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Standards

🔍 I’ve said before that I’m worried about where software development is heading. But it’s not just AI that’s the problem — it’s what AI is revealing. We’ve built an industry that rewards speed, hype, and surface-level skill over depth, safety, and real user value. And it’s starting to show — in the products we use, the people we hire, and the damage being done. 📈 This started before AI. During the pandemic, bootcamps exploded. Thousands of people pivoted to software for the remote work and high salaries. The market got flooded with junior devs trained just enough to build a CRUD app — but not enough to understand why and how things should be built. ...

August 5, 2025 · 4 min · 682 words · map[email:me@wynandpieters.dev name:Wynand Pieters]
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The Gell-Mann amnesia effect and Tech today

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect It describes how someone reads an article in their area of expertise, finds it full of errors and oversimplifications, but then turns the page and takes the next article, on a subject they know nothing about, at face value. I only learned this term recently, although I’ve always kinda knew and understood the concept. And with all the content LinkedIn and YouTube have been force feeding me, I’ve been thinking about how this idea extends beyond just “reading the news” to our skills and expertise. ...

July 11, 2025 · 3 min · 512 words · map[email:me@wynandpieters.dev name:Wynand Pieters]
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The Quest for the Holy Coding Grail (are LLMs the first step in replacing programming languages?)

Introduction So very many years back when I was but a fledgling coder, armed with BASIC skills and deep into a Turbo Pascal with Objects book, I remember a conversation with my dad. Frustrated by the level of specificity needed to communicate with a machine, I asked, “Why has no-one made a programming language where I can just tell it ‘build this game for me’?” My dad, in his infinite wisdom, mused that cracking that puzzle – creating a natural language programming language – was a feat yet to be achieved. “Whoever manages to do that,” he predicted, “will make a fortune.” ...

June 2, 2023 · 7 min · 1363 words · map[email:me@wynandpieters.dev name:Wynand Pieters]
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Why AI, No Code & Low Code WON'T Replace Junior and Mid-Level Devs (Yet)

I originally started writing this post at the end of 2022 but never finished it. Originally titled “Why LowCode/NoCode both excites and terrifies me!”, with the buzz around ChatGPT over the last months, I decided to 1) finish the post, and 2) update it to include AI tools like CoPilot and ChatGPT. So here, finally, is the update. Also a little different to my usual style. I didn’t like it. ...

March 17, 2023 · 6 min · 1113 words · map[email:me@wynandpieters.dev name:Wynand Pieters]