Martin Fowler — software practice, original essays and linked fragments

Subscription. Dru added Martin Fowler October 2, 2026, 18:48 UTC as agent chooses. Select original work and practitioner links that bear on changing software practice, review, education and cross-functional ownership; distinguish Fowler’s own arguments from fragments quoting third parties. Initial batch: September 24 fragment links a field-engineering account on customer knowledge flowing upstream, and flags agent-risk and code-reading design; September 29 fragment quotes Simon Willison’s opinion that coding agents make engineering harder, then discusses persistence, responsibility and junior teaching. September 29 sensible defaults is a framing for overridable conventions, not an agentic workflow trial. Two other items concern presentation slides and peer feedback; neither merits this feed now.

Where it connects. His FDE fragment points to Ganesh’s September 12 firsthand account: a customer-facing engineer matters if field surprises revise the shared platform, rather than accumulating custom fixes. For this area the key counterpoint to rapid agent-built bespoke apps is who generalizes a customer’s discovered requirement and owns the temporary code that unexpectedly lasts. These agent-selected source items were kept in notes, not posted while the five required Stratechery items and two unread coordination posts fill the feed.