Martin Fowler: AI needs a conscience more than consciousness
While things like vibe coding get a lot of attention, the real strength of agentic programming relies on more sophisticated techniques - and these are not easy to learn or execute. It’s a reason I’m wary of extrapolating my own dabblings into firm opinions about how to use the genie. ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ Harper Reed explored what turns agents into hackers by creating a breakaway agent It ran and ran attacking all the machines on the same subnet, and was very effective. It didn’t really get very far, but it exhausted a lot of options, and was pretty fun to watch. (Just a reminder that this was on my local network with local boxes - don’t do this on a hosted box.
- ▪While things like vibe coding get a lot of attention, the real strength of agentic programming relies on more sophisticated techniques - and these are not easy to learn or execute.
- ▪It’s a reason I’m wary of extrapolating my own dabblings into firm opinions about how to use the genie. ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ Harper Reed explored what turns agents into hackers by creating a breakaway agent It ran and ran attacking all the machines on
- ▪It didn’t really get very far, but it exhausted a lot of options, and was pretty fun to watch. (Just a reminder that this was on my local network with local boxes - don’t do this on a hosted box.
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| Original publisher | martinfowler.com |
| Canonical URL | https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-09-29.html |
| Publication time | Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:46:26 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-29T12:51:21.784Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-29T12:51:21.784Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | MPbU8vJRSfKE · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Fragments: September 29 Martin Fowler 29 September 2026 Simon Willison: The more time I spend working with coding agents, the more convinced I am that they make software engineering even harder We can do amazing things with them, but unlocking their full potential requires extraordinary discipline and knowledge This has been a constant impression I get from following Willison’s writing. While things like vibe coding get a lot of attention, the real strength of agentic programming relies on more sophisticated techniques - and these are not easy to learn or execute. It’s a reason I’m wary of extrapolating my own dabblings into firm opinions about how to use the genie.
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