Working Code is a technology podcast unlike all others. Instead of diving deep into specific technologies to learn them better, or focusing on soft-skills, this one is like hanging out together at the water cooler or in the hallway at a technical conference. Working Code celebrates the triumphs and fails of working as a developer, and aims to make your career in coding more enjoyable.
Thu, 23 Oct 2025
How do you keep millions of people safe on 40 different dating sites while simultaneously figuring out what drives them to buy memberships? Sean Corfield joins Adam and Ben to discuss the surprisingly complex engineering and business challenges of observing user behavior at massive scale. Sean runs us through fraud detection and prevention (including devastating "pig butchering" romance scams), database architecture at enormous scale (700GB databases with 250M+ row tables), custom domain-specific languages for writing business rules without touching SQL, real-time scoring systems with hundreds of rules, zero-downtime deployments and schema migrations, and the constant cat-and-mouse game between scammers and detection systems. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here.
Sat, 18 Oct 2025
Can you really multitask, or are you just rapidly switching between contexts and hoping your brain doesn't lose track? This week, we dig into the cognitive load of deep work, the impossibility of maintaining multiple large projects in your head simultaneously, and the ADHD patterns that shape how many of us think and work. Carol returns from the chaos of federal government planning meetings with renewed energy and alignment. Adam finds flow in his Jump Run project while navigating compliance season. Ben discovers the exhausting reality of writing actual specification documents for the first time in his career—and realizes just how taxing deep thinking can be. reCAPTCHA Migration: https://privatecaptcha.com/blog/recaptcha-migration-to-google-cloud-2025/ Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/234-the-multitasking-mind
Thu, 09 Oct 2025
How do you resist the siren call of shiny new features when you're months into a project that really matters? Adam finds himself six weeks into a 12-week build when his boss floats a couple of juicy AI integration ideas. Ben relates this to his own tendency to get distracted by massive refactors mid-feature. They dig into strategies for staying disciplined—like using future work as motivation, finding small wins along the way, or accepting that sometimes work just has to feel like work.. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/233-cheating-on-work-with-work/
Thu, 02 Oct 2025
In this week's episode the crew is back to discuss the never-ending journey of self-improvement in the tech industry, are we idiots to ignore it or maniacs to go along with it? Ben and Tim are back from CF Summit to recount there experiences where a big topic of discussion was... you guessed it, AI. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/232-are-we-idiots-or-maniacs/
Thu, 18 Sep 2025
In this week's episode the whole crew is back, and Ben brings our attention to "good" friction. It's all too common in business to hear about reducing and eliminating friction, but some forms of friction can be positive in ways we take for granted. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/231-good-friction/
Fri, 12 Sep 2025
Common sense isn't so common, or maybe it's a myth entirely? On this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Carol discuss common sense in programming. What may be common sense to a programmer may not be so simple to a user, and it's important, in these contexts, to deploy empathy and understanding rather than frustration. The hosts discuss this and more. A Hermeneutic of Generosity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovrzKCQ2JTM Ten Thousand https://xkcd.com/1053/ Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/230-the-myth-of-common-sense/
Thu, 04 Sep 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Carol dive into the nuanced world of software development as they explore the subjectivity inherent in coding. How do personal preferences, team cultures, and individual experiences shape the way code is written, reviewed, and maintained. From debates over naming conventions to the art of code reviews, we unpack the many ways that subjectivity influences technical decisions and the collaborative process. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/229-our-correct-opinions-subjectivity-in-coding/
Thu, 28 Aug 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Tim discuss the never ending rabbit hole that is implementing soft deletes in a database. What starts as a simple solution cascades into countless challenges and pitfalls, such as referential integrity, data consistency and compliance. This and other coding crimes in this week's episode. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/228-soft-deletes-and-other-crimes/
Thu, 14 Aug 2025
In this week's episode, Ben, Carol, and Tim are back to discuss picking the right tool for the right job. More specifically, the value of proportionality in effort and resource allocation, questioning when it's appropriate to cut corners versus maintaining high standards, when you should stick to what you know versus learning something new, and when you should pay more attention to context when making decisions. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/227-stop-commensurate-and-listen/
Thu, 31 Jul 2025
In this week's episode, Adam asks the question: To sync or not to sync? Sparked by an exploration of a competitor's API approach, the team share their thoughts on handling long-running tasks efficiently. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/226-to-sync-or-not-to-sync/
Thu, 24 Jul 2025
