Bibliography

The receipts, the rabbit holes, and the things we think you should read.

Article

“The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“The Influence of Organizational Structure on Software Quality”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Book

Site Reliability Engineering

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Other

A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Bret Devereaux

A gem of classical history applied to modern problems and media.

Referenced in Mythology In The Technical World

Practical Polytheism

Bret Devereaux

Bret Devereaux's excellent series on why polytheism came about and how it worked in the ancient world.

Referenced in Mythology In The Technical World

Robotics — Vocabulary (ISO Standard No. 8373:2021)

International Organization for Standardization · 2021

Because words mean things.

Referenced in A Dishwasher Is A Robot

The Robot Report

Steve Crowe

Robot and robot-adjacent news. Solid stuff from an absolute workhorse of an industry journalist.

Referenced in Commodification: The Race To Zero

Paper

2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Accelerate State of DevOps 2024

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

AI Engineering Impact Report

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Multivariable Feedback Control

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Ambig-SWE: Interactive Agents to Overcome Underspecificity in Software Engineering”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“An Empirical Study of Speed and Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Coordination Breakdowns and Their Impact on Development Productivity and Software Failures”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Focusing on the Long-term: It’s Good for Users and Business”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Grounding AI Agents in Contracts: An Empirical Evaluation of Spec-Driven Test Generation”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“How to Fight Production Incidents?”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Knowing but Not Showing: LLMs Recognize Ambiguity but Rarely Ask Clarifying Questions”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Online Controlled Experiments at Large Scale”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Overlapping Experiment Infrastructure”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Seven Rules of Thumb for Web Site Experimenters”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail?”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Podcast

ChinaTalk: FCC's Adam Chan on the new robot rule.

Jordan Schneider

Learn how the FCC rationally considers things that the media zeitgeist is just absolutely losing their shit about.

Referenced in Hit Dogs Bark