The Stack Overflow Podcast The most dangerous shortcuts in software
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Jan 2, 2026 In this engaging discussion, Tom Totenberg, Head of Release Automation at LaunchDarkly, dives into the risky shortcuts often taken in software development. He shares insights from his unique journey from music to tech, revealing common engineering pitfalls like lazy practices and the dangers of AI-generated code that skimp on reviews. Tom emphasizes balancing speed with sustainability, advocating for upfront planning and clear team structures to mitigate technical debt. His wisdom on fostering observability and creating replaceable platforms offers a roadmap for building resilient systems.
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Productive Laziness Can Become Risky
- Engineers take the path of least resistance and will gamify measurements to avoid extra work.
- That laziness is productive when constrained, but dangerous when it bypasses controls and scrutiny.
Duct-Tape Tooling Becomes Hidden Infrastructure
- Small homebrew tooling often becomes an unofficial dependency and fails at scale, creating incidents.
- Tom describes duct-tape connectors that bypass governance and cause hard-to-diagnose outages.
Don't Trust Single Reviews For AI Code
- Require stronger review practices for AI-generated code and avoid single-person approvals.
- Have at least two humans review AI-assisted PRs and watch for large, machine-generated diffs that evade scrutiny.