https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter Practical backend and AI engineering tips from Eric Roby, every Tuesday. en-us https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/were-shipping-faster-while-understanding-less https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/were-shipping-faster-while-understanding-less Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT I'm shipping more code than at any point in my career. And I understand a smaller share of it than ever before. If you use AI coding agents every day, I'd bet the same is true for you. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/claude-code-can-maintain-your-repo https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/claude-code-can-maintain-your-repo Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT I do not like refactoring or keeping up security changes. So here's my fix: schedule Claude Code to run headless every night and do the rounds for me — I review the findings over coffee. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/five-frontier-models-shipped-in-two-weeks https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/five-frontier-models-shipped-in-two-weeks Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Between 1 July and 16 July 2026, five frontier AI models shipped or came back online. Sixteen days. If you blinked, you missed a full generation of AI tooling. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/prompt-injection-is-the-input-bug-of-the-agent-era https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/prompt-injection-is-the-input-bug-of-the-agent-era Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Do not trust raw user input. Prompt injection teaches the agent-era version: do not trust anything the agent reads - user messages, emails, documents, web pages, or tool responses. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-2026-ai-agent-stack-drawn-from-scratch https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-2026-ai-agent-stack-drawn-from-scratch Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT A backend team starts building what sounds like a simple internal agent. The agent needs to answer support questions, look up a customer record, and call one refund endpoint. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/loop-engineering-stop-prompting-agents https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/loop-engineering-stop-prompting-agents Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Four builders who never worked together reached the same conclusion: the most important skill in AI engineering has changed. It's no longer writing a good prompt — it's building the system that generates prompts for you. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/sandboxing-your-agent-in-a-devcontainer https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/sandboxing-your-agent-in-a-devcontainer Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT I run Claude Code with --dangerously-skip-permissions every single day. Before you think I'm being reckless, hear me out. My agent doesn't live on my machine. It lives in a DevContainer. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/mobile-first-ai-coding-is-real https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/mobile-first-ai-coding-is-real Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT I reviewed a real pull request from the grocery store line last week. On my iPhone. Against a live preview environment. Mobile-first AI coding is here, but it's not about a flashy mobile IDE. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-stop-hook-that-wont-let-claude-lie-to-you https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-stop-hook-that-wont-let-claude-lie-to-you Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Claude told me the work was done. The tests passed. Everything green. It wasn't true. That was the moment I stopped trusting agents to grade their own work. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-i-built-a-second-brain-for-agents https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-i-built-a-second-brain-for-agents Tue, 26 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT I began a new Claude Code session a few mornings ago. It forgot everything we decided the day before. That's when I realized a second brain isn't just a luxury; it's a must-have for productivity. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-my-mac-mini-server-changes-how-i-work https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-my-mac-mini-server-changes-how-i-work Tue, 19 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT I have a Mac Mini sitting on a shelf in my office running Claude Code 24/7. It does work for me while I sleep, and I wake up to a queue of pull requests waiting for review. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/git-worktrees-are-the-future-parallel-agents https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/git-worktrees-are-the-future-parallel-agents Tue, 12 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT I run three to five Claude Code sessions in parallel now. The unlock wasn't a smarter agent. It was git worktrees. That shift changed everything about how I ship work. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-backend-engineering-is-harder-than-it-has-ever-been-in-2026 https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-backend-engineering-is-harder-than-it-has-ever-been-in-2026 Tue, 05 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Five years ago, if you knew an API framework and a database, you were set. That's no longer true. Backend engineering has fundamentally shifted, and most developers haven't caught up. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-i-actually-ship-with-ai-every-day https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-i-actually-ship-with-ai-every-day Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT The gap between using AI and using it well separates engineers who ship from those who just generate code. Here's what I've learned in months of daily use. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/beginner-developers-are-scared-of-the-wrong-thing-about-ai https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/beginner-developers-are-scared-of-the-wrong-thing-about-ai Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT A guy learning to code said he was terrified AI would replace him before he even landed his first job. I don't think he's wrong to be scared. I think he's scared of the wrong thing. