In this episode, host Jonathan “J.” Tower sat down with Jeffrey Palermo, CTO and Chairman at Clear Measure, to talk about what changes in software development once AI writes much of the code, and what doesn’t. Jeffrey argues this shift is different in kind from the web, agile, mobile, and cloud transitions that came before it, because it changes how we interact with a computer rather than just how we write code. He’s equally direct about the limits. A language model is very good at answering questions and has no way to come up with one worth asking, which is the part that still has to come from us.
From there, J. and Jeffrey get into why the definition of “good” has to come from outside the model. In practice, that means automated tests as the external standard and builds fast enough to keep pace with how quickly AI now changes code. Jeffrey makes the case that the ten-minute build that felt fast in the DevOps era is too slow now, and that getting down to two minutes means running every stage in parallel instead of in sequence. They also dig into which code is structural and which is decoration (his skyscraper analogy is worth the listen), why Fred Brooks’s surgical team is relevant again, and his prediction that the separate IT department is on its way out.
If you’re trying to work out what software engineering discipline looks like on the other side of AI, this episode is for you.
Guest Bio:
Jeffrey Palermo is CTO and Chairman at Clear Measure, a software development firm focused on AI-driven delivery for .NET and Azure organizations. He coined the term Onion Architecture in 2008, and it’s still one of the most widely referenced ways to structure a long-lived business application. He also hosts the AI DevOps Podcast, formerly The Azure DevOps Podcast, where J. has been a guest more than once. This episode turns the tables.
Additional Resources:
- AI DevOps Podcast, formerly The Azure DevOps Podcast (Jeffrey’s show)
- The Onion Architecture, part 1 (Jeffrey’s original 2008 post)
- Hexagonal / Ports & Adapters Architecture (Alistair Cockburn)
- The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (the theory of constraints)
- Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno (elimination of waste)
- The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks (source of the “surgical team” essay)
- Function points (the software sizing method Jeffrey points to for estimating)
