Nine Emerging Developer Patterns for the AI Era -

Why Bro Culture Still Holds Teams Back at Work -

Has DOGE missed its opportunity? - This is general advice for digital transformation, too. // And, on the actual focus,I mean: who could have predicted this outcome…

PepsiCo taps AWS to accelerate digital transformation, AI adoption | CIO Dive - ”Enterprises across industries are facing ballooning cloud bills as AI adoption drives up costs. Nearly 3 in 4 IT pros blamed the AI boom for ‘unmanageable’ cloud bills last year.”

A behind the scenes glimpse of the launch of GPT-4 - Fun anecdotes about OpenAI figuring out that ChatGPT was a big deal, and then marketing around it. // “Another little detail about the launch video is that we didn’t use titles for any of the OpenAI employees. Even to this day OpenAI is an incredibly flat organization. I watched a DeepMind video where every talking head had a title and it seemed like a caste system. While I don’t know if that’s really how it is there, I wanted to show that at OpenAI titles didn’t matter all that much. The one exception to titles were the people from Microsoft that appeared. I was given very specific instructions from them about titles. Microsoft even flew one of their execs down on a private jet so he could be in the video.” // Considering the goodwill and share value that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI likely brought, well worth it.

The Titan Who Couldn’t Let Go - Founder mode case study: “There’s a pattern here, and it’s bigger than Hughes. Obsession works–in short bursts, in narrow contexts, with clear feedback loops. But scale it up, let it harden into infrastructure, and it starts to rot the system from the inside. Hughes structurally disallowed any process he couldn’t control. That works in a cockpit. It fails in a boardroom."

Getting things “done” in large tech companies - If the executives don’t know you did something cool, you didn’t do something cool. Legible.

Let’s get the AI to build D&D adventures for us with a Model Context Protocol Prompt. I haven’t found much value in MCP Prompts until now. What makes them excited is when you use them a “recipe” to chain together other tool calls. In this episode of my MCP programming series, I show you how to make two MCP Prompts. First, a simple one that boot-straps playing D&D. Second, a more complex one that pulls together an adventure overview using multiple tools and “reasoning.” I think the result gets to a type of agentic AI.

💾 Code for this project: github.com/cote/Easy…

📹 More videos on D&D with MCP: www.youtube.com/playlist

The AIs are good at being a Dungeon Master for Dungeons & Dragons, but their memory is limited. How can you make sure they don’t forget all that loot you just got, or ensure that cobbler back in the village remembers the type of boots you orders and paid for up front? I’ll show you how to use Model Context Protocol (MCP) to create a DM Journal. This is done by writing an MCP Server tool that write journal entries and then an MCP Server Resource that allows you to read them. It’s just files, but it’s a good excuse to learn some agentic AI coding in Java, with the help of Spring AI.

💾 Code for this project in the EasyChatDM repo.

📹 The rest of the videos in this series.

I was on Cloud Foundry Weekly yesterday. We discussed “vibe coding.” More precisely, what I think of as “half ass vibe coding.” I get the AIs to write code for me, but then ask it questions, maybe even mess around with it myself.

I think that might just be “coding with an AI assistant,” but as Nicky put it, it’s also pretty close to pair programming. I know that ChatGPT sure has a lot more personality than a lot of people I’ve programmed with - know what I mean?! UP TOP 🖐️

Also, check out this week’s Software Defined Talk:

This week, we discuss Google being found to be a monopoly, OpenAI’s “offer” to buy Chrome, and some hot takes on JSON. Plus, is it better to wait on hold or ask for a callback?

Listen all the way to the end for my thoughts of Field Notebooks and XML.

Wastebook

• “Wally’s Rent-to-Own, 1145 North Hilltop. Where, as the sign says, ‘A bargain is a bargain, no matter what the cost.’” Notes to Diane.

• No one does grimy better than Terry Gilliam.

• Also: “I have learned from experience, that a modicum of snuff can be most efficacious.”

Enterprise AI

There's not much room for competitive advantage if you just use the same AI models as everyone else, let alone all the enterprise integrations you need.

If you’re interested in that, check out the overview of the Tanzu AI stack. It’s got the app layer, AI model hosting and access, data, and the operations you need for day zero, to day two, to day n+2.

Relative to your interests

• VMware ups Tanzu’s gen AI support, sheds Kubernetes dependence - Tanzu Platform integrates generative AI capabilities and shifts away from Kubernetes, aiming to streamline AI application development and deployment.

• Broadcom’s Tanzu gets AI updates, but is definitely not Kubernetes - Purnima Padmanabhan, GM for Tanzu, explained that these updates can lower the barrier of entry for developers and allow users to more quickly run their applications with AI integration “while maintaining complete security and lower down time… Even though it’s more advanced, it’s actually easier to adopt because I don’t have to have skill sets in my developers to muck around with YAML files and configurations. I don’t have to have people know and spell the various projects in Kubernetes like service mesh or what is your service discovery.”

• This 7,000-year-old mummy DNA has revealed a ‘ghost’ branch of humanity - A lost genetic line.

• A practical guide to coding securely with LLMs

• Top 10 Platform Engineering Takeaways from PlatEngDay & KubeCon London 2025 - I should probably read this.

• Drew Struzan: The Man Behind Your Favorite Childhood Movie Posters

• MCP Validator

• Docker introduces MCP Catalog and Toolkit as vendors scramble to support the protocol despite security concerns - Local LLMs and MCP everywhere.

• More than one million readers - Big achievement!

• Google Fi is launching a $35 / month unlimited plan - If you have the means, I highly recommend getting a Google Fi number, especially if you’re an expat. Have two phone numbers is great.

• Broadcom Helps GCI Transform Operations and Services on the Alaskan Frontier - “The self-service, cloud-like capabilities of Tanzu Data Services also meant that developers could deploy databases in a matter of minutes, greatly accelerating time-to-market for new services and features.”

• How to think about agent frameworks - Nerd fight?

• Diane, I wrote a lecture by talking about it (Interconnected) - Prompt for converting voice memo notes to a talk, along with out-of-band technique. // I’ve struggled over the years to make this kind of thing work for me.

• Heroku’s Strategic Refresh Signals Renewed Investment from Salesforce - Overview of “the new” Heroku, plus risks.

• Keith McNally’s Regrets… and his Dazzling, Driven Life - Sounds like fun-good book. // “Keith never makes a fuss about caring either. Instead, he subtly creates a sense that, if you’re there, you belong there, not because you’ve elbowed through some arduous gatekeeping process, but because your comfort is being seen to, and all you have to do is enjoy it.”

• Augmented Coding: an Experience Report - Getting an app released requires so many things that humans will always find something to do, and more that can now be done better.

• 14 Years of PivotNine - PivotNine - Congrats!

Logoff

It’s King’s Day tomorrow in The Netherlands, a big, fun event. People party a lot in the warm sun and kids sell a lot of used stuff. It’s like being at multi-family garage sale with endless beer. Which is to say, it’s pretty awesome.