In this week's episode, the crew discuss the relevance and significance of open-source software in the age of AI. The open source community offers domain expertise, rigorous testing, responsive bug fixing, and community support. But when AI can generate code with proficiency, how does the value calculus change when deciding to install a new package, generate code with an AI, or simply do it yourself? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/225-the-value-of-open-source-in-the-age-of-ai/
Thu, 17 Jul 2025
To be a good producer you have to be a good consumer. In this week's podcast, the whole team is back to delve into the concept of 'skin in the game' in product development and how consuming your own product, known as “dogfooding”, and empathizing with users can influence the development process. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/224-skin-in-the-game/
Wed, 09 Jul 2025
In this week's episode, Adam and Ben discuss the notion of “If I'm still telling you what to do in six months, then something went wrong”, a take heard in a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast. How can a company orientate itself to encourage autonomy throughout the career of an engineer? What are reasonable expectations of a junior engineer? These questions and more are discussed in today's episode. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/223-the-six-month-autonomy-rule/
Fri, 04 Jul 2025
In this week's episode, Adam and Tim delve into Gemini CLI, a command line interface tool for AI by Google, test-driving it on real code to find its capabilities and limitations. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/222-gemini-cli-test-drive/
Thu, 19 Jun 2025
In this week's episode, the full crew is back to talk about practical replatforming. In past episodes we've discussed replatforming in a more abstract sense, but Adam has much to share about ongoing real-world replatforming at AlumniQ. When the rubber meets the road, certain realities and complexities, which may not be obvious, may affect decision-making and replatforming strategy. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/221-life-in-the-trenches-of-replatforming/
Thu, 12 Jun 2025
In this week's episode, the team gets into it with special guest Dan Wilson, an AI & tech consultant that has recently created free and paid courses on using AI in daily workflows. They also dig into the ins and outs of creating Udemy courses and their viability in the tech space. Dan's courses: Master ChatGPT: Build AI Assistants That Know Your Business (FREE) https://www.udemy.com/course/master-chatgpt-build-ai-assistants-that-know-your-business/ Generative AI for Developers: How To Use AI In Your Workday (Use code quackquack for a special discount) https://www.udemy.com/course/generative-ai-for-developers-how-to-use-ai-in-your-workday Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/220-embracing-ai-with-dan-wilson/
Sat, 07 Jun 2025
In this week's episode, the team dives into a potluck of topics including the effective usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) by feeding their ego, the excitement of implementing feature flags in development cycles, and further developments and opportunities with Adam's side hustle app "Jump Run" the journey of building a side hustle with 'Jump Run'. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/219-potluck-ai-ego-feature-flags-customer-feedback/
Thu, 29 May 2025
In this week's episode, the crew is back to discuss and question quickly shifting values in the world and their implications for developers. Will AI erode the importance of code craftsmanship? When old values are quickly discarded, what does that say about the legitimacy of the new values? Is human coding obsolescence the elephant in the room? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/218-rethinking-values-in-the-age-of-ai/
Thu, 15 May 2025
In this week's episode, Adam puts the spotlight on Svelte, and takes us on a deep dive of Svelte features, latest developments and some of his own applications of Svelte in recent projects. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/217-more-svelte-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at/
Thu, 08 May 2025
In this week's episode, the team discusses Ben's new job in a radically different domain, the common difficulties when joining a new team with a new 'language', and the unique challenges of working at a manufacturing focused business as opposed to a start-up style tech business. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/216-bens-new-job/
Thu, 01 May 2025
In this week's episode, the full crew is back to discuss the challenges and strategies of managing development teams. Tim shares his new role as Director of Development and his approach towards improving developer experience and scaling applications. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/215-new-endeavours-new-challenges/
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Tim discuss the evolving perception of technology, shifting from an optimistic view in the 80s and 90s to a more critical stance today due to its potential negative impacts. They delve into the consolidation of tech power among major companies like Facebook and Amazon, contrasting it with ideas like Amazon's two pizza teams for maintaining team efficiency. Adam also has some authentication issues that Ben and Tim weigh in on. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/214-is-tech-the-bad-guy-now/
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Tim discuss strategies to stay motivated during long-term projects or repetitive tasks. If you've been at the same company or working on a project for a very long time, how do you stay motivated doing the same thing for a long time? Mentioned Links: Ze Frank - An Invocation for Beginnings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g Cat Purr Generator - https://purrli.com/ Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/213-staying-motivated-through-long-projects/
