Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
From Oxide and Friends by Oxide Computer Company
January 15, 2026 · 1h 33m · Season 6 · Episode 2
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of LLMs on software engineering and the importance of rigorous practices in utilizing AI.
What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David join Bryan and Adam to discuss how rigorous use of LLMs can make for much more robust systems. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal , we were joined by Rain Paharia , and David Crespo . Previously, on Oxide and Friends: OxF s03e08 – Does a GPT future need software engineers OxF s04e04 – Helios OxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the Large OxF s04e20 – Pragmatic LLM Usage with Nicholas Carlini Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: The issue Bryan was fixing iddqd: the crate Rain built Ghostty David's bugs: 1 2 3 Rain's nextest bug: SIGTTOU when test spawns interactive shell Oxide RFD 619: Managing types across Dropshot API versions drift: the crate Adam built If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar . We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
People in this episode
Hosts: Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal
Guests: Rain Paharia, David Crespo
Topics covered
- LLMs
- software engineering
- rigorous use of AI
- robust systems
- software demand
- bug management
Keywords
- LLMs
- software engineering
- AI
- robust systems
- bug management
- Dropshot API
- Ghostty
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Oxide Computer Company
Products: iddqd, Ghostty, Dropshot API
Books & works: Oxide and Friends, OxF s03e08, OxF s04e04, OxF s05e28, OxF s04e20, Oxide RFD 619
More episodes of Oxide and Friends
- This Old Repo: LLMs and the Restoration of BattleTris · June 9, 2026 · 1h 18m
- Rooting for the Home Team with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel · May 27, 2026 · 1h 2m
- The Tale of Reverso · May 16, 2026 · 1h 7m
- AI in Computer Science Education · May 10, 2026 · 1h 29m
- Mechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images] · May 7, 2026 · 1h 25m
- Are LLMs Insufficently Lazy? · May 3, 2026 · 1h 31m
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