Martin Fowler
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Martin Fowler
@martinfowler.com
19K followers 71 following 190 posts
Software Design Loudmouth. Works for Thoughtworks. Also hikes, watches theater, and plays modern board games. He/him.

host of https://martinfowler.com
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martinfowler.com
fragments: the consequences of absolute skepticism, cognitive debt with AI, will AI remove fun of programming, the future of source code, how to survive AI contributions to open source, explaining transformers to 12/62-year-olds

martinfowler.com/fragments/20...
Fragments: February 9
fragments 09 Feb 2026
martinfowler.com
February 9, 2026 at 7:35 PM
martinfowler.com
Thanks for noticing the error, I've let Birgitta know and I'll post a fix when I have it,
February 6, 2026 at 5:52 PM
martinfowler.com
NEW POST

Powerful context engineering is becoming a huge part of the developer experience of modern LLM tools. @birgitta410.bsky.social explains the current state of context configuration features, using Claude Code as an example.

martinfowler.com/articles/exp...
Context Engineering for Coding Agents
Notes from my Thoughtworks colleagues on AI-assisted software delivery
martinfowler.com
February 5, 2026 at 3:42 PM
martinfowler.com
Fragments: teaching your pair is learning, use LLMs as a GPS rather than a destination, future libraries may be specs, and LLMs of the future funded by advertising

martinfowler.com/fragments/20...
Fragments: February 4
fragments 04 Feb 2026
martinfowler.com
February 4, 2026 at 6:00 PM
martinfowler.com
NEW POST

These days I'm seeing a lot of bold fonts, especially in LLM-written prose. But when bold is used frequently, it quickly becomes ineffective.

martinfowler.com/bliki/Excess...
bliki: Excessive Bold
The more bold font weights are used, the less effective they are.
martinfowler.com
January 28, 2026 at 2:38 PM
martinfowler.com
NEW POST

Erik Doernenburg maintains CCMenu: a Mac application that shows the status of CI/CD builds in the Mac menu bar. He assesses how using a coding agent affects internal code quality by adding a feature using the agent, and seeing what happens to the code.

martinfowler.com/articles/exp...
Assessing internal quality while coding with an agent
Notes from my Thoughtworks colleagues on AI-assisted software delivery
martinfowler.com
January 27, 2026 at 3:55 PM
martinfowler.com
Fragments: Thoughtworks launches AI/works™, electricity consumption of LLMs, how LLMs shift where we put discipline, and thoughts on The Situation in Minnesota

martinfowler.com/fragments/20...
Fragments: January 22
fragments 22 Jan 2026
martinfowler.com
January 22, 2026 at 2:34 PM
martinfowler.com
NEW POST

I had a conversation with Unmesh Joshi, and Rebecca Parsons where we talked about the feedback loop between the "what" and "how" in software development, and the role LLMs play in it.

martinfowler.com/articles/con...
Conversation: LLMs and the what/how loop
How the feedback loop between “what” and “how” shapes programming structure — and how paradigms and LLMs fit into that loop.
martinfowler.com
January 21, 2026 at 2:49 PM
martinfowler.com
NEW POST

Jim Highsmith sees teams turning into tribes wedded to adaptation or optimization - but we should manage the tension between them by blending modes of explore and exploit, based on uncertainty, risk, cost of change, & evidence threshold.

martinfowler.com/articles/sto...
Stop Picking Sides
Explore and Exploit are two operating modes that need to be blended for a particular activity.
martinfowler.com
January 13, 2026 at 3:11 PM
martinfowler.com
My favorite albums from last year. Balkan brass, an acoustic favorite of 80s returns, Ethio-jazz, Guatemalan singer-guitarist, jazz-rock/Indian classical fusion, and a unique male vocalist.

martinfowler.com/articles/202...
My favorite musical discoveries of 2025
Six favorite music acquisitions in 2025
martinfowler.com
January 8, 2026 at 2:02 PM
martinfowler.com
Fragments: How AI is changing Anthropic's internal development, a detailed account of using LLM to program a knowledge management tool, obvious-easy-possible buckets for interface design, specifications cannot be complete, and lightweight tools to work with LLMs

martinfowler.com/fragments/20...
Fragments: January 8
fragments 08 Jan 2026
martinfowler.com
January 8, 2026 at 1:38 PM
martinfowler.com
I continue to enjoy playing board games: here's my summary of 2025 gaming on my BGG blog.

boardgamegeek.com/blog/13064/b...
My gaming 2025 | Martin's 7th Decade
boardgamegeek.com
December 30, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Martin Fowler
gergely.pragmaticengineer.com
Two legends confirmed for The Pragmatic Summit: Martin Fowler (@martinfowler.com) and Kent Beck (@kentbeck.com)

We'll talk about what past booms+busts taught them, and their take on AI+software engineering: what they see working, and what not so much

11 Feb, SF: www.pragmaticsummit.com
December 29, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Martin Fowler
heavycardboard.bsky.social
Tonight at around 1815 EDT, we are featuring #Indonesia again!

With the 3rd Edition delivering, now seemed a great time to revisit the all-timer, but now, in green & 4k!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkI5...

See y’all tonight!

@jeroendoumen.bsky.social
@martinfowler.com
Indonesia - 3rd Edition - 4p Teaching, Play-through & Roundtable Discussion by Heavy Cardboard
YouTube video by Heavy Cardboard
www.youtube.com
December 29, 2025 at 5:07 PM
martinfowler.com
Only a splotter game could have a situation where there's uncertainty about which component is the worst ever.
December 19, 2025 at 7:48 PM
martinfowler.com
Fragments: Illustrated guide to mainframe modernization, what the second value of code reviews means for LLMs, LLMs write and then port an HTML parser

martinfowler.com/fragments/20...
Fragments: December 16
fragments 16 Dec 2025
martinfowler.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:51 PM
martinfowler.com
There's also the point that knowing *who* wrote the code affects how you deal with it. If you're reviewing problematic code you need to teach the author what's wrong and what's better, so they can improve.
December 14, 2025 at 7:39 PM
martinfowler.com
Fragments: The nature of AI's prose, what makes good tests, EUs fines on X aren't about free speech, and the perils of being a reverse-centaur

martinfowler.com/articles/202...
Fragments Dec 11
a short post
martinfowler.com
December 11, 2025 at 3:42 PM
martinfowler.com
Some fragments on AI, its impact on maintainability, the dangers from its jailbreaking, developer workflows - and how it can be an ally against Parkinson's disease

martinfowler.com/articles/202...
Fragments Dec 4
a short post
martinfowler.com
December 4, 2025 at 4:07 PM
martinfowler.com
We need a rule that says we're only allowed to play a number of games that fits exactly on the image grid!
December 2, 2025 at 1:51 PM
martinfowler.com
Email worked well enough. Maybe it helped that for most changes my reaction is "yeah, whatever", so there's not so many that need discussion. Either way, it was so much better than dealing with squiggles on print outs for my first books!
December 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM
martinfowler.com
Do you need another post for your 18xx.games plays?
December 2, 2025 at 1:40 PM
martinfowler.com
Going through copyedits is such a grind, definitely one of the least-fun parts of writing. It is much easier however when they are in the form of git diffs.
December 1, 2025 at 2:32 PM
martinfowler.com
Probably was
November 25, 2025 at 1:59 PM
martinfowler.com
Thoughtworks Radar, on a podcast with @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com , another way at looking at feature/time curves, and the return of @heavycardboard.bsky.social

martinfowler.com/articles/202...
Fragments Nov 19
a short post
martinfowler.com
November 19, 2025 at 7:06 PM