The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
Changelog Media
We now have Kerr’s Law (Interview)
2 hour 27 minutes Posted Nov 4, 2026 at 9:00 pm.
Welcome to The Changelog
Sponsor: Coder.com
Welcome back, Dave Kerr!
Gall’s law and starting simple
How much code should we read?
Effective Shell meets agents
Linux is the foundation
Agents on Kubernetes
An agent in YAML
What open source means now
Sponsor: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon
Kerr’s Law
AI and healthy boundaries
Experience still counts
From dotfiles to a system agent
What we still design by hand
READMEs are for people
Sponsor: WorkOS
Sponsor: Fingerprint
Let the agents cook
When agents hit a wall
Show me the evidence with Shellwright
Flow or decision fatigue?
Don’t be an island
Do what’s fun
Closing thoughts and stuff
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2:27:04
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Show notes
Dave Kerr created hacker laws, and now he finds himself reviewing agent-written code for them. Back on the show after six years, Dave names what he sees limiting teams today: keeping everyone’s mental model in sync with what’s actually been built. Adam declares it Kerr’s Law on the spot. We get into why Dave’s team treats code review as a deliberate slowdown, how Shellwright lets agents bring evidence to a pull request, and what living with bipolar disorder has taught Dave about noticing when the excitement of these tools stops being healthy.