Breaking Change v44.0.1 - José Valim: It's a time for builders
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Sep 29, 2025 
José Valim, the creator of the Elixir programming language and founder of Dashbit, dives into the evolving landscape of AI coding agents. He raises concerns about their uncertain future and the challenges of integrating AI into coding workflows. Topics include the burden of code review, the effectiveness of small deliverables, and the risks of technical debt from unreviewed AI-generated code. Valim emphasizes the need for developers to adapt practices and engage with new tools like Tidewave, a full-stack coding agent designed to streamline feature development.
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Acceptance Rates Mask Waste
- We lack reliable measures for how much AI actually contributes to shipped code versus noisy drafts.
- José warns acceptance rates (e.g., 25%) hide wasted reviewer effort and false productivity signals.
High-Five Prompt Backfired
- Justin shared a story where he promised high fives to an agent to coax it into finding more occurrences.
- The agent returned 30 results and printed dozens of high-five emojis, leaving Justin to clean up the silly outputs.
Restart Instead Of Chasing Bad Runs
- Avoid asking agents to iteratively fix tiny issues; often start fresh when quality is low.
- Break tasks into small, reviewable slices and restart agents instead of patching failing runs.