Ken Judy

@Hertz calls to cancel my “guaranteed”reservation in White Plains with 90min notice. Only available car is a smaller class in Brooklyn at 2x the price. On 4 train back from wasted trip to Grand Central. I’m out the extra cost, train fair I cant use, tolls, time and hassle. #hertz

In terms of enduring value, it’s the instrument and the artistry of the musician. That still holds true in a world of charlatans irregardless of the medium or the instrument.

On the plane back from São Paulo. Distinctly US American crowd. No more “desculpe” only “sorry”.

Automate aspects of an existing structured process with a knowledge base 👍 Automate without an existing process or knowledge base 🫤 🎲🎲

Both of my workshop sessions complete in the first half of the first day at XP Conf Brazil 2026. Now I can just meet people and learn. I’ll post my presentation tonight.

AI has democratized who can do a thing but it hasn’t made creating a thing useful, safe, and delightful any less rare compared to talking about a thing, doing a thing poorly, making it miserable to use, or harming the people who use it. To be clear, I don’t blame robots for this.

Learn faster than before. Work harder than before. I accept the economic imperatives of the developer world. I can crash hours and I can reflect, learn, and master new things. But not necessarily at the same time and not without downtime.

AI simplifies complicated tasks. That ease of use masks complexity. People already fail to grasp the unintuitive and unpredictable nature of abstract tasks like building safe, effective software. The challenge is not just adapting change it’s communicating what has not changed.

My first thoughts in any leadership role is who is my team. Who are my partners. Who are my advocates. Who can I really trust to do their job well, to focus on collective success, and be candid with me. That’s everything. Full stop.

Claude code, Github, and Obsidian editor are my goto document management solution. Having great success producing deep and broad analysis quickly using these tools where we have to work from outlines, capture notes, understand and process a lot of written context.

Claude code, perhaps because of its instructions and execution logic to reduce token usage, declares premature victory. You need to have transparency into its plan so you can interrogate any claim of completeness 🎉. “What about…” Also, check back on the goal. “Does this…”

My learning mindset is driven by humility about my depth of understanding, which extends borderlessly into self-reproach. They are an inseparable essence. One gift.

Crossing the entire length of a train station to dispose of my cup in the same shop I purchased the coffee because intruding into a restaurant I haven’t bought something at feels wrong and due to darker moments in recent history there are almost no public trash cans.

It’s a privilege to take time away from paid labor. Uncommon in history. Not common enough in our time. Something our parents fought for. Something under threat as the powerful reset the definition of work. The first aspect of a vacation to be grateful for is vacation itself.

My mom’s tradition was to serve unagi (eel) on rice on the hottest day of the year. So, whatever summer day we had it she willed to be the hottest day. Japanese women have that force of will. At least, my mom did.

What’s a more appropriate arrival in Tokyo than making my way from Haneda airport on a crowded train with a stranger falling asleep on my shoulder.

“Please check carry on items for fire arms before approaching the checkpoint…” — JFK announcement

If large language models don’t improve in reasoning, there’s plenty of improvement to be gained in more precise context, additional tooling, reduced computes, increased privacy, local operation, permissively and ethically sourced training data, access, and our fluency using them.

The average US male lives to 75. The average US software developer is under 40 — tailing well off by my age. But I am not average. No human is. While much is out of my control. Some is. So, I strive to keep learning, accomplish interesting things, stay grateful, and embrace hope.

We're letting hype compromise our professional integrity. AI makes devs feel productive, but data shows 10x increase in duplicated code, copy/paste exceeding refactoring for first time. I'm proposing a PDCA framework to wrangle AI away from debt generator: agilealliance.org/reducing-ai-co…