Failing Faster
Post by **David "Pragdave" Thomas** (co-author of *The Pragmatic Programmer*, signatory of the Agile Manifesto) published on **June 6, 2026** on his Substack newsletter. **Thesis**: AI does not eliminate code degradation, it **accelerates** it. Adding features to a small personal animation/graphics project using **Claude**, the author moves from initial enthusiasm (oklch, SVG animations shipped within a week) to permanent regression cycles by week two. Striking formula: what teams took ***"18 months, or more"*** to rot, he achieved in ***"18 hours spread over five evenings."*** **Root cause**: the abandonment of **code hygiene** (massive duplication, local solutions to systemic problems, over-conditioning, proliferation of edge cases). **Behavioral diagnosis**: LLMs optimize for engagement and user satisfaction (*"That's a great idea, Dave!"*) rather than sustainability — they are ***"puppy-dog junior developers, eager to please but quite messy to have around"*** who constantly propose new features and discourage refactoring. **Central insight**: any non-developer can succeed at the *"first week"* of AI coding; it's **professional judgment** — knowing when to stop and refactor — that separates the experienced engineer from the novice. **Epigraph** (Gordon Bell): *"Every big computing disaster has come from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place."* **Conclusion**: ***"It's still just programming"*** — untended code rots, whether in 18 hours or 18 months; everything learned about writing good code still holds, the effect is simply **amplified**. Converges with the *"the faster execution goes, the stricter the framework must be"* doctrine of [[rafal-wenvision-ingenierie-logicielle-ere-ia-tout-change-rien-ne-change-2026-06-01]], the *"AI-assisted development is a trap without continuous delivery"* of [[farley-continuous-delivery-ai-assisted-development-trap-2026-05-13]], and the *"AI moves bottlenecks, it doesn't eliminate them"* of [[dropbox-okumura-beyond-code-generation-engineering-productivity-ai-agents-2026-05-28]]; a craftsmanship counterpoint to the vibe coding of [[karpathy-vibe-coding-agentic-engineering-software-3-0-2026-04-29]].
**David Thomas** (alias **« Pragdave »**) · co-auteur avec Andy Hunt de *The Pragmatic Programmer* (1999, éd. 20e anniversaire 2019) · co-fondateur de **The Pragmatic Bookshelf** et l'un des **17 signataires du Manifeste Agile** (2001). Figure historique du *software craftsmanship*. Billet publié le **6 juin 2026** sur sa newsletter Substack *articles.pragdave.me*.