Sat, 05 Apr 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Tim tackle the intriguing and timely topic of AI and its implications for the future of coding. They delve into how AI is currently being used, including the hype around LLMs, its perceived threat to coding jobs, and the limitations of AI in professional software development. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/212-you-are-not-a-coder/
Thu, 27 Mar 2025
In episode 211, Adam, Carol, and Tim play 'Roast My Desk, Rate My Clean-up.' Listeners submitted before and after photos of their desks, and the crew roast their setups and rate their clean-up effort. The photos and reactions can be viewed on our Discord, Instagram, and BlueSky accounts. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/211-roast-my-desk-rate-my-cleanup/
Thu, 20 Mar 2025
In week's this episode, the crew explores the often confusing phrase 'free as in speech, not as in beer.' They discuss the differences between software that's free in terms of cost (beer) and free in terms of user freedoms (speech). The conversation delves into open-source licensing, the implications for users and developers, and comparisons to various software models. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/210-free-as-in-speech-not-as-in-beer/
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
In this week's episode, Adam seeks support from Ben and Tim as he ventures into creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for a new app designed to digitize the operations of drop zones. The discussion centers on the importance of developing a solid hypothesis, engaging potential users early on, and navigating the emotional hurdles associated with bringing a side project to market. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/209-mvp-therapy/
Thu, 06 Mar 2025
In this week's episode, the crew play Real or Fake for esoteric programming languages. Are Whitespace, JSF***, Cow or DeadFish real or fake? Listen to find out. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/208-real-or-fake-esoteric-programming-languages/
Thu, 27 Feb 2025
In this week's episode, Adam, Ben, and Carol discuss a variety of topics including "disagree and commit", responsive design, and feature flags. We take a trip through time with some fun facts from internet and web development history. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/207-potluck-and-fun-facts/
Thu, 20 Feb 2025
In this week's episode of the podcast, Adam, Ben and Tim discuss various books that have significantly influenced their careers and coding philosophies. The conversation ranges from classics like 'Clean Code' and 'The Phoenix Project' to unexpected titles such as 'Fight Club' and 'The Four Agreements'. The discussion underscores the value of continuous learning and how different types of books can offer unique perspectives and practical wisdom. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/206-the-most-impactful-books/
Thu, 13 Feb 2025
In this week's episode, the team discusses various software development topics and how their opinions on these subjects have evolved over time. Key topics include the benefits and challenges of testing, the balance between microservices and monoliths, the role of static typing in code, and the practicality of semver versus other versioning strategies. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/205-lessons-learned-along-the-way/
Thu, 06 Feb 2025
In this week's episode, the full crew is back to discuss the complexities translating user requirements to developers and the importance of clear communication to avoid wasted efforts. The conversation also touches upon the roles of project managers and developers, emphasizing the significance of a clearly defined problem statement and well-structured processes to ensure efficient project execution. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/204-relaying-requirements/
Wed, 29 Jan 2025
There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors. (Leon Bambrick) In this week's episode, the crew discusses the complexities and nuances of naming conventions in software projects. The team reflects on their own practices, shared challenges, and the real-world impact of terminology and structure on software development and maintenance. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/203-the-hard-problem-of-naming-things/
Wed, 22 Jan 2025
In this week's episode, Tim and Ben go head-to-head in a trivia game inspired by Cunningham's Law, answering questions, with points awarded for correct 'um, actually' corrections. The game reveals lesser-known facts and recent updates in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and browser functionalities. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/202-um-actually/
Wed, 15 Jan 2025
We're back! and in this episode of the Working Code Podcast, the crew returns to dive into a thought-provoking discussion on the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT on technical communities such as Stack Overflow. They explore how LLMs are changing workflows, the ethical considerations of using AI for coding assistance, and personal experiences with these tools. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/201-llms-vs-stackoverflow/
Wed, 30 Oct 2024
In this special episode, we celebrate reaching our 200th show by discussing the critical importance of taking breaks and avoiding burnout. We share our thoughts on mini-retirements, the differences between sabbaticals and mini-retirements, and the surprising benefits of doing 'drudgery' work. We also delve into the upcoming hiatus for the podcast and what each of us plans to do with our extra free time. Join us for a candid and insightful discussion on how stepping away can actually help you come back stronger and more motivated. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/200-the-power-of-pause-were-taking-a-break/
Wed, 23 Oct 2024
In this week's episode, the hosts discuss the potential discontinuation of .io domains, the historical and geopolitical nuances of TLDs like .tv and .io, and the complexities of managing and pricing domain names. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here.
