The seven deadly
sins of DevX
A reading · Shawn McKay
I have yet to see two developers
who work the same way
Some of that is personality. Some of that is the tools.
Most of it is scar tissue from hundreds of micro-workarounds, adaptations, and coping without comparing notes.
The reading begins
Every developer works differently.
But all commit at least one of the
seven deadly sins of DevX.
Which are you?
The full spread
Tap a card to read its sin.
The First Sin
The silent sufferer
It's fine. I'm fine. Everyone's fine. Silently. Simultaneously.
“It’s probably just me.”
- The tell
- “That’s been broken for a while.”
- Penance
- Ask one peer if they have the same issue. If two of you do, everyone does.
The Second Sin
The maze runner
You've been navigating the codebase for years,
but you’re not the one in the maze anymore. Your agent is.
Your AI enters the maze with a two‑line prompt and comes back with berries and a rock.
- The tell
- Your AI fails, and you never ask it “where did you get lost?”
- Penance
- Learn from each failure. Then put up road signs: context, documentation, and skills.
The Third Sin
The avoider
You know where the dragons in your code sleep,
and don't want to get burned again.
The map of the places we avoid
is the roadmap.
- The tell
- “I wouldn’t open that one.”
- Penance
- Write the dragons down publicly. Then find a way to slay one.
The Fourth Sin
The configured
You have dozens of files, modified in exactly the right way to work.
Then you share your fragile mess with others.
This is how a broken setup achieves reproduction: one act of kindness at a time.
- The tell
- “Here, drop these in. It worked for me.”
- Penance
- Ditch the custom config and automate your setup scripts. Same generosity, permanent version.
The Fifth Sin
The gatekeeper
You're guarding the gates to make sure no bad work gets past
when you should be building the roads for better AI work.
The AI got 10× faster; we became the bottleneck.
- The tell
- "I review every PR myself to make sure the agentic code is good enough."
- Penance
- Invest in verification. Input, output, verify repeat.
The Sixth Sin
The passenger
You know what good DevX looks like.
You’re just waiting for someone else to drive.
“I’ll do it at the next hackathon.”
- Translation
- “I have 'real' work to do. DevX can wait.”
- Penance
- Stop saving it. Put DevX on the roadmap in a normal sprint.
The Seventh Sin
The sandcastle builder
You see the pain and build the tool. It’s good.
Then a reorg, promotion, or busy quarter washes it away.
Sandcastles don’t fall because they're bad. They fall because nobody was still there when the tide came in.
- The tell
- “I built it myself, so only I really know how it works.”
- Penance
- Name the owner before you build, then spend a quarter on DevX (not a weekend).
A confession
Every one of these sins is
a rational response
Suffering silently is cheaper than being the complainer.
Avoiding the dragon is cheaper than fighting it.
Waiting for the hackathon is cheaper than defending the roadmap slot.
Everyone is behaving sensibly. That’s the problem.
The three commandments
- I
Put DevX on the roadmap
Not the hackathon. Not 20%. Not “when things calm down. ” Things never calm down. A real line item, a real sprint, a real owner.
- II
Be a squeaky wheel
Put complaints in your #devx‑snags channel. Then complain a second time. The second one turns an anecdote into a pattern, and patterns survive planning.
- III
Improve the process
Solve it for yourself and you’ve helped one person. Fix the default and you’ve helped everyone after you. Same effort, different denominator.