by John Macdonald | Feb 14, 2026 | AI, Human, The250
The first modern labor unions popped up in Britain in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. They were groups of wage workers in the new factory economy bargaining collectively for better economic terms and better working conditions. They felt taken advantage... by John Macdonald | Feb 13, 2026 | AI, Human, Technology, The250
When I was a young engineer, I programmed on a test system that provided 128 lines of program space. That was it. You had 128 lines of code. Make it work. By the way, that smart light bulb that Alexa can turn on and off? That has about 25,000 lines of code. That’s... by John Macdonald | Feb 12, 2026 | AI, Human, Technology, The250
I first posted some AI dominance stats in 2024. It’s now early 2026, and AI is still — if not even more — dominating the zeitgeist. Here are some new stats: By 2030, AI will displace around 92 million jobs, but create 170 million new ones. AI (still) projects to... by John Macdonald | Feb 7, 2026 | AI, Leadership, The250
It’s not, really, but some things are. Take a day in the 50’s (F). That feels cold in July, but warm in February. Push harder motivates if the team has headroom, but it’s destructive when the team is already drowning. The relative load of the individuals and the... by John Macdonald | Feb 6, 2026 | AI, The250
Now we’re at the point in software development where we have agents talking to agents to create code. One of the best use cases for agentic conversation is “the skeptic.” Here’s how that works. One agent writes code, and we pass that code to The Skeptic. The Skeptic... by John Macdonald | Feb 5, 2026 | AI, The250
If you’ve been doing something a long time, it can be hard to teach someone else. I can stop on ice skates, but I struggle to teach new skaters how to do it. For me, I just think it, and it happens. I’ve been skating for over 50 years. I can play Master of Puppets on...