Notices by Martin Fowler (mfowler@toot.thoughtworks.com)

NEW POST

LLMs often need to interact with external systems. Kiran Prakash explains how they do this kind of function calling, not by executing the calls directly, but passing sufficient data about the call to a separate program.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/function-call-LLM.html

"how a child development researcher charged with no crime ended up in a crowded cell in Louisiana"

https://www.propublica.org/article/rumeysa-ozturk-best-friend-inside-story-tufts-trump-louisiana-ice

18F was a US government group helping government departments improve their use of technology which got recently wood-chipped. Here's a good overview of their work plus lessons learned: which apply to any large organization.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/learning-from-the-legacy-of-18f

I enjoyed this idea that authoritarian states are more like the movie Brazil than the book 1984 - because authoritarianism breeds incompetence.

https://observer.com/2025/02/terry-gilliams-brazil-at-40-more-prescient-than-orwell/

One lesson I've learned from history, is that few reputations survive being on the opposite side to the Quakers

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-condemn-police-raid-on-westminster-meeting-house

The US is intending to remove the "X" for gender on passports. I have non-binary friends and don't see why they have to pick an option that makes no sense, or how "X" harms other people. So I commented on the Federal Register.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/2025-passport-x.html

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DeepSeek's LLMs made a big splash, but more interesting is their recent research papers. Shayan Mohanty writes an overview of them, outlining their three main arcs: efficiency, HPC Co-Design, and RL for emergent reasoning.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/deepseek-papers.html

NEW POST

I continue my New Year habit by sharing favorite albums I discovered during the last year. This years set includes Celtic jazz, trip-hop neo-fado, jazz-fusion for the 2020's, playful harmonies, and a vibrant Indian classical plus string quartet.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/2024-music.html

NEW §

Juntao Qiu continues his explanation of how codemods can automate complex refactorings across a code base with a more complex example of extracting a responsibility from a JSX component

https://martinfowler.com/articles/codemods-api-refactoring.html#RefactoringAnAvatarComponent

NEW POST

Design tokens are fundamental design decisions represented as data. Andreas Kutschmann explains how they work and how to organize them to balance scalability, maintainability and developer experience.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/design-token-based-ui-architecture.html

@evan I haven't looked into that yet.

With the recent uptick in tech activity on Bluesky, I've decided that I will start posting there in addition to my current locations. I've also put together my general thoughts on the state of social media, and how I'm using it, now that it's two years since The Muskover.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/2024-social-media.html

A wonderful bit of animation directed by one of my favorite musicians. Four minutes of bleakness and hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXUkSiV4Jzs&t=247s

@timbray @simon I'll add a strong +1 to Tim. To really control your long-term material, you need a domain you control. Then you have the maximum flexibility on what tech to use on it.

@judeswae @selenadeckelmann @wikimediafoundation do you have a link with more info on this?

@Drbruced I’d suggest talking to my colleague @judeswae , who wrote https://martinfowler.com/articles/your-org-run-mastodon.html

@adam @timbray https://codeberg.org/martianh/mastodon.el

Handy article from @grrrck on analyzing all that data in a twitter archive

https://www.garrickadenbuie.com/blog/tweet-archive-in-r/

Me /tries to do a quick something
site: enter your password
Me: fine
site: enter your one-time code
Me: already? but fine
site: your password will expire in 6 days. Change it now
Me: ?

And just to make it clear. "Regular password changing harms rather than improves security."

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/passwords/updating-your-approach#PasswordGuidance:UpdatingYourApproach-Don'tenforceregularpasswordexpiry