Archive - The Pragmatic Engineer

The Pulse #140: Does Cursor make developers less effective?

Also: the complicated story of the Windsurf sale, beginning of the end for VC-subsidized tokens, and more.

Jul 17 •

Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding with Steve Yegge

Steve Yegge shares why Google struggles with platforms, how AI coding is deceptively hard, and why the "AI Fixer" role could be one spreading inside…

Jul 16 •

1:33:41

The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 Survey: What’s in your tech stack?

Which tools do software engineers use for backend development, frontend, infrastructure, AI tooling, and more, today? Reader survey, with feedback and…

Jul 15 •

and

The Pulse #139: Section 174 is reversed! Or is it?

Finally, relief: tax regulation hurting the US tech industry is striked off for good - for the most part, that is. Also: why Meta is “going to war” to…

Jul 10 •

What is a Principal Engineer at Amazon? With Steve Huynh

Former Amazon Principal Engineer Steve Huynh shares what it takes to reach the Principal level, why the jump Principal is so tough at Amazon, and how…

Jul 9 •

1:13:16

Skills useful to learn for robotics engineering

Helpful software engineering, AI engineering, and robotics fundamentals to know for getting into robotics. Also: advice about studying this exciting…

Jul 8 •

and

The 10x “overemployed” engineer

A software engineer worked at several AI startups at the same time, without his employers knowing anything about it. Then one frustrated founder who…

Jul 3 •

How AI is changing software engineering at Shopify with Farhan Thawar

Shopify's Head of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, shares how the company is using internal LLMs, unlimited AI tokens, and custom tooling to figure out how…

Jul 2 •

47:02

Software engineering with LLMs in 2025: reality check

How are devs at AI startups and in Big Tech using AI tools, and what do they think of them? A broad overview of the state of play in tooling, with…

Jul 1 •

June 2025

Learnings from two years of using AI tools for software engineering

How to think about today’s AI tools, approaches that work well, and concerns about using them for development. Guest post by Birgitta Böckeler…

Jun 24 •

and

Birgitta Boeckeler

The Pulse #138: Ban or embrace AI tools in technical interviews?

Also: Shopify celebrates engineers who spend the most AI tokens, too much AI usage could lead to cognitive decline, and more.

Jun 19 •

The present, past and future of GitHub

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke shares how the company evolved from a Rails monolith, embraced remote work and junior hiring, and how AI tools like Copilot are…

Jun 18 •

1:27:14

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