Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age

What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David join Bryan and Adam to discuss how rigorous use of LLMs can make for much more robust systems.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill (bsky.app/profile/bcantrill.bsky.social) and Adam Leventhal (bsky.app/profile/ahl.bsky.social), we were joined by Rain Paharia (bsky.app/profile/sunshowers.io), and David Crespo (bsky.app/profile/davidcrespo.bsky.social).
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
• OxF s03e08 – Does a GPT future need software engineers (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/does-…)
• OxF s04e04 – Helios (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/helios)
• OxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the Large (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/syste…)
• OxF s04e20 – Pragmatic LLM Usage with Nicholas Carlini (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/pragm…)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
• The issue Bryan was fixing (illumos.org/issues/17816)
• iddqd: the crate Rain built (github.com/oxidecomputer/iddqd)
• Ghostty (ghostty.org)• David's bugs: 1 (github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9853) 2 (github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9851) 3 (github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9812)

• Rain's nextest bug: SIGTTOU when test spawns interactive shell (github.com/nextest-rs/nextest/issues/2878)
• Oxide RFD 619: Managing types across Dropshot API versions (rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/619)
• drift: the crate Adam built (crates.io/crates/drift)
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar (calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f418…). We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!