What David Crawshaw thinks about software quality

@david-crawshaw · 19 positions · On ppll ↗

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

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1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what David Crawshaw has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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7 May 2026

Our readingCode review as a review mechanism depends on reviewers being able to infer effort from reading code, and AI-agent-generated code erases that signal.

code generation

Their wordsthe reviewer is the principal, the contributor is the agent, and code review only worked because the reviewer could cheaply infer effort from reading the code. Agents collapse that signal.

↗The agent principal-agent problemcrawshaw.io 1st of 3 in this piece