Kent Beck

Beliefs Korrents

• Korrents What they believe 38 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.

  Each is a korrent — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.

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  • Saying that coding will be automated away first betrays a misunderstanding of software engineering, because coding is only a small part of the work.

    My response is that that's a statement by someone who doesn't understand software engineering. Coding is part of what you're doing, but it's only a small part of what you're doing.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • The industry is now accumulating code faster than it is accumulating trust, and trust only comes from having struggled to understand the domain yourself.

    we're accumulating code faster than we're accumulating trust and that sense of trust comes from me struggling to understand some domain concept I get it. I represent it in the code. I have I write tests that demonstrate that I really did understand it. And now I trust my program.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Engineers were promised that understanding the computer would be enough, and the human skills they were told they could skip turn out to be the hard part.

    So I was promised just understand the computer and then just kidding understand people from a position where I was already 10 years behind.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Letting non-programmers build their own unmaintainable software is still a large step forward, because the alternative was a thousand-page requirements document and an eight-year wait.

    You look under the underneath though at the code and it was just a horrible unmaintainable mess. But the fact that people could program the programs that they wanted was a a significant step forward as opposed to I'm going to write a thousandpage requirements document and then wait 8 years and not get what I want which was the alternative that we were offering at the at the time.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Programs exist to communicate intent to other people and now to models as well, and we do not understand at all how to communicate effectively to models.

    part of the goal of programs is to communicate intent to other human beings and now to models as well which which is a much more open-ended problem. We understand a lot more about how to communicate to other human beings whether we apply that understanding or not. We don't understand at all how to communicate effectively to models

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • An outside expert's understanding of somebody else's problem is bounded, because they do not have to live with the design after they leave.

    Your understanding of somebody else's problem is bounded because you're not in the middle of it. You don't have the same skin in the game. If you're not semiconductor test engineer, you don't have as much skin in the game as somebody who is because they're going to have to be using this interface for a long time after you're gone.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Moving the computation to where the data lives is the fundamental design move in object-oriented programming, and it got lost in the noise.

    So a a big challenge in object-oriented programming is dividing the responsibilities because you're moving the computation to where the data is. Saying, "Well, this object does this and that object does that is a really critical decision because you want to you want the computation near to the data so that there's less coupling between them." which is a lesson that I I think uh kind of got lost in the noise. That's the fundamental design move in ob in designing object-oriented programs and I I think I stand behind that.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Unit testing frameworks arrived so late because testing was a status divide, and testers had every incentive to keep a separate tool and language of their own.

    So beforehand because of this social divide between programmers and testers. There was a lot of incentive for the testers to have their own language. This is my tool. I know how to run it. I'm going to run it.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Programming, not diagramming, is where an engineer actually learns, because code is the point at which you can no longer fool yourself about what you understand.

    and I thought programming sitting fingers on keyboard staring at code that's that's where I do my learning because that's where you can no longer fool yourself that you actually understand either you compute the correct value or you don't compute the correct value. So I wanted to elevate that moment of reality meets program and that's where the programming comes from.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Always try your stupid ideas when the experiment is cheap and reversible, because the one that works has no competition.

    Always try your stupid ideas if you can do it cheaply and reversibly. Jumping off a bridge is not a reversible decision. Not talking about that. I'm talking about stuff like this where you're just like, "Here's a stupid idea." 99 times out of a 100 it'll fail. But that one time you won't have any competition cuz nobody else is stupid enough to try this idea.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Having an AI agent write tests costs tokens in the short run and saves them in the long run, because the classic failure is that the code does not work.

    It costs tokens in the short run, but it can save them in the long run because one of the classic genie mistakes is stuff doesn't work.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • TDD fell out of fashion partly because its advocates turned it into a moral test of professionalism, when people write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

    And then there were people who used it as a moral cudgel. Like you should be if you're not using TDD, you're not professional. And that's just such People can write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • TDD earns its keep only where work alternates rapidly between doing and learning; choosing it is a practical decision, never a moral one.

