Topics covered in this episode:

Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?
More on Deprecation Warnings
How FOSS Won and Why It Matters
Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative?
Extras
Joke

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HEADS UP: We are taking next week off, happy holiday everyone.

Michael #1: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?

by Martin Alderson
Agentic coding tools are collapsing “implementation time,” so the cost curve of shipping software may be shifting sharply
Recent programming advancements haven’t been that great of a true benefit: Cloud, TDD, microservices, complex frontends, Kubernetes, etc.
Agentic AI’s big savings are not just code generation, but coordination overhead reduction (fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, fewer blocks).
Thinking, product clarity, and domain decisions stay hard, while typing and scaffolding get cheap.
Is it the end of software dev? Not really, see Jevons paradox: when production gets cheaper, total demand can rise rather than spending simply falling. (Historically: the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal)
Pushes back on “only good for greenfield” by arguing agents also help with legacy code comprehension and bug-fixing. I 100% agree. #Legacy code for the win.

Brian #2: More on Deprecation Warnings

How are people ignoring them?
- yep, it’s right in the Python docs: -W ignore::DeprecationWarning
- Don’t do that!
- Perhaps the docs should give the example of emitting them only once
  - -W once::::DeprecationWarning
See also <code>-X dev</code> mode , which sets -W default and some other runtime checks
Don’t use warn, use the <code>@warnings.deprecated</code> decorator instead
- Thanks John Hagen for pointing this out
- Emits a warning
- It’s understood by type checkers, so editors visually warn you
- You can pass in your own custom UserWarning with category
mypy also has a command line option and setting for this
- --enable-error-code deprecated
- or in [tool.mypy] enable_error_code = ["deprecated"]
My recommendation
- Use @deprecated
- with your own custom warning
- and test with pytest -W error

Michael #3: How FOSS Won and Why It Matters

by Thomas Depierre
Companies are not cheap, companies optimize cost control. They do this by making purchasing slow and painful.
FOSS is/was a major unlock hack to skip procurement, legal, etc.
Example is months to start using a paid “Add to calendar” widget!
It “works both ways”: the same bypass lowers the barrier for maintainers too, no need for a legal entity, lawyers, liability insurance, or sales motion.
Proposals that “fix FOSS” by reintroducing supply-chain style controls (he name-checks SBOMs and mandated processes) risk being rejected or gamed, because they restore the very friction FOSS sidesteps.

Brian #4: Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative?

Pricing changes for GitHub Actions
- The self-hosted runner pricing change caused a kerfuffle.
- It’s has been postponed
But… if you were to look around, maybe pay attention to
- These 4 GitHub alternatives are just as good—or better
  - Codeburg, BitBucket, GitLab, Gitea
- And a new-ish entry, Tangled

Extras

Brian:

End of year sale for The Complete pytest Course
- Use code XMAS2025 for 50% off before Dec 31
Writing work on Lean TDD book on hold for holidays
- Will pick up again in January

Michael:

PyCharm has better Ruff support now out of the box, via Daniel Molnar
- This is from the release notes of 2025.3: "PyCharm 2025.3 expands its LSP integration with support for Ruff, ty, Pyright, and Pyrefly.”
- If you check out the LSP section it will land you on this page and you can go to Ruff.
- The Ruff doc site was also updated. Previously it was only available external tools and a third party plugin, this feels like a big step.
Fun quote I saw on ExTwitter: May your bug tracker be forever empty.

Joke:

Try/Catch/Stack Overflow
Create a super annoying linkedin profile - From Tim Kellogg, submitted by archtoad

#463 2025 is @wrapped

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