Wed, 02 Oct 2024
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. In this episode, the hosts discuss the complexities and frustrations of deployment automation and DevOps, particularly focusing on the challenges faced with makefiles, continuous integration (CI) processes, and build systems. They explore tools like ZX from Google and Oclif from Salesforce to find better solutions for running and organizing commands. The conversation also touches on the difficulties of maintaining older legacy systems like ColdFusion. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/198-battling-build-complexity/
Wed, 25 Sep 2024
In this week's episode, the hosts discuss the value of focusing on a single top priority during challenging times and the implications of AI on the workplace, emphasizing the importance of maintaining human connections and individual reflection. They explore career progression, advocating for both skill quality improvements and the need for organizations to focus on their most critical tasks. Additionally, they touch on personal habits such as the impact of constant connectivity, the value of solitude, and the challenges of balancing productivity with personal well-being. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/197-ai-the-innovation-dilemma-promotions-and-more/
Wed, 18 Sep 2024
In this week's episode, Adam, Carol and Tim discuss Developer Experience (DX) and its importance in creating a comfortable and efficient workflow for developers. The hosts highlight various elements that impact DX, such as the ergonomics of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), debuggers, and browser tools. They emphasize the need for faster build and deployment times to minimize context switching and improve productivity. Strategies for managing development, QA, and production environments, including the use of GitHub Actions, source-controlled database schemas, and automated deployments, are also explored. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/196-building-better-developer-experience/
Wed, 11 Sep 2024
In this week's episode, the hosts discuss situations where the effort put in is not worth the results. They cover topics like the inefficiency of tracking every minute, the high cost of striving for 100% code coverage, and handling lengthy build times during deployments. The team debates the importance of releasing features incrementally versus deploying massive changes and highlights the inefficiencies in requiring extensive requirements documentation. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/195-when-the-juice-isnt-worth-the-squeeze/
Wed, 04 Sep 2024
In this week's episode, Adam consults with Carol and Tim about various aspects and challenges involved in the development of an app intended to streamline and digitize the process of organizing skydiving jumps. They discuss overcoming technical difficulties, such as integrating drag-and-drop functionalities, managing data efficiently, and incorporating features like login systems, billing, and user authentication. They also explore potential UI/UX improvements, including touch interface adaptations and notifications for jumpers. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/194-manifesting-a-new-app/
Wed, 28 Aug 2024
In this episode, the hosts delve into the idea of whether bonds formed in moments of workplace trauma and high-stress situations are uniquely irreplaceable. The discussion also touches on how team-building activities can simulate the bonds formed under duress, the cultural differences in work stress, and challenges faced in the workplace. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/193-bonds-built-in-the-foxholes/
Wed, 21 Aug 2024
In this episode, the hosts discuss their experiences with different codebases, from the best they've worked on to the worst. They explore the complexities of evolving and maintaining legacy code, the challenges of debugging, and the importance of clean architecture. Key points include the pain of working with ORMs, and the impact of early design decisions on long-term project health. They also touch on reactivity concerns in modern frameworks and share personal anecdotes of both successful and problematic coding practices. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/192-the-best-of-code-and-the-worst-of-code/
Wed, 14 Aug 2024
In this week's episode, the crew discuss finding the right balance in implementing processes within software development teams. Processes often originate from reactive measures to past mistakes but it is crucial to emphasize the importance of periodically reassessing the necessity and efficiency of these processes. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/191-processing-processes/
Wed, 07 Aug 2024
In this week's episode, Ben and Carol of the Working Code Podcast reflect on career advice they would give to their younger selves, touching on the importance of simplicity in coding, continuous learning, and maintaining work-life balance. They emphasize the significance of learning from mentors, leveraging database constraints, and avoiding premature optimization. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/190-career-advice-for-our-younger-selves-ben-and-carol-edition/
