From the living room to the agent loop: Marko Bjelac
Three years ago, we asked Marko Bjelac, Software Sauna’s very first employee, whether we’d managed to build the “living room” he’d always imagined: developers swapping ideas, drinking tea (or coffee, he eventually conceded), thinking out loud together. His answer was yes, more or less.
Then AI arrived. And it did something unexpected: it didn’t break the living room. It made it more real.
We sat down with Marko again to find out what eight years at Sauna looks like through the lens of AI, what XP (Extreme Programming) has to do with it, and whether the developer’s job still exists.
AI didn’t kill the living room.
It furnished it.
At his 5th-anniversary interview, Marko described his vision for the living room as a non-restricted working environment where developers have genuine conversations, pair program, and toss ideas back and forth without the friction of “let me just code this real quick.”
Visioning the living room was easy. Getting there was the challenging part. That has changed.
“I continued to pair program with my teammate, while using AI,” Marko says, “and this has brought us much closer to the living room idea.
The most important part of our daily work has now received even more time and spotlight.”
The mechanics are almost poetic in their simplicity: ideas get articulated, written into a notes file, and then, “we prod the agent now and then to read the next note and carry it out.” The conversation is the work. The code is almost a side effect.
XP: The methodology that aged like a fine “löyly”
When Marko joined Software Sauna, his primary motivation was to explore XP-like practices: test-driven development, continuous delivery, and pair programming. At the time, it was a principled bet on how good software gets made. Eight years later, it turns out it was also a bet on how good software gets made with AI.
“From my experience with AI so far, I feel that XP practices strongly support growing a codebase with AI,” he says.
The reasoning is clean: “Small, controlled & verified steps are what AI agents need to stay focused and not veer off. This is also what humans needed before AI. This is what XP offers.”
It’s one of those observations that sounds obvious the moment you hear it, and isn’t obvious at all until you do.
The developer isn’t gone. They moved up a level.
You’ve probably heard someone say AI will replace developers. Marko has a more precise view. “It is only a focus shift,” he says.
“Before AI, developers had to spend more time thinking about how to implement something, but they still needed to know what to build and how the building blocks all connected together. Software development consists of ‘levels of thought’. The only change with AI is that some of the lowest levels are now more or less automated.”
The craft isn’t gone. The building’s lowest floors just got an elevator.
Greenfield, finally! And faster than you’d think
Three years ago, Marko’s wish list included more Sauna-owned greenfield projects. A reasonable hope, slightly constrained by reality. AI has quietly made that constraint much smaller.
“It is now completely possible to build a POC * (or a couple of them) for a potential greenfield project and show them to the (not yet signed!) client,” he says.
*) Proof of concept
“This would demonstrate our understanding of the client’s idea and also our experience with using AI. The time spent on this is comparable to the time spent on business analysis and estimation of the greenfield project, which we already do.”
That’s a meaningful shift in how you walk into a room. The demo comes before the contract. Conviction replaces speculation.
The one thing he won’t budge on
Ask Marko what matters most when building a team today, and he doesn’t hedge.
“I hate to burst some people’s bubble, but the benefits of AI fluency are very short-lived without strong engineering fundamentals. On the flip side, I believe you can still build a complete software project without AI fluency, having strong engineering fundamentals.”
He’s not dismissing AI fluency. He is clear that the next generation of developers needs both. But the order matters. “The old geezers learned it the ‘hard way’ by coding everything up themselves. I think diving into code is still going to be needed for learning what to do and what to avoid.”
Eight years in, the man who won Sauna’s “Never Stop Learning” award at the 5th-anniversary party is still making the same argument: fundamentals aren’t optional. They’re the floor everything else stands on.
Eight years of living room
Eight years in, and Marko’s reasons for being here haven’t changed. The XP practices, the people, and the belief that software is fundamentally a human endeavor.
What has changed is the pace. Greenfields that used to require a signed contract first now come with a working demo. The conversation has never moved faster.
The living room is more real than ever.
