Archive - Nik Malykhin

The Strangler Build: Modernizing Java Tooling with Gradle 7.6

What do you do when your build system is the primary blocker to your modernization? You want to introduce automated testing and containerized…

Feb 17 • Nik

The Golden Bridge: Why Java 8 is the Ultimate Tool for Legacy Refactoring

When does “latest and greatest” become a liability? Imagine you’ve just inherited a “Big Ball of Mud”: a 20-year-old repository built with Ant, running…

Feb 16 • Nik

January 2026

Does Delegating to AI Mean We Can Finally Be Lazy Managers?

I tested Google's Jules agent with two approaches: a vague "lazy" prompt and a detailed technical spec. The results reveal a paradox about AI autonomy…

Jan 20 • Nik

December 2025

Can We Skip TDD with Modern AI? A Context Experiment

Dec 9, 2025 • Nik

November 2025

Does "Extract Method" Actually Hurt Your Readability?

We’ve all been there.

Nov 25, 2025 • Nik

Does AI Need Clear Goals? My Experiment in Turning Vague Ideas into Code

We’re all told the same thing: AI needs clear, specific, and context-rich prompts to be useful.

Nov 11, 2025 • Nik

October 2025

What If the ‘Cleanest’ Code Is the Wrong Solution?

In our continuing experiment with Trio Programming—two engineers and an AI—we decided to level up.

Oct 28, 2025 • Nik and Javi lopez

Does an AI Teammate Mean You Write Less Code?

We embarked on an experiment called Trio Programming: two engineers and an AI assistant building software together.

Oct 14, 2025 • Nik and Javi lopez

September 2025

From Buzzword to Practical Tool: A Developer's Guide to Generative AI

It seems like every week there’s a new AI tool that promises to change everything.

Sep 29, 2025 • Nik

Jules, My AI Junior Developer

Here’s a question that emerged from my recent work with AI coding agents: to get better, more autonomous results, do you need to treat the AI less like…

Sep 15, 2025 • Nik

August 2025

Does More Powerful AI Mean Slower Fixes?

Is it possible that our most advanced AI coding assistants are actually slowing us down?

Aug 26, 2025 • Nik

The Context Window Paradox: To Get More From Your AI, Give It Less

When I started working with LLMs that have massive, million-token context windows, I fell into a trap.

Aug 18, 2025 • Nik

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts