Contracts are a means of setting preconditions and postconditions on function declarations, and adding assertion statements within functions. The feature is intended to help make C++ code safer and more reliable.
Every iOS app I've shipped over the last nine years started the same way: a Rails developer with a great web app, users who want it in the App Store, and weeks spent on Xcode, signing certificates, and Swift boilerplate that has nothing to do with the actual product.
A global survey of 2,039 Java developers published today finds 63% reporting that dead and unused code adversely affects their team's productivity, with 22% describing the impact of that technical debt as being severe. Conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Azul, a provider of a distribution of OpenJDK, the survey also finds that more than half (56%) now deal with a Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) involving Java on a daily or weekly basis.
AI made producing software cheap, but understanding it is still expensive. The Manifesto optimizes for the former. This addendum shifts the emphasis toward the latter. Four updated values, three refined principles, with reasoning for each.
If there's one universal experience with AI-powered code development tools, it's how they feel like magic until they don't. One moment, you're watching an AI agent slurp up your codebase and deliver a remarkably sharp analysis of its architecture and design choices. And the next, it's spamming the console with "CoreCoreCoreCore" until the scroll-back buffer fills up and you've run out of tokens.
We're sunsetting Ruby Newbie and merging its content into the Ruby Users Forum. Ruby Newbie was a site dedicated to helping beginners get started with Ruby through guides, tutorials, and posts aimed at making the first steps in Ruby easier and more approachable. Here's what this means: By integrating everything into the Ruby Users Forum, we can build a stronger, up-to-date knowledge base and make it easier for new members to learn and connect with others.
Software development used to be simpler, with fewer choices about which platforms and languages to learn. You were either a Java, .NET, or LAMP developer. You focused on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Full-stack developers learned the intricacies of selected JavaScript frameworks, relational databases, and CI/CD tools. In the best of times, developers advanced their technology skills with their employer's funding and time to experiment. They attended conferences, took courses, and learned the low-code development platforms their employers invested in.
On December 19, 2025, Cursor acquired Graphite for more than $290 million. CEO Michael Truell framed the move simply: code review is taking up a growing share of developer time as the time spent writing code keeps shrinking. The message is clear. AI coding tools have largely solved the generation speed. Now the industry is betting that review is the next constraint to break.
Just as software finished eating the world, zero interest rates ended. Companies optimized for cash and slowed hiring. The market didn't shrink, but stopped growing at the breakneck pace we all expected. The result: a glut of entry level talent groomed for jobs that never materialized. This would explain a more competitive entry level market. But it doesn't explain the entry-level market shrinking, despite overall industry growth. In short: demand for senior talent is rising, but has fallen off a cliff for juniors.