The REPL: Issue 143 - July 2026

The Short Leash AI Coding Method For Beating Fable The author describes staying in the loop as the AI writes code, steering constantly. One thing I’d add to their toolkit: ask the AI to produce diagrams. ERDs, state diagrams, sequence diagrams – whatever the task calls for. Just by drawing them, it often finds bugs in the design, before I even review them. DON’T YOU MEAN EXTINCT? If we are at the cusp of a paradigm change, it makes sense that we need to evolve. To adapt. Just like the stop-motion animators did. It turns out they had more to offer than stop-motion know-how. They also knew a great deal about dynamics, and about what movement looks natural. Should You Use AI for a Task? Here’s a Simple Way to Decide Really useful heuristic: Is it work or the gym? An example that comes to mind: I can ask AI to summarize the instruction manual for my Instant Pot. The manual was badly written in the first place, and all I need to know is which button to press. But asking AI to compress a…