Execution in the Kingdom of Agents: Reflections on Abstraction and Complexity

Talk I gave at Monktoberfest 2026; video to come!

1. Execution in the Kingdom of Agents Reflections on Abstraction and Complexity
2. Origins of this talk OXIDE
3. Origins of this talk OXIDE
4. Abstraction • The essence of software systems is the creation of abstraction • Abstractions allow us to build software systems that do sophisticated things; they are the shoulders we stand upon – and provide to others • Abstractions are qualitative; good ones allow us to hide gory implementation details – to build castles atop them and tunnels beneath • Bad ones, however, leak: instead of sealing implementation details, they seep them – yielding systems that are unwieldy and brittle • In the 1980s, one particular aspect of abstraction was top of mind… OXIDE
5. Abstraction and reusability (1987) Bertrand Meyer, Reusability: The Case for Object-Oriented Design (IEEE Software, 1987) OXIDE
6. Abstraction and reusability (1987) Bertrand Meyer, Reusability: The Case for Object-Oriented Design (IEEE Software, 1987) OXIDE
7. Abstraction and “reuse in practice” (1987) Bertrand Meyer, Reusability: The Case for Object-Oriented Design (IEEE Software, 1987) OXIDE
8. The asylum where they raised me (1993) Brown University Department of Computer Science, conduit! (Fall 1993) OXIDE
9. The asylum where they raised me (1993) Brown University Department of Computer Science, conduit! (Fall 1993) OXIDE
10. The asylum where they raised me (1993) Brown University Department of Computer Science, conduit! (Fall 1993) OXIDE
11. Abstraction and complexity • When abstractions leak, are absent, or became unnecessarily entangled with one another, we have complexity • Fred Brooks famously called this accidental complexity, differentiating it from the essential complexity endemic to a particular problem • Complexity doesn’t merely accrue, however – it can explode… • Uncontained accidental complexity in one component can become essential complexity in something that must interact with it! OXIDE
12. Taxonomizing complexity Engineered Complex Simple Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
13. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
14. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
15. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Accreted Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
16. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Revolutionary Complex Simple Accreted Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
17. Revolution (1995) OXIDE
18. Revolution (1995) James Gosling and Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment (1995) OXIDE
19. “Object oriented from the ground up” (1995) James Gosling and Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment (1995) OXIDE
20. Java revolution (late 1990s) • Java and object-oriented programming became synonymous with one another – and joined to form a single (suffocating!) dogma • Java was shoved everywhere: web applets, desktop applications, office suites, network computers (!), operating systems (!!), microprocessors (!!!) • These broadly died under their own weight – but Java saw real traction in the commercial, server-side applications of the enterprise… OXIDE
21. Java accretion and rebellion (early 2000s) • J2EE begat a Cambrian explosion of abstraction: EJB, JSP, JDBC, JNDI, RMI, RMI-IIOP, JMX, JAXP, JAX-RPC, SAAJ • However revolutionary Java had been at birth, through the late 1990s J2EE was clearly constructed – and by the early 2000s, accreted • Java had rebellions with it, e.g. Spring (“a fresh start after the ‘winter’ of J2EE”) – but the hegemony of Java was cracking under the sheer weight of the complexity • The time was right for a larger rebellion… OXIDE
22. “Look at all the things I’m not doing” (2005) David Heinemeier Hansson, Ruby on Rails demo (2005) OXIDE
23. Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) Steve Yegge, Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) OXIDE
24. Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) Steve Yegge, Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) OXIDE
25. Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) Steve Yegge, Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) OXIDE
26. Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) Steve Yegge, Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006) OXIDE
27. Reflecting on Java • Java cleary was an important and successful technology… • …but its efficacy was ultimately limited by its dogma and its complexity • These are not unrelated! • Ultimately, the elimination of the Java monoculture was healthy – and the 2010s saw several different revolutions in software systems OXIDE
28. Software factories • The metaphor of a “software factory” has been drifting around in software since the late 1960s, its use ebbing and flowing with broader trends • With the rise of LLMs to assist in software development – and then especially the rise of agentic coding workflows in late 2024 – the temptation to anthropomorphize LLMs as labor became too great… • The metaphor of a software factory is being seized upon with little knowledge or appreciation of manufacturing! • A software factory is effectively all engineering change orders! OXIDE
29. Aside: Actual factory OXIDE
30. Aside: Actual workers in an actual factory OXIDE
31. Inflection point (2025) Simon Willison, 2026 in LLMs (so far) (2026) OXIDE
32. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Welcome to Gas Town (2026) OXIDE
33. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Welcome to Gas Town (January 1, 2026) OXIDE
34. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Welcome to Gas Town (January 1, 2026) OXIDE
35. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Welcome to Gas Town (January 1, 2026) OXIDE
36. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Welcome to Gas Town (January 1, 2026) OXIDE
37. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Gas Town Emergency Manual (January 13, 2026) OXIDE
38. Gas Town Steve Yegge, BAGS and the Creator Economy (January 14, 2026) OXIDE
39. Gas Town Steve Yegge, BAGS and the Creator Economy (January 14, 2026) OXIDE
40. Gas Town Steve Yegge, BAGS and the Creator Economy (January 14, 2026) OXIDE
41. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Stevey’s Birthday Blog (January 19, 2026) OXIDE
42. Gas Town Steve Yegge, Stevey’s Birthday Blog (January, 2026) OXIDE
43. Gas Town burns down Steve Yegge, The Shape of Things to Come (August, 2026) OXIDE
44. The new dogma David Heinemeier Hansson, Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote OXIDE
45. The virtue of laziness • Our need to comprehend and compose systems drives us towards developing simple, powerful abstractions • This is our drive to cognitive efficiency in a system – what Larry Wall famously called the programmer virtue of laziness • LLMs lack the virtue of laziness – they are biased to the complex • Moreover, their limited context makes them tautologically emergent… OXIDE
46. Execution in the Kingdom of Agents Engineered Constructed Revolutionary Complex Simple Accreted Rebellious Emergent OXIDE
47. Abstractions and complexity in the LLM age • Complexity has always been the enemy of systems – and it is simple to make the system complicated! • LLMs are extraordinarily powerful – but they are a tool • If we leave LLMs to their own devices, we risk systems that collapse under the weight of their accreted complexity • To make effective use of LLMs, our (human!) abstractions are more important than ever – and the code very much still matters! OXIDE
48. Further reading and listening • Rich Hickey’s classic 2011 talk, Simple Made Easy • Fred Brooks’s timeless 1986 essay, No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering • Michi Henning’s outstanding retrospective, The Rise and Fall of CORBA • Oxide and Friends, No Silver Bullet and Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age • RFD 576 Using LLMs at Oxide OXIDE
49. Thank you OXIDE CONFIDENTIAL