    It's when you have this rapid alternation between I do a thing, I learn a thing, I do a thing, I learn a thing, I do a thing, I learn a thing. That's where TDD is really powerful. But it's not a moral decision. It's a practical decision.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Naming the movement 'agile' was a mistake, because the word is indefensible: nobody will ever admit to not being agile, while nobody claims to be an extreme programmer without having done the work.

    what I don't like about it I didn't like about it then and still don't like about it is it's not defensible. Nobody's going to say I'm not agile. Oh no, I prefer rigid development. Oh, I prefer inflexible development. No, everybody's going to say that they're agile, which extreme doesn't have that problem.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • The Agile Manifesto is only the intersection of the ideas of the people who happened to be in the room, and there is far more to software development than it contains.

    The agile manifesto is the intersection of the ideas of the people in the room. I think there's a lot more to software development than is contained in the manifesto. And I've written books and books and books about what I think those things are.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Promising twice the work in half the time without the hard-won technical skills is simply a lie.

    And there were people who were willing to say, "Nah, no, no, don't worry about that. This is easy. You can do this. Anybody can do this. Twice the work in half the time." From my perspective, that's just a lie.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • The adulation and the abuse a well-known figure receives are both about the audience's need for a hero or a villain, and have nothing to do with the person.

    And what I had to learn was the reason that people come to me with those out of proportion responses is because that's what they need. They need a hero or they need a villain. and their need for a hero or a villain has nothing to do with me. If it wasn't me, they'd be contacting you. They'd be contacting somebody else. It really doesn't have anything to to do about me.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Facebook could ship safely without much unit testing because it had many independent layers of feedback, each one catching what the earlier layers missed.

    Then you had code review which gave you another level of feedback. You could roll out internally more frequently. And everybody was using Facebook for all kinds of stuff, personal and internal business stuff. So whatever feature you developed, people would start using it immediately. So you get another round of feedback. Then we had this phased roll out process where you'd start rolling your stuff out. If there was a problem, the blast radius would be limited to a a few million people.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • An engineer who accomplishes every goal they set is sandbagging; hitting about half of them is the sign of someone risking and learning enough.

    If you accomplished everything you set out to accomplish, people, you know, you're sandbagging. you're not trying hard enough. You're not risking enough. You didn't learn anything over the course of the six months.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • A coach's job is to identify and induce productive discomfort, not to reassure people that they are doing fine.

    It's not always pleasant. It's not a pat you on the head and you're going to be fine. It's a It's a don't like no, you're screwing this up. Go try this thing. Tell me how that works. Oh, you didn't try the thing. Oh, you don't want to work on this? Okay, we're done. Quite uncompromising. uh I say coaches are are there to identify and induce productive discomfort

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Empathy, body language and tone of voice are learnable skills, and expecting the world to adapt to how you are wired is not going to work.

    There are people who say, "Well, it's up to the rest of the world to adapt to the ways that I'm weird." It's just not because I mean, it's not going to happen. So, learning empathy, learning how to read body language, learning how to read tone of voice, this is not natural skills, but they're skills. They're learnable.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • AI has accelerated the pace of development but not the pace of business, and that mismatch will become more and more apparent.

    So one of the things is that the pace of development is definitely accelerated. One thing I wonder the pace of business hasn't accelerated though and that mismatch is going to become more and more apparent.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Companies protected by high switching costs will see those costs fall to zero, and their profits with them.

    Okay. So now we have people who've been able to rely on switching costs to protect their profits and the switching costs just drop to zero. Their profits are going to drop to zero and and some people aren't going to survive that change.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • People who vibe-code a replacement for a product will rebuild the visible tip of the iceberg and then discover the downstream problems they never knew existed.

    So, we're going to see people get into those where they're like, "Well, I vibe code the tip of the iceberg. I throw away the rest of the iceberg and now I'm in trouble because now I don't know what to do. Now I get to these downstream problems that I didn't even know existed." So, we're going to see on the on the side of the the the vibe coding replacers, we're going to see that kind of a naivity play out.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • Exploring, expanding and extracting are three distinct phases, and how you write code, who you hire and how you organise should be completely different in each.

    So how you write code, how you manage projects, who you hire, how many people, what the org structure is is completely different in the three phases.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • AI has wiped the senior engineer's playbook clean, and writing a playbook is a completely different skill from applying one.

    Nobody knows now. That playbook has been wiped clean and people whose identity is I know the playbook are now terrified. Who who am I? Now, it turns out that the skill of writing a playbook is completely different than the skill of applying a playbook.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • It is far too soon for a manifesto about AI development: the Agile Manifesto took fifteen years of object-oriented practice before anyone could write it.

    which is why when I see manifestos today I'm just like too soon. Not a bad idea. Would love to have one just too soon. It took 15 years for the technical change of object-oriented programming to come before we could say here are the consequences of it. Here's how in a simple way we can express how to effectively use this technology that we've been using day in and day out for 15 years. The genie comes along. People are like, "Well, what's the new manifesto? It's just not manifesto time yet.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • When an AI agent runs out of forward progress, throw the project away and start over rather than trying to tweak it.

    the genie runs out of g runs itself out of options it can't make further forward progress and so I'll wipe it away start over I won't try and tweak I'll start over and say all right well if I implement things in a different order. If I implement with this markdown file or if I implement it with this commit hook, we collectively need to try absolutely everything.

    How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry Said 1 Jul 2026

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  • For twenty-five years the senior people had the answers to hand, and what has changed is that at this moment nobody knows the answer to anything.

    And one of the things I noticed is for 25 years we've kind of had the answers. Somebody comes to us and says we have too many bugs or like, all right, well, here's how you write tests. Oh, I can't write tests. Well, here's how you design so you can write tests. It's just kind of press play uh on the recorder. And the thing that's changed is at this moment nobody knows the answers to anything.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • The job of senior people now is to demonstrate not how to use these tools effectively, but how to figure out how to use them, which is a different set of skills.

    So, as seniors, I figure it behooves us to demonstrate not just how to use these tools effectively, but how to figure out how to use these tools effectively, cuz that's a whole different set of skills.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • Asking what the smallest experiment is that would settle a claim to your own satisfaction has become a thousand times more valuable in the last year.

    Yeah, what what's the smallest experiment I can run to verify to my own satisfaction and everybody's level of satisfaction is going to be different whether or not this claim is true. That's That's the skill that is suddenly in the last year become a thousand times more valuable is that skill of saying, "What's the least I can do to validate for my to my own satisfaction whether this claim is true?

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • Nobody can hold the answer in an environment where the answer changes weekly, which means you are as smart as everybody else because you are as ignorant as everybody else.

    That's a You know, people want the answer, and the answer is changing. So, you can't possibly in this environment have the answer. Now, that's the bad news. The good news is nobody else has the answer either. So, you're just as smart as everybody else because you're just as ignorant as everybody else.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • This is the golden age of the junior programmer, because AI is an amplifier and the people learning quickly get amplified most.

    Yeah, AI is an amplifier. And if uh if you're young and learning quickly, AI is going to amplify that or can amplify that. So, I I personally think this is this is the golden age of the junior programmer.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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    AI and jobs

  • The wish to get rid of all the programmers keeps coming back, and programmers ought to ask themselves why, because some of the reason really is about us.

    But now now we have this repeating this repeating, "Hey, we get to get rid of all the programmers." Which it behooves us as programmers to think about why they keep wanting to get rid of us. Some of that's about us and some of it's not, but some of it is. So we should think about that. But also that ants amps up the fear factor that everybody is experiencing.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • Agents are driving a re-soloing of programming, undoing the safe social environment that extreme programming built for people who are not naturally social.

    So, I see a a big trend is the re-soloing of programming. Where a big part of extreme programming is creating a safe social environment for basically antisocial people. Not just asocial, antisocial. And the when I think about the degree of interaction on an XP team, people aren't talking to each other hours a day and happy to be doing so because it's set up for that to be a positive experience.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • Running six agents is using six tools at once, not managing a team, because no tool believes something different from you or has a different energy level today.

    What I see now is, well, "I'm a a programmer and I've got six agents. So, really I'm managing a team." No, you're not. You're using six tools at once, which is fine. But, it's that's very different than having a conversation with somebody who believes things that are a little different than what you believe.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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    energy

  • Slow models are better company than fast ones, because the minutes an agent spends working are the minutes two humans get to talk about the design.

    But my my experience pairing with a two humans and a genie or multiple genies has been very positive. And the fact that they're kind of slow is really nice. So, every time the models come out and they're faster, I'm like, "Oh, there's less time to talk."

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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  • The satisfaction of getting one function exactly right no longer makes a difference, and an engineer has to let go of it and enjoy understanding the domain instead.

    So I think for me I take a kind of uh OCD enjoyment in the in the craft. And I need to let go of that. Because that that satisfaction of getting this one function just right just doesn't make a difference anymore.

    Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for reinventing software, again and again Said 7 Apr 2026

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