About Code for Humans and Machines
Great code is no longer just readable. It must be machine-legible and transformable. This publication is about just that.
About Adam Tornhill
I’m a software developer combining degrees in engineering and psychology. I’m also the author of Your Code as a Crime Scene, Software Design X-Rays, and a couple of other books.
As the founder of CodeScene, I’ve also had the opportunity to expand my experience beyond software development itself. Investors, product strategy, business development, marketing, and building engineering organizations have shaped how I think about software and its role.
Why this publication exists
After more than 30 years as a professional programmer, I no longer code manually. Sometime in 2025 I went 100% agentic, and I’m not planning on going back.
However, that shift didn’t come easily. Agentic software development is significantly harder than manual coding. To pull it off, software design and engineering discipline are more important than ever. Hence this publication.
More in the Welcome post.
What you’ll find here
I write about software design principles, patterns, and discuss their trade offs. These articles are typically built around refactoring examples. We start with problematic code and evolve it into software that’s easier for both humans and machines to understand.
Here are a few examples:
I also look at trends and challenges in our profession, all related to the agentic shift.
Examples of these reflections:
What this isn’t
Content creation isn’t my job. I write these articles because I a) love to write, and b) care deeply about our profession. It’s a fun hobby, not a job.
Consequently, I don’t feel any pressure to publish on a schedule. I’d rather publish less and maintain a higher quality bar. So far, that has worked out to roughly one article per week. But no guarantee.
You also won’t find any LLM-generated articles here. Writing is learning, and LLMs remove that component. (See my list of ingredients for an exploration of AI-writing).
Paid vs free
Most posts are free, and will remain so.
That said, I’m of course grateful for any support. One way to support the publication is by becoming a subscriber, whether free or paid.
If you care about software that is easy to understand, easy to change, and designed to work well with both humans and machines, you’ll feel at home here.
