When I first started working in software, I discovered that were some battles you could win and some you couldn't. There were some decisions that no matter how logically you argued against you them, would occur anyway because that's just the way it is. Some people think this is a naive way of being; arguing against the status quo. I believe it's hopeful and humanistic to question our environment.

Naivety in the form of hope lasts throughout life. I believe ultimately that people want to do good, however, looking around us at the state of the world right now it's clear that some of our leaders are either wilfully clueless or slightly malevolent and these exhibited behaviour influence some of those we come into first contact with, our bosses, our leaders, our peers and sometimes our clients.

Lies spring easily into mouths, or at least ideas which are simply repetitions of what someone else wants us to say. It takes effort to swim against the flow.

I had a lovely interaction with my son this week. He's doing a Master's in Game Design after completing his Bachelor's in CompSci. He has been complaining about all the vibe coded* crap he's having to rescue for his non-coding group mates. It's obvious that they didn't write the code, the LLM wrote it for them, and of course when they need to adjust it, to tweak it - which you need to go continuously with any code base - they had no idea where to start.

If coding is all there is to software engineering, then the machines win. If creating a movie is just making moving pictures, then the machines win. If writing a book is just a collection of words, then the machines win.

Skills are required now, more than ever, to navigate these new roads we find ourselves on. While GenAI and LLMs are still grabbing the headlines in tech, I don't find my day job is changing that rapidly. In fact, if anything corporates are introducing more human guardrails than ever to ensure that their security and core business systems are protected.

We are the resistance. Those who think will always endure.

I've had some lovely feedback regarding the launch of my novel "Human Software" and it even made it up to #3 in the Amazon Chart yesterday in the "Social Aspects of the Internet" category, right behind Microsoft's CEO! It also reached #235 in "technothrillers" in a category dominated by Dan Brown, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson - awesome company!

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It continues to roll out out on various platforms over October but you can already purchase in paperback or Kindle from your local Amazon store, plus you can purchase e-pub on Leanpub or Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and plenty more.

What are people saying about it?

Finally, if you have read the book then let me know what you think of it, and if you like it helps if you could leave a review on Amazon and/or on Goodreads.

Have a great Sunday!

* - vibe coding: Vibe coding describes a chatbot-based approach to creating software where the developer describes a project or task to a large language model (LLM), which generates code based on the prompt. The developer does not review or edit the code, but solely uses tools and execution results to evaluate it and asks the LLM for improvements. Unlike traditional AI-assisted coding or pair programming, the human developer avoids examination of the code, accepts AI-suggested completions without human review, and focuses more on iterative experimentation than code correctness or structure.

​Human Software Now Available in Paperback, Kindle, Leanpub and Elsewhere​

Published on September 30, 2025

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