Friday Links: Estimates, being senior, and AI failures
28 Nov 2025 #mondaylinksHere are 3 links I found interesting this week:
#1. This week, a coworker shared an Instagram reel (~1min) about what coding really looks like. The girl in the video needed to finish a 1 line-of-code change but still needed meetings, estimates, and tickets. It sparked a discussion about estimates and these 5 laws of estimates (10min) summarized the discussion.
#2. Being senior means asking the right questions and knowing when to stop optimizing, like avoiding pointless abstractions. But here’s another take on what makes you senior (5min). It’s not LeetCode, years of experience, or a long list of tools.
#3. Every time you find another headline promising the AI takeover, here’s a list of AI failures (10min) when coding. The most epic? Replit agent deleting a production database.
Also on my blog this past week, I shared about the real definition of legacy code (3min).
Before I wrap up, here’s something that helped me level up my SQL Server skills: Brent Ozar’s SQL courses. They took me from writing server-crashing queries to being a confident SQL Server developer.
This month, Brent’s running a Black Friday sale: the lowest prices all year. You can grab the Fundamentals Bundle (10 courses, 40+ hours of video) and save $300.
See you next time,
Cesar