Programming Principles Finally Take Off … Hopefully

For decades our industry struggled to establish a shared understanding of software craftsmanship.

Pioneers like Martin Fowler, Robert C. Martin, or Kent Beck (just to name a few more widely known) have fought an uphill battle.

But developers are somewhat arrogant and ignorant when it comes to applying experiences and suggestions of others.

We always know better than others.

Other industries are way ahead of defining and applying standards for their craft and work. And, most importantly, also accepting those.

And even if SOLID, Clean Code, TDD, or BDD are broadly known, the adoption rate is low.

We always know better than others.

But now there is AI and agentic coding. And our industry is in the most impactful change ever. Or at least, as Martin Fowler says, since the switch from assembler to higher-level languages.

Agentic coding tools do their best work when they get clear and precise instructions and requirements.

They do their best work when they can work on a clean and well-structured codebase, following broadly known principles.

They do their best work when they have something to validate their work with: automated tests. A broad suite of automated tests.

So they do their best work when we follow standards, when our architecture follows standards, and when we have a test suite we can trust.

It might sound ironic, but what we've tried for years, and haven't achieved until now, might finally take off in the biggest transformation of our industry: Applying programming principles.