What are the advantages of spec-driven development compared to vibe coding with an LLM? Are these recent trends a move toward declarative programming? This week on the show, Marc Brooker, VP and Distinguished Engineer at AWS, joins us to discuss specification-driven development and Kiro.

Marc describes the process of developing an application by writing specifications, which outline what a program should do and what needs it should meet. We dig into a bit of computer science history to explore the differences between declarative and imperative programming.

We also discuss Kiro, a new integrated development environment from Amazon, built around turning prompts into structured requirements. We examine the various types of documents used to specify tasks, requirements, design, and steering.

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Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:41 – How did you get involved in open source?
00:07:23 – How would you describe spec-driven development?
00:10:49 – Balancing the desire to start coding with defining the project
00:13:06 – What does this documentation look like?
00:18:27 – Declarative vs imperative programming
00:24:13 – Infrastructure as part of the design
00:27:03 – Getting started with a small project
00:29:05 – Committing the spec files along with the code
00:31:08 – What is steering?
00:34:17 – How to get better at distilling specifications?
00:38:59 – What are anti-patterns in spec-driven development?
00:41:08 – Should you avoid third-party libraries?
00:43:16 – Real Python Resource Spotlight
00:44:39 – Getting started with Kiro
00:51:00 – Neuro-symbolic AI
00:55:41 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
00:58:36 – What do you want to learn next?
01:00:18 – How can people follow your work online?
01:00:57 – Thanks and goodbye

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