Gergely Orosz

How was one of the most loved programming languages - Kotlin - created, and what is next after it? With @abreslav, creator of Kotlin, now building @codespeak_dev Watch: 00:00 Intro 02:02 Why Kotlin was created 07:26 Dynamic vs. static languages 10:27 Andrey joins the Kotlin project 15:26 Designing a new language 20:40 Frontend vs. Backend in language design 22:05 Why is it named Kotlin? 25:37 Kotlin vs. Java tradeoffs 29:32 Null safety 32:24 Scala, Groovy, C# influence 40:12 Smart casts 45:54 Java interoperability 56:01 Kotlin's development process 1:08:20 Android 1:19:20 CodeSpeak: a language for LLMs 1:25:07 LLMs and new languages 1:29:20 How software engineering is changing with AI 1:37:12 Developer tools of the future 1:40:00 Andrey's advice for devs Brought to you by: • @statsig  — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. http://statsig.com/pragmatic • @SonarSource  – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review. Join me online at the Sonar Summit on March 3rd: http://sonarsource.com/pragmatic/sonarsu… • @WorkOS  – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. https://workos.com Three things you probably did not know about Kotlin: 1. Kotlin’s first version was not a compiler: it was an IDE plugin. In a smart move, Andrey decided to build an IDE plugin that utilized IntelliJ’s parsing infrastructure first. This let Andrey demo the language interactively before anything could compile.! As he recalled: “I could show off the language as if it existed because it had some tooling, but I couldn’t compile anything.” 2. The initial Kotlin team was almost entirely made up of new grads Andrey hired from his former students because he knew how to work with students, from his university days. Many became core contributors who built foundational parts of the language. I found this story inspiring: it’s a reminder that you don’t need lots of experience to build durable things, as long as you are a fast learner. 3. Omitting the ternary operator from Kotlin is Andrey’s biggest design regret. Andrey removed this operator it because if was already an expression, freeing up ? and : for nullable types and type annotations. But if, as an expression, turned out to be verbose. Andrey noted: “by the time I agreed [that removing the operator was a mistake], it was too late because you can’t retrofit the ternary operator in the current syntax.” (See the next reply for links to watch/listen on other platforms)

Once again, @Steve_Yegge talks truth to power. He also has a history of being right, quite a lot. Including calling it mid-2025 how writing code by hand will be over, and late 2025 how agent orchestration will be the next hot topic with AI coding. Full: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com

Met a musician+hobbyst dev who building a platform to connect (music) engineers w musicians. Building it with Cursor agents, Opus 4.5 deployed it on Railway. Me: “Why did you choose Railway?” Them: “Asked Claude: it’s what it recommended.” Welcome to the future of marketing…

What if we're actually in the middle of the third golden age of software engineering? This is what sees happening. If you are anxious about the state of the industry, you want to watch/listen to Grady's longer-term perspective and stories. Watch the full episode here: 00:00 Intro 01:58 The first golden age of software engineering 18:59 The software crisis 33:01 The second golden age of software engineering 42:21 Y2K and the Dotcom crash 45:47 Early AI 47:34 The third golden age of software engineering 51:48 Why software engineers will very much be needed 58:46 Grady responds to Dario Amodei 1:06:54 New skills engineers will need to succeed 1:10:04 Resources for studying complex systems 1:14:33 How to thrive during periods of change Brought to you by: • — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. http:// statsig.com/pragmatic • – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review. Join me online at the Sonar Summit on March 3rd, where I talk about practical tactics for the AI era. http:// sonarsource.com/pragmatic/sona rsummit?utm_medium=paid&utm_source=pragmaticengineer&utm_campaign=ss-sonar-summit26&utm_content=podcast-sonar-summit&utm_term=ww-all-x&s_category=Paid&s_source=Paid%20Other&s_origin=pragmaticengineer … • – Everything you need to make your app enterprise-ready. https:// workos.com

