# Titus Winters

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/people/titus-winters/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Real Alpha has cut 7 moments of Titus Winters (Senior principal scientist, Adobe) talking, from an interview on The Pragmatic Engineer published Oct 28, 2026.

- Role: Senior principal scientist, Adobe
- About: Built Google’s Abseil C++ libraries, led its readability program, and co-authored Software Engineering at Google.
- On X: https://x.com/TitusWinters

## What Titus Winters said

- [Use deterministic rewrites for large codebase changes](https://realalpha.app/s/use-deterministic-rewrites-for-large-codebase-changes/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 8 min
  > “AI tools are really, really good at generating open rewrite recipes, which is way cheaper on token consumption and way more accurate and much faster” — Titus Winters · [32:06](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=1926)
- [AI creates value by making harder work possible](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-creates-value-by-making-harder-work-possible/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 8 min
  > “a lot of the value of AI is not in doing the same thing faster. It's doing a harder, more valuable thing” — Titus Winters · [1:10:01](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=4201)
- [Grade the process, not just the code](https://realalpha.app/s/grade-the-process-not-just-the-code/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 6 min
  > “Grade instead, what are the prompts that you used to get here? Also, what are the tests that you provided?” — Titus Winters · [1:31:05](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=5465)
- [CS curricula still teach for the software of the 1990s](https://realalpha.app/s/cs-curricula-still-teach-for-the-software-of-the-1990s/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 7 min
  > “The average thing in the curriculum is exactly what was needed to build a database or an operating system in the 90s.” — Titus Winters · [1:12:50](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=4370)
- [Google used readability reviews to spread coding norms](https://realalpha.app/s/google-used-readability-reviews-to-spread-coding-norms/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 5 min
  > “It was a huge, subtle, below-the-waterline information-sharing program.” — Titus Winters · [47:02](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=2822)
- [Layoffs impose hidden costs on morale and engineering time](https://realalpha.app/s/layoffs-impose-hidden-costs-on-morale-and-engineering-time/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 3 min
  > “It is a huge hidden cost to all of that and it's really demotivating.” — Titus Winters · [59:53](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=3593)
- [Abseil packaged Google's cleaned-up C++ idioms](https://realalpha.app/s/abseil-packaged-googles-cleaned-up-c-idioms/)
  The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026 · 4 min
  > “And Abseil was basically, here is the layer of common C++ idiom. This is the vernacular that everything at Google is written out of.” — Titus Winters · [22:21](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/?t=1341)

## The episode

- [Software engineering at Google & CS education with Titus Winters](https://realalpha.app/v/mQu0zN4IvSI/) · The Pragmatic Engineer · Oct 28, 2026