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HEADS UP: We are taking next week off, happy holiday everyone.
Michael #1: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?
- by Martin Alderson
- Agentic coding tools are collapsing “implementation time,” so the cost curve of shipping software may be shifting sharply
- Recent programming advancements haven’t been that great of a true benefit: Cloud, TDD, microservices, complex frontends, Kubernetes, etc.
- Agentic AI’s big savings are not just code generation, but coordination overhead reduction (fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, fewer blocks).
- Thinking, product clarity, and domain decisions stay hard, while typing and scaffolding get cheap.
- Is it the end of software dev? Not really, see Jevons paradox: when production gets cheaper, total demand can rise rather than spending simply falling. (Historically: the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal)
- Pushes back on “only good for greenfield” by arguing agents also help with legacy code comprehension and bug-fixing. I 100% agree. #Legacy code for the win.
Brian #2: More on Deprecation Warnings
- How are people ignoring them?
- yep, it’s right in the Python docs:
-W ignore::DeprecationWarning - Don’t do that!
- Perhaps the docs should give the example of emitting them only once
-W once::::DeprecationWarning
- See also <code>-X dev</code> mode , which sets
-W default and some other runtime checks - Don’t use
warn, use the <code>@warnings.deprecated</code> decorator instead- Thanks John Hagen for pointing this out
- Emits a warning
- It’s understood by type checkers, so editors visually warn you
- You can pass in your own custom UserWarning with
category
- mypy also has a command line option and setting for this
--enable-error-code deprecated- or in
[tool.mypy] enable_error_code = ["deprecated"]
- My recommendation
- Use
@deprecated - with your own custom warning
- and test with
pytest -W error
Michael #3: How FOSS Won and Why It Matters
- by Thomas Depierre
- Companies are not cheap, companies optimize cost control. They do this by making purchasing slow and painful.
- FOSS is/was a major unlock hack to skip procurement, legal, etc.
- Example is months to start using a paid “Add to calendar” widget!
- It “works both ways”: the same bypass lowers the barrier for maintainers too, no need for a legal entity, lawyers, liability insurance, or sales motion.
- Proposals that “fix FOSS” by reintroducing supply-chain style controls (he name-checks SBOMs and mandated processes) risk being rejected or gamed, because they restore the very friction FOSS sidesteps.
Brian #4: Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative?
Extras
Brian:
Michael:
- PyCharm has better Ruff support now out of the box, via Daniel Molnar
- This is from the release notes of 2025.3: "PyCharm 2025.3 expands its LSP integration with support for Ruff, ty, Pyright, and Pyrefly.”
- If you check out the LSP section it will land you on this page and you can go to Ruff.
- The Ruff doc site was also updated. Previously it was only available external tools and a third party plugin, this feels like a big step.
- Fun quote I saw on ExTwitter: May your bug tracker be forever empty.
Joke:
