Blog (3 of 17)
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The LLM Reality Check: Why AI Can't Replace Strategic Software Development
Building an MVP with LLMs over the past few weeks has revealed two fundamental limitations that define exactly how AI fits into software development workflows: non-trivial tasks fail about 40% of the time regardless of prompting quality, and code quality correlates directly with how often other developers have solved the same problem online.
Tuesday, 22 July 2025Read more ➞ -
The Blessing of Opinion-Free Development
After twenty years of managing development teams, I've discovered something liberating about coding with LLMs: they don't have opinions about technical architecture.
Thursday, 17 July 2025Read more ➞ -
LLMs: Overeager Junior Developers on Cocaine
In my last post I described working with Claude, Cursor, and friends as supervising an overeager junior developer on cocaine – the conclusion from weeks of building an MVP for a stealth startup, coding extensively with LLMs. Time to explain the metaphor.
Tuesday, 15 July 2025Read more ➞ -
LLMs Force Engineering Discipline We Should Have Had All Along
I've been building an MVP for a stealth startup over the past few weeks, coding extensively with LLMs. After managing development teams for years, I can finally articulate what working with Claude, Cursor, and friends actually feels like: like supervising an overeager junior developer (team) on cocaine.
Thursday, 10 July 2025Read more ➞ -
The Irony Of Building A Perfect Desk While Not Working
So here's the thing: After stepping away from tech leadership to take a year off, what's the first thing I do? Spend weeks crafting the perfect desk setup. Because apparently, the best time to build your dream workspace is when you're not actually working.
Tuesday, 11 February 2025Read more ➞ -
My Local Development Environment on NixOS
Probably irrelevant to most, but still logging this. How do I set up my local development environment while using NixOS? For different projects I require different tools, which I do not always have installed globally. In the past I was using the nix-shell command manually but now I automated it…
Tuesday, 21 January 2025Read more ➞ -
A New Chapter Begins?
I've closed my chapter at commercetools. What started as a startup dream with Frontastic evolved through funding, acquisition, and growth into something larger than we could have imagined. Now it's time for something new – though I'm not yet sure what that "new" will be…
Tuesday, 7 January 2025Read more ➞ -
Remote First: Never meet in person?
Does remote-first or remote-native mean that you'll never meet your peers in person? I certainly diagree. But you'll meet intentionally and usually this'll mean intense and productive collaboration.
Wednesday, 15 March 2023Read more ➞ -
Product development is not Open Source development
The most visible software development is the Open Source community and many developers (including myself) have learned work and software patterns there. I'm convinced though that those patterns differ significantly from developing a SaaS product and that you should pay attention to these differences. My key take away is: Be careful when changing the surface, but stay flexible on the inside.
Tuesday, 21 February 2023Read more ➞ -
Understand your ideal customer profile
In my previous companies I've never even heard about the ideal customer profile (ICP) but this helpd me (and also other members of the founder and product teams) a lot when priotizing and making decisions in general. What is this and how does it affect the technology stack?
Tuesday, 14 February 2023Read more ➞ -
Delegation is hard, but this might help you
How do you learn to delegate and learn what to delegate when? And when are you still allowed to do something by yourself and, for a moment, delay transfering knowledge to your teams? How to make sure all relevant knowledge about the stack is transferred to right people, so that your teams are able to take responsibility for those components in the future.
Tuesday, 7 February 2023Read more ➞ -
Software architecture and product market fit
Which software architectural principles are important when funding a SaaS product company and how to adapt it to the change you'll see in your product?
Tuesday, 31 January 2023Read more ➞
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