Wed, 31 Jul 2024
In this episode, Tim and Adam discuss career advice for their younger selves, including the importance of job changes for salary increases, focusing on programming tasks rather than managerial roles, and the hazards of tying one's identity to a specific programming language. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/189-career-advice-for-our-younger-selves/
Thu, 25 Jul 2024
In this week's episode, Tim returns to the podcast for a discussion on code reviews, touching on the importance of providing constructive feedback, tailoring reviews based on the developer's experience level, and discussing the merits and drawbacks of tools like GitHub. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/188-yeeting-changes-to-production-code-reviews/
Wed, 17 Jul 2024
In this week's episode, Adam and Ben talk about the feasibility of being a solo developer in 2024, considering industry pressures, tools, and personal strategies for balancing simplicity and complexity in the development process. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/187-is-it-possible-to-be-a-solo-developer-in-2024/
Wed, 10 Jul 2024
In this week's episode Ben and Carol delve into their personal and professional insecurities. The discussion includes feeling the need to justify one's value at work, struggles with validations. They also talk about the emotional impact of customer interactions and the importance of human connections. The conversation highlights broader issues regarding job promotions, industry expectations, and the myth of constant innovation. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/186-warm-blankies-for-your-work-insecurities/
Wed, 03 Jul 2024
On this week's show, Adam and Ben explore the complexities of implementing AB testing in email campaigns. The hosts tackle the challenge of integrating AB testing into existing systems without causing disruptions and examine methods for experimenting with various elements like subject lines, calls-to-action, and email contents. They also discuss strategies for automating the selection of winning variants based on metrics such as opens and clicks. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/185-adams-ab-testing-mvp/
Wed, 26 Jun 2024
In this week's show, Ben and Adam discuss the aesthetics and functionality of code comments. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev, and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/184-solving-world-peace-with-code-comments/
Wed, 19 Jun 2024
In this episode, the team discusses various aspects of starting new projects, dealing with both personal and professional challenges, and the excitement and fears around initiating new work. Carol shares her idea for a new web application to help organize event contributions, and the group explores initial steps and considerations for starting such a project. They touch on security, data management, and different frameworks and platforms for development Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/183-whos-got-the-beans-carols-new-project/
Wed, 12 Jun 2024
On today's show, Tim and Carol share personal updates while Adam and Ben are away. Carol discusses her challenging workday involving a difficult rebase and adjusting to a new routine after moving to Texas. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/182-coffee-talk-and-catching-up/
Wed, 05 Jun 2024
On today's show, we continue our discussion of the entries outlined on the website, the Laws of Software. Topics include McKinley's law on boring technologies, Doerr's law on aligning team vision, and Fitt's law on target touchability. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/181-more-laws-of-software/
Wed, 29 May 2024
On today's show, we discuss a few of the entries outlined on the website, the Laws of Software. Topics include Atwood's Law on JavaScript, Cunningham's Law on getting answers, Parkinson's Law on getting things done, Goodhart's Law on taking measurements, Hofstadter's Law on inevitable failure, and the Peter Principle. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/180-the-laws-of-software/
Wed, 22 May 2024
On today's show, Tim gears-up for a farm insurance conference out in Nashville where he's hoping to educate farmers on the pros and cons of artificial intelligence (AI). But, ahead of his talk, he'll be using AI voice technology to call the conference attendees and convince them to attend his presentation. And then, hopefully, weave statistics and sentiment analysis insights—from these automated calls—back into his slide deck. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/179-ai-sells-you-on-ai/
Wed, 15 May 2024
