# Growing software

September 15, 2026 · ai, coding-practice, design-philosophy, workshop, future-of-software

Canonical: https://www.romellogoodman.com/writing/growing-software
Originally published: https://mellogood.substack.com/p/growing-software

---

*Context: This is an adaption of a lecture that I gave at The New York Times as part of an internal Designing with Coding Agents workshop.*

My dominant metaphor for working with agents is gardening. Others are reaching for the term “software factory” to describe their workflows and I feel that this misses something important.

A factory is a place for automated production. You take a process and standardize it into a set of repeatable steps for that the agent can follow. These environments are typically inflexible and have no room for surprise or squishiness, the qualities are innate to generative systems. The secret sauce that make them special.

In a garden there is room for the agent to surprise. You job is less to set up steps and more to set up the rules under which the agent works under.

I felt this acutely this year when Elianna and I started our garden. We found a set of plans for raised garden beds, went to the store for wood and soil, built everything and planted everything. Then we waited. We watched as the garden took shape and guided it when we need to. We bought more lattice for the tomatoes and tried to redirect the enourmous vines of our squash plant as they overran the entire bed. We chose the output by choosing what to plant, but the size, quantity and timing of every fruit and vegetable was its own.

Gardening is about maintaining an ecosystem. Noticing and pruning and making small changes to how the system is functioning. It is a continuous process and changes with the seasons and even the years. Next year we aren’t going to grow so many tomatoes. Next year we might need to invent a different harness to help cradle our plants.

The way we develop software must not follow the same. Not as a rigged factory but a garden, where the work is building the bed and the lattice, creating the harness and the conditions and paying attention to what grows. A place where, over time, the right conditions can be natured and maintained by many hands.

![](https://imagedelivery.net/BtaYDmQqPcGi8C3w4F2NuA/67e3e652-d8ea-4a0b-cd6a-4876e22b6d00/public)

![](https://imagedelivery.net/BtaYDmQqPcGi8C3w4F2NuA/84a4864d-560e-4ebb-133f-9e7bde3c1300/public)

![](https://imagedelivery.net/BtaYDmQqPcGi8C3w4F2NuA/c2f8368d-5990-4f70-32c6-09817aac3900/public)

![](https://imagedelivery.net/BtaYDmQqPcGi8C3w4F2NuA/c9f33339-df7b-4ae5-54c2-d7962894a000/public)

-Mello