Paul Winkler

Hello you, I thought I'd update you on our progress at Engine Labs as it would be great to get some feedback on what we've been doing. We've been pursuing an AI powered IDE for a while and I think we've got to the point where the product is starting to be pretty great. The key to our approach has been to give the AI a fully fledged linux VM to work in, meaning all the code it writes actually runs, which comes with the major advantage of allowing the AI to see errors and fix them itself. We've tackled some fairly chunky technical challenges to get here, for example integrating the terminal with node-pty and most recently spinning up our own Firecracker server to create VMs as fast as possible. Next step is to put it to work autonomously, by integrating with systems like Linear or Trello, engine will create PRs for you on it's own. Be great to hear from you, especially if you're working in a similar space. Groves https://lnkd.in/eg2yDdjc

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What is a TypeScript Engineer? I keep seeing this pop up in recruitment posts, which means clients are asking for it...right? Has this replaced the FullStack Engineer, which, lets be honest, meant a NodeJS developer. That was back in the good old days when it was only NodeJS. Now we have Bun, Deno, Hono and more. Or perhaps its asking for a Javascript developer...whatever that means in todays world of a thousand js frameworks and evolving ES standards. Or are they actually asking for a Java developer, because someones used Gen AI along the way and it got confused between Java and Javascript (*shudders*) Are they seriously in need of a type system engineer, thats kinda niche. It's hard enough trying to explain what you do as a job to "normal" folk as it is, without this level of obfuscation. How would you even explain this when asked "What do you do?". Do kids nowadays needs to consider themselves experts in everything inside package.json to land a job? When will the industry move beyond this fixation on specific languages? I get it, it's an important consideration, but asking for Typescript Engineers...it's not going to help you find the devs you actually need.

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It's not all non-symbolic AI... I presented today to Accord Project Technology Working Group on recent enhancements to the Template Engine and how TypeScript expressions within templates are compiled and evaluated. Accord Project uses TypeScript over Concerto types (with Concerto also compiled to TypeScript) to provide type-safe logic/calculations for templates; ensuring that a wide array of programming errors are caught at template compilation time, not at runtime. #typesafety #soundness #typescript #templating #legaltech

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Just to prove my point on AI assisted product development... As a little weekend project I created https://companychat.uk/ from scratch in net 2 days. That is from idea to a fully functional MVP (not just a demo proof-of-concept), delivering value to the end user. Feel free to give it a go, you get 5 free tokens to play with! It's an AI aided advanced search tool for the publicly available Companies House dataset. It can help finding leads for all sorts of campaigns and help research by answering questions and prompts such as "How many companies in Brighton were founded by under 30s last year?" or "Give me a list of companies in Bournemouth that will turn 10 years old next month!". It's hosted on a tiny EC2 instance (£6 per month), connects to an on-premise database server via Tailscale (PostgreSQL with GIS support, hosting Companies House dataset through an ETL pipeline) and to a local SQLite database for system data. Application stack is FastAPI with Jinja templates for the backend and HTMX + TailwindCSS for frontend rendering. AI stack: Cursor + Claude Sonnet 3.5 for development, Langchain and Langgraph with gpt-4o-mini for AI assistance End to end implemented by yours truly using Cursor with Claude Sonnet 3.5.

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Code readability: prefixes. If you've got a method which checks if a status is true or false, instead of calling it 'status', why not try 'isStatus' or 'isPending'? If you've got a method which checks if someone has replied, don't call it 'replied', call it 'hasReplied'. In my opinion, it's better to hint at whats being returned. Lots of micro-improvements like this make your code easier to read.

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Oh man, jumping back into #Angular after a few years (I still mostly work on #AngularJS legacy apps), requires a lot of cleaning-off of mental cobwebs. This set of routes literally took me 2-hours to design. I keep forgetting that complex routes can map to sibling components (not just nested components). I'm looking forward to seeing if I can get this to work proper with lazy loading of the route trees. This morning's episode of Shop Talk Show with Chris Coyier + Dave Rupert felt very on-point for me. They talked about embracing the struggle. Sometimes, it just feels like there are no "easy days". I'm almost embarrassed that setting up a router isn't something I have immediate muscle-memory for. But, how often do I actually have to do this? Whether it's problem solving or just trying to figure out how to best make use of your limited time, every day has its own kind of struggles. Such a great pod cast. Keep up the great work you two! Episode: https://lnkd.in/ev9SpUXu

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The secrets of how experienced engineering leaders accelerating growth of new Tech Leads... 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘦𝘵 + 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 + 𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 + 𝘍𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 = 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 Individual focus → 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 I love Andy Grove's definition 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. Although I prefer to use the term 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀. It's possible for a team to product a lot of output but not much value! 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱? A team scoped Tech Lead can have many flavours. Is team leadership included? What about line management? What about delivery? Clarity is key 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 Engineer → Tech Lead is a tricky transition. Holding more frequent 1:1's initially Seek feedback from team Stay close 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 We all make mistakes when taking on new responsibilities  Provide both reenforcing and corrective feedback Observations + Impact = Actionable feedback Learn from mistakes Celebrate the wins P.S How do you support new Tech Leads?

