The Almost-Right Machine
Adlerian Essays on Software Engineering in the Age of AI
This book is 12% completeLast updated on 2026-10-18
AI is most dangerous when it's almost right. Fifteen essays on software engineering in the age of AI, read through the psychology of Alfred Adler, about the machine that is almost right, and about our almost-right responses to it.
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About
About the Book
"AI is most dangerous when it's almost right."
A graduate student wrote that sentence at the end of a course on trustworthy software development. This book takes its title from him, and its question from what he saw.
The almost-right machine does most of what you need well enough that you stop checking. It writes code that compiles, passes tests, and reads as complete. Its hardest defects are the ones that look finished. But the phrase cuts both ways. Our responses to the machine are also almost right. Dismissing it is almost right, because its flaws are real. Surrendering to it is almost right, because it is genuinely capable. Handing it our judgment is almost right, because it is fast and we are tired.
The Almost-Right Machine is a set of fifteen essays on software engineering in the age of AI, written by an engineer who has spent twenty-five years studying whether systems deserve to be trusted. Its lens is an unlikely one: the psychology of Alfred Adler, who argued that what matters is not whether we feel inadequate next to something more capable, but what we do with the feeling.
In the tradition of Fred Brooks's The Mythical Man-Month, each essay starts with a scene, real or imagined, in a classroom, a conference, or a code review, and only then reaches for the idea. Each stands on its own.
This is not a manual of prompts and workflows, and it is not a reassurance. It is written for engineers, for the people who lead them, for those who teach them, and for those who build the tools they use.
A book in progress. The essays are published one at a time as they are reviewed and written. Get the book now, and you will receive every new essay and revision as it is released, free.
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About the Author
Marco Vieira
Marco Vieira is a Professor in the College of Computing and Informatics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Born in Ponte de Lima, Portugal, he earned his Ph.D. in Informatics Engineering at the University of Coimbra, where he was a Professor until moving to Charlotte.
For more than twenty-five years, his work has asked whether systems deserve to be trusted. His research focuses on how AI can be applied to software engineering, and on how we evaluate whether it actually works, a question that has led him to argue for Benchmark Engineering as a discipline in its own right. He has authored or co-authored more than 280 refereed papers, chairs the IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance, and serves in leadership roles for several of the field's major conferences.
Beyond software engineering, he is drawn to the question of why we do what we do, particularly through Alfred Adler's view that we are pulled forward by the goals and meaning we choose rather than driven by our past. He writes about software, teaching, and culture on his blog, Echoes of Saudade, and is a lifelong student of Portuguese history.
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