"Good software knows when to stop, look at ls!"

ls: usage: ls [-@ABCFGHILOPRSTUWXabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%,] [--color=when] [-D format] [file ...]

I don't think it knew when to stop.

Link this to the Spotify product developers

I agree with this basically 100%.

> Say no by default — every feature has a hidden cost: complexity, maintenance, edge cases

AI-assisted development is blowing up this long-standing axiom in the software development world, and I am afraid it's a terrible thing.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

No, all software grows until it gets email. Jamie told me that.

The hardest engineering skill I've developed is knowing when to stop optimizing. There's always another microsecond to shave, another edge case to handle, another abstraction to introduce.

The best codebases I've worked with share a common trait: they have clear boundaries about what they don't do. The worst ones try to be everything and end up being nothing well.

This applies doubly to developer tools. The ones that survive decades (Make, grep, curl) do one thing and compose well. The ones that try to be platforms tend to collapse under their own weight.

So uhm where can I get the 'als' command then? :P

Really at this point we should stop making software as we know it, but create minimal tools that an LLM can use.