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Just a reminder, that my course of the foundations of messaging, Practical Messaging, is running next at NDC London in 2025. - Day 1: Messaging Patterns. We will cover the fundamentals of using messages for interoperability in distributed systems - Day 2: Conversation Patterns. How to compose the building blocks of Day 1 into Event Driven Architectures. Takeaways: how to write messaging code; how to compose event driven architectures See the link in the comments.

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🌟Big news from Flexiana🌟 We’re kicking off some awesome new Clojure projects this year,, and we still have experienced Clojure teams ready to take on more. Here’s the deal: 🛠 Our teams are packed with senior devs who’ve been working with Clojure for 5–10 years. We’re not just about writing code—we deliver clean, maintainable solutions tailored to your needs. 🌐 We’ve got expertise in web apps, functional programming, and even integrating Clojure with Python for AI projects. 🔧 We’re all about using the best tools for the job, drawing from a tech stack that spans 25+ programming languages (yes, we’re nerds like that). Why work with us? ✅ You’ll be working with senior-only teams—no juniors learning on the job here! ✅ We use agile methods, so we can pivot and adapt with you as needed. ✅ We’ve nailed projects in fintech, ERPs, web apps, mobile—you name it. If you’ve got a Clojure project in mind or just want to chat about ideas, let’s talk! We’d love to help you bring your vision to life. For a glimpse into our team's experience, check out this video:

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https://lnkd.in/ei3FCeZA Here is a blog post for my on-going rewrite of my Uni dissertation project. I was trying to implement an example of Type-Safe Builder Patterns https://lnkd.in/ebkEusU3

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In one of our nDeva CTO Gatherings yesterday the group had a great discussion around QA strategy in modern software development. Here is Joel Tow's take on it...

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React 19 was originally anticipated to be released back in May during 2024 React Conf but we're now heading in July and there is still no release date in sight. The initial feedback on React 19's new features was rather positive, new hooks, no longer having to worry about memoization, etc. As developers started using the release candidate more they encountered massive performance issues when using suspense boundaries. If sibling nodes under a suspense boundary previously triggered asynchronous data fetches, those operations would execute in parallel. Under React 19 that has changed, they are now executing sequentially. The React team's response can be summed up as "you're doing it wrong, this new way is better", which if you rewrite your code it could be but this is a rather large change that will negatively impact applications that utilize suspense and don't rewrite. If you want to go in depth into the drama behind React 19's release there's an excellent blog that you can check out https://lnkd.in/gvZHbQXd

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The 2024 StackOverflow survey is out, and for the 8th year in a row, Clojure has ranked near the podium in the Top Paying Technologies category—often occupying rank 1. I don't talk much about why I choose to use a weird Lisp—mostly because nobody cares—but the results speak for themselves. If you can hold your nose long enough to learn something very different, you'll find yourself in a high-productivity environment that features: 🔥 Hot code reloading 🦆 Dynamic typing ♻️ Best-in-class garbage collection 📂 Highly performant immutable data structures 📚 Access to the entire JVM's ecosystem of libraries 🧩 Cross-platform compilation to JavaScript 🧠 An unbelievably smart and humble community Sure, you'll pay a high mental price to learn the language, but as a reward, employers will pay a high price for *you*.

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Some updates to my #FeatureFlags demo app (https://lnkd.in/eQd23gfU) - I've added an "Explain" view that outlines why a particular variant was chosen (based on the current context and rules). This is a companion piece to my feature flags book (read it at https://lnkd.in/ehxiy6bY).

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Highly recommend this course for anyone who wants to wrangle, ahem I mean develop, people brilliantly!

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Myself and others at Crafted will be talking at #DenverStartupWeek sharing strategies to adapt to the SaaS rollercoaster 🎢 of the past 18 months. In our talk we're planning to discuss: 🔍 Business Context - WTF is going on in SaaS right now, we'll share some curated data 📊 Why the Business Context matters - Companies are struggling with profitability and growth curves in an era of scarcity 🛠️ How this impacts Product Development teams working hard to do more with less 🎯 What teams can do about it to take their destiny back - delighting both a company’s users AND their boards. Now more than ever, #focus is key and we will share a #framework and #stories to help teams #build what matters. We are community driven and open to feedback - please help us tailor the talk for maximum impact! 👉 What resonates? 👉 What would you like to hear about that is not represented above? Register for our talk here: https://lnkd.in/gkxzTCKJ

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Great to see that CDDO / GDS have updated their guidance page on the use of Progressive Enhancement on UK Government services 😍 https://lnkd.in/esuSVb29 Keep fighting the unnecessary bloat that JavaScript has brought to the modern web! ✊ #a11y #accessibility #webperf #progressive #enhancement

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Big news from JetBrains 🎉 They’re working on a brand new, standalone IDE just for Kotlin Multiplatform developers. Yep, that means NO more juggling between Android Studio and Xcode - it’s all in one place now and it’s built to make mobile development so much smoother. 🙌 What’s got me excited? - A workspace that brings Kotlin and Swift together - finally a seamless setup! - One workflow for both Android and iOS devs, so no more getting tripped up by different platforms. - They’re even exploring ways to let us build iOS apps on the cloud, which means no need for a Mac! JetBrains is seriously leveling up the dev game and I’m all in for it. 🔗 Full scoop here if you want to dive in: https://lnkd.in/dn3SYQPi #KotlinMultiplatform #JetBrains #MobileDev #KMP #TechTools #Android #iOS

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