Engineering Unblocked · 2026-01-19 · 42 min
In this episode, Lada Kesseler shares what she’s learned from a year of hands-on experience building with AI coding tools - including the three fundamental challenges that define how these tools work, and why understanding limitations is what makes you better at using them. Lada explains why “focus” is the critical concept most developers miss, how a dedicated committer agent will catch issues that a general-purpose copilot never does, and why software craftsmanship matters more now than ever. She also gets into why using AI to critique itself produces dramatically better results, and how AI works as an amplifier that speeds up both good and bad engineering practices. Find the transcript at: (0:00) Introduction (2:46) The five fundamental gaps in AI development (7:15) “You’re absolutely right!” (8:00) The anti-pattern of the distracted agent (11:09) Do agile best practices still matter in the age of AI? (14:48) Why software craftsmanship is more important than ever (15:46) Managing complexity: Can AI do it, or do we still need humans?
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