Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Programming Insights

Can you trust software written without AI? We examine the risks of manual coding versus automated vulnerability exploits.At Rails World 2026, a show of hands revealed that writing material amounts of code by hand is becoming a rarity. We discuss whether that human-written code is actually safer, especially after reviewing the eMudhra certificate authority compromise where private keys were recovered in under a second. Between open-weight models demonstrating Mythos-class exploit skills and the ongoing debate over AI consciousness, the security landscape has shifted significantly.This conversation is for engineers navigating the reality of AI mandates at work and the impact of agents that continue running after you log off. We also cover the practical side of professional development, from Bethany building a holiday gift-list app to Brittany replacing cloud subscriptions with local transcription tools. By analyzing these technical shifts, we aim to help you maintain a grounded perspective on your career trajectory.Subscribe for weekly software engineering breakdowns, and comment on which professional challenge you want us to tackle next.HostsOvercommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.devBrittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

What do you do when the project you prepared for is no longer the priority? In our first Honest Answers segment, Erika and Bethany respond to a listener's question about a last-minute change of plans. They discuss how communication can make a change feel less arbitrary, why context switching leaves unfinished work on your mind, and how stopping notes, handoff documentation, and an AI-assisted morning routine can help you pick work back up. They also cover keeping a record of contributions when projects don't ship, separating your identity from your assigned work, and the loss of autonomy that can come with a reorg. The conversation turns to disagree and commit, the psychological safety it requires, and recognizing when it may be time to find a different team or role. To close, they translate some familiar corporate memos into plain language.HostsOvercommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.devErika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyheadShow LinksMolly Graham, Work Whiplash: https://mollyg.substack.com/p/work-whiplashJohn Cutler, TBM 31/52: Why Does Our Strategy Keep Changing?: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-3152-why-does-our-strategy-keepShiftMag, Do managers shift priorities to make engineers miserable?: https://shiftmag.dev/shifting-priorities-development-business-886/UW Bothell, Sophie Leroy on attention residue and ready-to-resume plans: https://www.uwb.edu/news/2019/02/12/task-interruptedSophie Leroy's faculty page and research publications: https://www.uwb.edu/faculty/sophie-leroy/Jellyfish, Mitigating Context Switching in Software Development: https://jellyfish.co/library/developer-productivity/context-switching/Masicampo and Baumeister, Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024192Hello Interview, Handling a project priority change: https://www.hellointerview.com/community/questions/project-priority-change/cmlj4w9bn01yq08adp1vva9otDavid Rock, A sense of autonomy is a primary reward or threat for the brain: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-at-work/200911/a-sense-of-autonomy-is-a-primary-reward-or-threat-for-the-brainBordia and colleagues, Uncertainty during organizational change: Is it all about control?: https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320444000128Glavin and Schieman, Control in the Face of Uncertainty: https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272514546698NASA, Managing the Trauma of a Terminated Project (PMHut reprint): https://pmhut.com/managing-the-trauma-of-a-terminated-projectDisagree and commit, Concept overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disagree_and_commitAmazon's leadership principles, Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles

What does Stack Overflow’s 2026 Developer Survey reveal about software engineering, career insights, and engineering culture? The Overcommitted hosts unpack the findings, discuss what they mean for developers, and share the trends they’re watching across the profession.LinksDeveloper survey: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026 Ed from Polytoken: https://youtu.be/YrmR6EZ5Y1U HostsOvercommitted: ⁠⁠https://overcommitted.dev⁠ ⁠Bethany Janos: ⁠⁠https://www.trustyduck.devBrittany Ellich: ⁠https://brittanyellich.com Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

Roxy Rodriguez-Becker taught middle school math, moved into the school library after earning a master's in library and information science, and then taught herself to code while raising three kids. She is now a developer community manager at Torc and the host of the She Ships podcast. In this episode she walks through what that transition actually required: the four AM club, waking up to study until she rushed out the door to a five AM gym session, working through 100Devs, and treating the job search as a numbers game with fifty to sixty outreach messages a week. She is candid about the burnout that followed and what it took to come back from it.The conversation also digs into networking as a skill rather than a personality trait. Roxy describes going to her first conference and barely speaking, then meeting her future colleagues at the second one, and shares tactics that work for socially awkward people. We also talk about the Tube Feed Tracker, the web app she built after watching ICU nurses struggle with feed rate math for her medically complex son. It grew to roughly four thousand users and now includes BMI based rate suggestions and a calorie tracker covering seventy verified formulas. Roxy closes with why career switchers cannot go it alone, and why community matters more than any single course. Plus a tiny internet troll lightning round covering course playback speeds, salmon shirtgate, and conference karaoke.HostsOvercommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.devBrittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.comGuestRoxy Rodriguez-Becker: https://linktr.ee/roxyrodbeckShe Ships on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@roxyrodbeckRoxy's blog: https://foxyroxy.dev/Roxy on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/roxyrodbeck.bsky.socialRoxy on X: https://twitter.com/RoxanaCodesRoxy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxana-rodriguez-beckerLinksTube Feed Tracker: https://tubefeedrate.com/About Tube Feed Tracker: https://tubefeedtracker-about.vercel.appTorc: https://www.torc.dev/100Devs: https://100devs.org/Scrimba, Learn JavaScript: https://scrimba.com/learn-javascript-c0v

Closed That Tab is back. Erika finally read Richard Cook's How Complex Systems Fail, an 18 point paper Cook wrote with patient safety and medical systems in mind, but one that is frequently discussed in web development and software engineering since the foundational principles apply universally. Erika and Bethany work through what holds up in practice.They cover the difference between normal failure and catastrophic failure, why knowing your system's baseline is its own skill, and why fixes are never free: every change adds complexity, knowledge gaps, and new risk. They get into safety as a set of defensive actions, including rate limiting, caching, rollback plans, feature flags, backups, playbooks, and watching for drift. Then they take on Cook's most contested claim, that root cause analysis is fundamentally wrong for complex systems, and where they agree and disagree. Bethany makes the case that incident reviews are still one of the best learning tools available, as long as psychological safety comes first.The conversation also digs into hindsight bias and self-blame, the difference between taking accountability and taking blame, practitioners as both the risk and the defense in a system, why training and safety work are chronically undervalued, where AI helps during an incident and where you still need a human expert, practicing failure through game days and shadowing, and keeping on-call sustainable so you do not burn out the people holding the pager.HostsOvercommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.devErika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyheadLinksHow Complex Systems Fail by Richard Cook: https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/HowComplexSystemsFail.pdfThinking In Systems: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/thinking-in-systems/