No project has gotten more traction in such a short time than @moltbot by @steipete But how is he building it? Watch or listen: • YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8lF7HmQ_RgY… • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Ie6QtG…… • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/th…… Brought to you by: • @statsig  — ⁠The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. Join us at The Pragmatic Summit I’m hosting with Statsig, on 11 February: https://pragmaticsummit.com • @SonarSource  – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review. Join me online at the Sonar Summit, on 3rd March: http://sonarsource.com/pragmatic/sonarsu…… • @WorkOS  – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. If you're in SF on 9 February, stop by at the WorkOS AI Night with The Pragmatic Engineer (free to register): https://luma.com/workos-pragmatic…

The spread between how one-person dev teams are building software is fascinating: 1. Multiple agents, shipping at inference speed, not reading the code (but very involved designing it) - some 2. Heavy use of AI IDEs and a single AI agent - many 3. Mostly in the IDE - fewer

For the last ~20 years, I did most of my coding inside an IDE - the last ~15 with increasingly good autocomplete. Which is why it’s so weird that I barely opened an IDE the last two weeks, even as I pushed lots of code. I use the CLI, the web and my phone (!!) to prompt code

"A controversial take I have: Most people who are AI-native in building software do not build AI-native software. It's like the beginning of the internet when merchant websites tried to copy the physical world instead of creating native e-commerce websites." - via @rauchg

New "wow" moment with LLM tools: I'm using a agentic desktop apps to edit videos and add subtitles to them (Codex desktop and Claude Cowork.) It's wild: they figure out how to use CLI tools like ffmpeg and just... do the work. Not perfect, but damn impressive.

A massive upgrade while travelling has been getting a portable 15-inch monitor with a foldable stand. I can now setup a 2-screen workplace wherever - and it's been a massive unlock for me. Could not recommend it more for any techie on the go (there are tons of brands for this)

Today, live at 12pm PST / 3pm EST / 9pm EU See you on @tbpn ! Image Jordi Hays and John Coogan

The more I have AI agents write all my code, the more I feel that us devs will be alright (and possibly more in-demand for important stuff) Hard for me to imagine anyone building *reliable* software without an understanding of how to do this (either via experience or study)

From an eng responsible for AI tooling at a mid-sized company (100+ devs): "Our execs read a blog post about Claude Code and ask: 'why are we not all using it?' Me: well, none of you would approve going from $40/mo on GitHub to $65/mo on Cursor... Claude Code is $150/mo."

I wonder if we’ll eventually see “model fatigue” with LLMs the same way we saw “app install fatigue” with native mobile apps. Even though it’s just a tap to install a new app, every passing year it’s harder to get people to do so -even for slightly superior apps to what you have

What. A. Day. The first-ever Pragmatic Summit was next-level. Thank you to the 500 exceptional attendees, 20 awesome roundtable hosts, the 17 out-of-this-world speakers, and the incredible @statsig organizing team: Four years of @Pragmatic_Eng built up to this special day:

Can we end the argument of "how long should it take a new joiner to contribute their first change to the codebase?" now? If it's longer than one day: you have fixing to do. There's not much excuse for this anymore. (Also: Meta had this down to 1-2 days back in ~2021)

I am so excited to announce The Pragmatic Summit, in partnership with @statsig! 11 Feb, SF. One day. ~400 people. Answering the question: How is AI reshaping software engineering, dev workflows, and the modern engineering stack? Details & apply here: https://pragmaticsummit.com

Even though AI agents make me more productive: when I use them, I end up working more, not less! It’s such a contradiction: a thing that should be saving time ends up taking away more overall time… A reason I find it hard to believe AI will lead to fewer hours/days worked…

I'm hiring! For a pretty fun job, if you ask me. Talk to some of the most interesting teams and companies across the globe, understand what they do, then explain this to fellow software engineers. Full-remote, flexible €150+/$175+ per hour Details: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/tech-……

Are there examples of universities that already integrate AI agents into computer science programs? Feels like one of those things that will necessarily be part of all CS programs in a few years - in the meantime, pretty much all students prob already use them anyways…