# rachels-ramblings Rachel Laycock's blog about the future of software, AI-era software development, and collaboration among platforms, agents, and people. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Fragments: August 18 DevFeed: [Fragments: August 18]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Martin Fowler (martin@martinfowler.com) Published: 2026-08-18T15:04:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Martin Fowler]() Topics: [rachels-ramblings](), [Artificial Intelligence](), [Software Engineering](), [Programming]() Tags: [agentic](), [ai](), [compliance](), [performance](), [programming](), [software](), [software-development]() ### AI overview A collection of August 18 fragments covering Rachel Laycock's new "Rachel's Ramblings" writing, the upcoming XConf Europe sessions in London, and Noah Smith's discussion of AI's capabilities, intelligence, and the lack of clear evidence so far for massive productivity growth or job losses. ### Source excerpt Part of the reason why I'm at Thoughtworks is because I'd like to see a software development organization founded on technical excellence as an example for the rest of the industry. The trouble is that I have little aptitude or inclination for the hard work of building such an organization. So I rely on working with people who are prepared to actually put the effort in. A key partner in all of this is Rachel Laycock, who is the global CTO of Thoughtworks. Not just is she far better than me at running a technology organization, she's also a keen observer and connector of ideas. I've been urging her to write these down, even if her busy schedule makes it difficult for her to compose them into something substantial. Happily she's starting writing "Rachel's Ramblings" Fast, imperfect, thinking out loud. Naming ideas early rather than waiting until they're fully formed. Because the reality is, most of what I do day to day isn't answering known questions. It's spotting patterns and asking questions we haven't quite figured out yet. ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ My colleagues in Europe are organizing XConf Europe in London on September 11th. The sessions examine what happens when agentic systems meet compliance, how to run sovereign models, performance patterns in data migrations and how to safely navigate legacy codebases. Lu Wilson will give a keynote on 'Jam-oriented programming'. ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ Noah Smith recognizes the high usage of AI, and its impressive feats - but also that there aren't signs of massive productivity growth or job losses. This may be the calm before the storm, but Smith thinks there may something else in play. He quotes a metaphor from François Chollet One of the biggest misconceptions people have about intelligence is seeing it as some kind of unbounded scalar stat, like height. "Future AI will have 10,000 IQ", that sort of thing. Intelligence is a conversion ratio, with an optimality bound. Increasing intelligence is not so much like "making the tower taller", it's more l ## Why I'm Writing Rachel's Ramblings DevFeed: [Why I'm Writing Rachel's Ramblings]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Rachel Laycock (rlaycock@thoughtworks.com) Published: 2026-07-28T12:32:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Martin Fowler]() Topics: [rachels-ramblings](), [Software]() Tags: [industry](), [leadership](), [rachels-ramblings](), [software](), [writing]() ### AI overview Rachel's Ramblings introduces a series in which Rachel shares early, imperfect thoughts about patterns and hypotheses she sees across clients, teams, and the software industry. ### Source excerpt TL;DR I have ideas. I haven't been writing them. That's about to change. I promise... myself. I've been thinking a lot about talent. Actually, I've been thinking a lot about thinking. And writing. Or more specifically, not writing. This really hit me earlier this year at the Future of Software conference. I was surrounded by people sharing their latest ideas and I had a slightly uncomfortable realization: I have my own. Not just opinions. Actual patterns. Hypotheses. Things I'm seeing across clients, across teams, across the industry that feel new or at least not well articulated yet in a way that a leader can think about and act upon in some way that can influence how they strategise and plan for the future. Because helping clients and other leaders internal and external to thoughtworks do this is actually a big part of what I do and without letting my northern humbleness get in my own way, I'm actually pretty good at it. If I wasn't I wouldn't be the global CTO of a future thinking tech org, you know the kind that has Martin Fowler as its Chief Scientist. A title I know he loves... Martin, by the way, is one of the people pushing me to do this, which is weird because on paper I'm his boss but I don't believe in the traditional idea of a boss anyway. I'm a strong believer in the servant leadership type but I'll save that for when I write about that. Anyway the point is for all the ideas I have and discussion I have I don't do a good job of writing it down. At best I'll stick it in a presentation deck when I'm forced to communicate with them in some forum or another. I hate decks and love writing so I'm obviously doing something wrong. So why haven't I been writing? It's easy to say I've been too busy. I don't have an easy job. It's a fun one but not easy. I also have two small children, 5 and 8. In case you are interested, I attempt to give as much time as possible to this busy job. And then I try to have a life. I'm also writing an epic world building sci-fi fantasy b