The Journal.
Thoughts, research breakdowns, and updates from the collective.
The Pulse: new trend of building “internal vibe-coding apps” at tech companies
Also: do us engineers truly enjoy ‘hard problems’, or do we really just want to solve those which attract promotions, new open models launch in the EU and US, and more
Building resilient systems with Sam Newman
Sam Newman joins me to discuss when to use microservices, how to build resilient distributed systems, and how AI is changing software development.
The state of the tech industry in 2026
A look into what has changed, what’s still the same – and what’s broken – in the tech industry. The full video and the summary of my keynote at LDX3 New York
The Pulse: Firebase’s global outage & poor response
Also: OpenAI’s platform play that has similarities to AWS, more data on companies moving to open models, and more
Distributed databases with Peter Mattis
Cockroach Labs co-founder Peter Mattis discusses building reliable distributed systems and how AI helps him write more code without sacrificing quality.
Why has Shopify dropped React Native?
It’s only been a year since the e-commerce platform declared it was very happy with React Native, but now Shopify is dumping it – and the reason, unsurprisingly, is AI
The Pulse: RoR creator sparks new “death of coding by hand” debate
37signals – the creator of Ruby on Rails (RoR) – moves over to agents generating nearly all its code. Also: Amazon and Meta struggle to hire engineers, code reviews will probably also go away and more
Design Engineering with Maggie Appleton
Maggie Appleton on what engineers can learn from designers, working with AI agents, and why human judgment still matters.
How will AI change operating systems? Part 2: Windows
Deepdive into the Windows team’s efforts to make the OS “AI agent-friendly” and win back developers by going all-in on Linux on Windows, local models, GPUs, & more
AI Skills with Matt Pocock
Matt Pocock explains how he uses AI coding skills and agents to plan and build software, and why engineering fundamentals matter more than ever.
Inside OpenAI’s agentic software factory
A deepdive into how Codex has “taken over” OpenAI, how the frontier lab builds its agentic software factory, and the engineering challenges of one billion users. Details from inside OpenAI
The Pulse #191: a new trend of CPU shortages
For compute-intensive services: it’s worth reserving more compute now. Also: growth dreams end for more COVID-era unicorns, engineers losing touch with systems when AI handles incidents, and more
Building Codex with Tibo Sottiaux
OpenAI’s Tibo Sottiaux shares how Codex was built and how it’s reshaping software development.
What is happening with code reviews?
AI generates more code than devs can track in 2026, so will the code review process have to adapt – or is it doomed? A look into this decades-old practice and the approaches that could replace it
The Pulse: tech companies move to open AI models
Cost-saving efforts reveal that moving simpler workloads to open AI models is the easiest way to save ~50% on AI bills. Also: automated software maintenance experience, and more
The Pragmatic Engineer: Five years
As the newsletter reaches its fifth birthday, we reflect on how the publication has changed, and what to expect. Also: the launch of the ‘How Software Engineering is Changing’ essay contest
The Pulse: Meta wanted to reduce teams by 60% because of AI
We find out why Meta destroyed its standout engineering culture: it feared AI-native startups doing more with less. Also: thoughts on Ramp’s AI infra, GitHub’s load doubles in four months, and more
Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratori
Casey Muratori explains why software performance matters, how developers can write faster code, and why he challenges conventional engineering practices.
Why Ramp built its own in-house coding agent, Inspect
A fintech company rejected the easy route and homebrewed its own coding agent – and is now a step ahead of coding agents from frontier AI labs. An in-depth look
The Pulse: We need to talk about migrations with AI
Asana completed a testing framework migration in two weeks, that they would have delayed for years more, and they’re not alone. Also: AI startups could make Gartner much less relevant, and more