't.

The cost of writing software has collapsed. The cost of writing the wrong software hasn't. When you can ship faster than you can plan, product development looks different and a different kind of partnership makes that sustainable.

Todd Kaufman

ai-ml

founders

greenfield-product-development

product-innovation

quality

Insights for great software & great teams

Double Takes

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