SE Radio 732: Jason Gorman on The Effective Use of AI For Software Development

Jason Gorman, founder of Codemanship, told Software Engineering Radio that established technical practices such as test-driven development, modularization, continuous integration, and continuous reviews become more important when using AI assistance in software development, addressing LLM limitations like context window size. The episode also covered spec-driven development, agentic programming, and emerging research on cognitive downsides of over-reliance on AI.

Jason Gorman , a software development expert and founder of Codemanship, joins host Giovanni Asproni /team/giovanni-asproni/ to explore how best to use AI in software development. They start by considering how established technical practices — test-driven development, modularization, continuous integration, and continuous reviews — become more important, not less, when working with AI assistance. These practices help address several key limitations of LLMs, including keeping context windows as small as possible. Looking at AI’s impact on team productivity, Jason offers some practical advice for teams to introduce AI tools into their workflows. The episode also explores spec-driven development, agentic programming, and the importance of writing readable, understandable code — even when it’s AI-generated. Finally, Jason and Giovanni look at emerging research into the cognitive downsides of over-reliance on AI, and what developers can do about it. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society https://www.computer.org/ and IEEE Software magazine https://www.computer.org/software . Show Notes Related Episodes - SE Radio 711: Scott Hanselman on AI-Assisted Development Tools /2026/03/se-radio-711-scott-hanselman-on-ai-assisted-development-tools/ - SE Radio 710: Marc Brooker on Spec-Driven AI Dev /2026/03/se-radio-710-marc-brooker-on-spec-driven-ai-dev/ - SE Radio 705: Murat Erder and Eoin Woods on Continuous Architecture /2026/01/se-radio-705-murat-erder-and-eoin-woods-on-continuous-architecture/ - SE Radio 633: Itamar Friedman on Automated Testing with Generative AI /2024/09/se-radio-633-itamar-friedman-on-automated-testing-with-generative-ai/ - SE Radio 615: Kent Beck on “Tidy First?” /2024/05/se-radio-615-kent-beck-on-tidy-first/ Related Resources - The AI-Ready Software Developer – Index https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/the-ai-ready-software-developer-index/ - CRESS Principles for Context Engineering https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/c-r-e-s-s-principles-for-context-engineering/ - Book: Process Over Magic: Beyond Vibe Coding by Uberto Barbini https://pragprog.com/titles/ubaidev/process-over-magic-beyond-vibe-coding/ - What Is Agentic Coding? https://cloud.google.com/discover/what-is-agentic-coding - Specification-Driven Development SDD https://github.com/github/spec-kit/blob/main/spec-driven.md - Understanding Spec-Driven-Development: Kiro, spec-kit, and Tessl https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/sdd-3-tools.html - Ralph Loops https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/techniques/ralph-loop - Kent Beck Canon Test Driven Development https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/canon-tdd - Book: “Test-Driven Development: By Example”, Kent Beck https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/test-driven-development/0321146530/ - Modularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity - Gas Town https://github.com/gastownhall/gastown - Dora Metrics https://dora.dev/ - Article: Super-intelligence or Superstition? Exploring Psychological Factors Influencing Belief in AI Predictions about Personal Behavior https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06602 - Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/ - Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 - AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6 - How Does Naming Affect LLMs on Code Analysis Tasks? https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12488