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-difference-between-using-ai-and-actually-being-good-at-it https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-difference-between-using-ai-and-actually-being-good-at-it Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT Just communicating with AI doesn't mean you're using it well. Typing prompts and hoping for the best isn't a workflow. It's a coin flip. You can set things up to be the winning engineer. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/i-use-ai-to-code-every-day-but-i-still-dont-trust-it https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/i-use-ai-to-code-every-day-but-i-still-dont-trust-it Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI is a core part of how I build software every day. But there are still times where I have to push back on the plan, change direction, or completely disregard what it's trying to do. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-bar-for-junior-developers-has-never-been-higher https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-bar-for-junior-developers-has-never-been-higher Tue, 17 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT We are currently in an era with more junior developers than ever before. And while there are more junior developers than ever, the bar to entry is also higher than ever — fundamentally due to AI. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/i-canceled-my-cursor-subscription-after-a-year https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/i-canceled-my-cursor-subscription-after-a-year Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT After a year of using Cursor, I canceled my subscription. Terminal-based agents like Claude Code have completely changed my workflow — and my IDE is now just a code review tool. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/heres-how-i-became-a-backend-engineer https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/heres-how-i-became-a-backend-engineer Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT From struggling to land an internship after college to coding 397 days straight — this is the story of how I went from business analyst to backend engineer. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/stop-chasing-every-new-ai-coding-model https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/stop-chasing-every-new-ai-coding-model Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT Every few weeks, there's a new AI coding model. I know plenty of people who try every new model the moment it releases. Me? I don't. That's because this is shiny tool syndrome. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-ai-is-changing-what-it-means-to-be-a-10x-engineer https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/how-ai-is-changing-what-it-means-to-be-a-10x-engineer Tue, 10 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT There's a lot of debate about whether 10x engineers actually exist. They do - but becoming one is really hard to do by yourself. You need to be influenced by mentors and peers to get there. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-learn-to-code-when-ai-can-do-it-for-you https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-learn-to-code-when-ai-can-do-it-for-you Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT I get this question constantly - from aspiring developers, career changers, and entrepreneurs with app ideas. The answer isn't straightforward. Sometimes you genuinely don't need to learn traditional coding. Sometimes you absolutely do. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-future-of-ai-agents-in-code-reviews https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/the-future-of-ai-agents-in-code-reviews Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Code reviews are broken. Not that engineers don't care. We're just busy and inconsistent. We're better at higher-level thinking than at spotting the same pattern violations over and over. AI agents are about to change everything. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/are-developers-losing-their-technical-edge-to-vibe-coding https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/are-developers-losing-their-technical-edge-to-vibe-coding Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT There's a new breed of 'developer' emerging. They ship fast. They build products. But ask them to explain how their code works, and you get hand-waving about 'it just works.' Welcome to vibe coding. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/cursor-vs-claude-code-why-top-developers-are-using-both https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/cursor-vs-claude-code-why-top-developers-are-using-both Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT What if the best AI coding setup isn't Cursor OR Claude Code, it's Cursor AND Claude Code? Professional developers are using both tools, and here's why that approach makes perfect sense. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/6-claude-code-tips-that-cut-dev-time https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/6-claude-code-tips-that-cut-dev-time Tue, 06 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Claude Code adds AI help right in your terminal. Here are six practical tips that changed how developers use Claude Code and help save a lot of development time. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-developers-think-they-are-20-percent-faster-with-ai https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/why-developers-think-they-are-20-percent-faster-with-ai Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT What if the AI revolution in coding isn't really making us more productive? What if it just makes us feel that way? METR's 2025 study found developers took 19% longer with AI tools while thinking they worked 20% faster. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/57-have-ai-agents-in-production-only-6-are-ready https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/57-have-ai-agents-in-production-only-6-are-ready Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT The AI agent revolution has a hidden issue: many organizations aren't ready to use them. 57% of companies have agents in production, yet only 6% have the right infrastructure to support them. https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/ai-workflow-backend-devs https://www.codingwithroby.com/newsletter/ai-workflow-backend-devs Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT Most backend devs use AI like StackOverflow - quick answers, quick code, quick fixes. But the workflow that actually saves hours every week? Almost no one uses it.