The New Ontology of Code: How AI is Rewriting Software Development Paradigms

AI code generation isn't just changing how we write software—it's changing what code is. We're witnessing a fundamental inversion where code transforms from permanent artifact to regenerable output, where implementation becomes fluid while interfaces become the new bedrock. But this shift creates uncomfortable paradoxes: "easier" coding that doesn't eliminate complexity but displaces it, democratization that centralizes power, and the strange alienation of debugging code you commanded but didn't create. This essay explores what we're really trading in this transformation—intimate understanding for broad capability, craft for productivity, independence for efficiency. Neither utopian nor dystopian, it offers language for that unsettling feeling many developers can't quite name: working with systems we control but don't comprehend. For anyone grappling with AI's impact on software, this is about recognizing the trade-offs we're making before we've made them irreversible.

AI Philosophy

 Lifespan Strategies

Mutability × Time: The Compound Risk series.
Proven techniques for containing the compound risk of mutable state over time. From theoretical patterns to a successful real-world refactoring that eliminated invisible coupling.

Best Practices Design Philosophy

 Invisible Coupling

Mutability × Time: The Compound Risk series.
Why components become secretly coupled through shared mutable state. Examines how invisible dependencies erode trust and create debugging nightmares separated by both code and time.

Best Practices Design Philosophy

 The Mutation Timeline

Mutability × Time: The Compound Risk series.
The anatomy of object decay over time. Examines how instances progress through Birth, Initialization, Drift, Contamination, and Corruption—and why each stage compounds the previous problems.

Best Practices Design Philosophy

 The Lifespan Paradox

Mutability × Time: The Compound Risk series.
Why longer-lived mutable instances become exponentially more dangerous over time. Explores the counterintuitive relationship between object longevity and system reliability through a real-world state management failure.

Best Practices Design Philosophy

 A philosophy of software design - John Ousterhout

I read A Philosophy of Software Design about 18 months back. It's a well-structured, concise read about managing complexity in software design. I don't think the suggested approaches are applicable in all situations (and John Ousterhout says this himself IIRC), but I recognised a lot of the problems described in the book and found it provided some useful ways to articulate concepts during code reviews (eg. whether adding a shallow function is increasing complexity in a codebase, if complexity can be pulled down into an implementation, or where it's useful to have consistency in the code).

Design Philosophy Software Development

 Evolution of software architecture

Welcome to The Pragmatic Engineer! Today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Grady Booch, a true legend in software development. Grady is the Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM, where he leads groundbreaking research in embodied cognition. He’s the mind behind several object-oriented design concepts, a co-author of the Unified Modeling Language, and a founding member of the Agile Alliance and the Hillside Group. Grady has authored six books, hundreds of articles, and holds prestigious titles as an IBM, ACM, and IEEE Fellow, as well as a recipient of the Lovelace Medal (an award for those with outstanding contributions to the advancement of computing). In this episode, we discuss: • What it means to be an IBM Fellow • The evolution of the field of software development • How UML was created, what its goals were, and why Grady disagrees with the direction of later versions of UML • Pivotal moments in software development history • How the software architect role changed over the last 50 years • Why Grady declined to be the Chief Architect of Microsoft – saying no to Bill Gates! • Grady’s take on large language models (LLMs) • Advice to less experienced software engineers • … and much more!

Architecture Philosophy Video

 Complexity Basics — Part II: Types of Systems

Abstraction Philosophy Systems

 A Philosophical Look at System Dynamics

Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, Spring of 1977. In this lecture, Donella Meadows takes on a more philosophical concept. How can we bring ourselves to be aware of the assumptions we make as systems thinkers? She asserts that models are a set of assumptions. Donella Meadows defines some of these system dynamics assumptions (such as causal relationships and feedback loops) in this video.

Abstraction Philosophy Video

 Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

The purpose of the Smalltalk project is to provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone. Our work flows from a vision that includes a creative individual and the best computing hardware available. We have chosen to concentrate on two principle areas of research: a language of description (programming language) that serves as an interface between the models in the human mind and those in computing hardware, and a language of interaction (user interface) that matches the human communication system to that of the computer. Our work has followed a two- to four-year cycle that can be seen to parallel the scientific method: Build an application program within the current system (make an observation) Based on that experience, redesign the language (formulate a theory) Build a new system based on the new design (make a prediction that can be tested) The Smalltalk-80 system marks our fifth time through this cycle. In this article, I present some of the general principles we have observed in the course of our work. While the presentation frequently touches on Smalltalk "motherhood", the principles themselves are more general and should prove useful in evaluating other systems and in guiding future work.

Design OOP Philosophy