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An engineer who helped create today’s software engineering curriculum now says to burn down almost all of it. What’s the cause of this contradiction? We find out from the lead author of Software Engineering at Google.
Titus Winters spent more than a decade at Google, where he led its readability program and built Abseil, Google’s open-sourced foundational C++ libraries. He is currently a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe, where he focuses on developer experience and productivity.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, Titus and I discuss how his team tackled a massive refactoring project across Google's 250-million-line C++ codebase, why Google made testing mandatory, and his work on updating the ACM/IEEE undergraduate computer science curriculum guidelines.
We also explore why traditional productivity metrics miss some of AI’s biggest benefits, what needs to change in CS education, and how new engineers can stand out.
Timestamps
Intro
Getting hired by Google
Finding his niche at Google
Why Google made testing mandatory
Why new engineers fear making mistakes
Abseil: C++ foundations at Google
Google’s massive C++ refactoring
AI for rewrites
Software Engineering at Google: the book
Google’s readability reviews
Why teams still matter
Psychological safety
Layoffs and culture
Measuring developer productivity
Rethinking CS education
What new grads should learn
Titus’s ideal software engineering curriculum
Advice for breaking into tech
Book recommendation
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• The state of the tech industry in 2026
• Inside Google's Engineering Culture
• Slow down to speed up when working with AI agents
• Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey
• How tech companies measure the impact of AI on software development
• What is happening with code reviews?
• When AI writes almost all code, what happens to software engineering?
• Developer productivity with Dr. Nicole Forsgren (creator of DORA, co-creator of SPACE)
• Measuring the impact of AI on software engineering – with Laura Tacho
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.
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