This week on the podcast, we touch on a variety of topics. Ben has been incrementally building a data export feature for his customers; and, he's gotten to a point in which he can see a viable light at the end of the tunnel. Carol has discovered that if she doodles circles with her non-dominant hand, it occupies the ADHD portion of her brain and frees her up to focus on reading. Tim is continuing to improve his AI voice-agent, using a listener-suggested approach to loading Spanish language voice models on demand. And, Adam is battling some pretty steamy code rot; and is attempting to upgrade a series of interconnected Node.js Lambda functions from v0.10—released in 2013—to v20. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/178-upgrading-from-node-010/
Wed, 08 May 2024
Adam uses the new CSS color functions for HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) in order to create a heatmap for the number of dollars raised by his platform. Ben dives into the Algolia search service as a way to provide a search feature on his blog. Carol is trying to alleviate performance concerns around an N+1 SQL problem using an ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) that has decided to use an N+1 selection strategy as "the way" with no escape hatch. And, Tim is getting some great feedback regarding his AI-powered call system that will alert customers to upcoming renewal dates. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/177-infinite-invisibility-timeout/
Wed, 01 May 2024
On today's show, we cover a variety of topics. Tim was suffering from a "carding" attack (aka, a "credit card stuffing" attack) and had to build an internal CAPTCHA system in order to protect his web-based payment forms from bad actors. Adam created an open-source JavaScript library for mocking ES modules (see Mockable) that makes it possible to swap implementation details at runtime. And Ben falls back in love with ColdFusion—again—continuing to find that even the small language details bring him great joy. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/176-triumph-and-fail-safe-space/
Wed, 24 Apr 2024
On today's show, we cover a variety of topics. Ben talks about overcompensation at work; and, how we often swing way too hard in one direction as the first signs of a challenge. Carol talks about how her current task got away from her; and, how she suddenly founder herself creating a Pull Request with 84 files in it. Tim talks about the generation smoking ban going into effect in England. And Adam talks about the challenges of mentoring junior developers; and, how hard it is to have enough "right sized" tasks ready for them to work on. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/175-build-times-overcompensating-mentoring-and-more/
Wed, 17 Apr 2024
On today's show, we talk about incidents and outages at work. Incidents are a fact of life. If you depend on a file system or a database or a third party vendor, at some point, something will break and your service will be degraded. Customers freak out (rightly so); and, it becomes a cross-team effort to try and find the problem, fix it, and effectively communicate updates back to your customers. There's no right way to do this. But, one could argue that there are definitely wrong ways to do this. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/174-when-your-software-has-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day/
Wed, 10 Apr 2024
Adam picks Tim's brain searching for the perfect solution for payments and compliance auditing. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/173-shopping-for-solutions-payments-and-compliance-auditing/
Wed, 03 Apr 2024
In a world where many programmers instinctively reach for an existing solution in "user land", Ben poses the question: is there value in building out and maintaining your own standard library? This would be the collection of commonly-used functions and classes that you enjoy using; and, which are tailored to your use-cases and programming paradigms. Doing so would be a vibrant mixture of pragmatism, vanity, ego, efficiency, and compensation. But, would it ultimately be a net befit? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/172-building-your-own-standard-library/
Wed, 27 Mar 2024
Tim just completed his quarterly strategy review meeting at work. As such, he's in the perfect head space to teach Adam and Ben what strategy is; how strategy differs from tactics; and, how OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) can be used in order to ensure that the work to be done actually rolls-up to one of the company's core strategies. In the end, Ben still has no idea what's going on (as per usual); but, Adam is down to clown. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/171-from-tactics-to-strategy/
Wed, 20 Mar 2024
On today's show, we talk to Thelma Van about integrating design into the product development workflow. This includes User Experience (UX) design, User Interface (UI) design, scope negotiation, and user validation through interviews. It turns out, even if you can only talk to five of your customers, having this amount of feedback can have a massively out-sized impact on your overall design and development trajectory. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/170-thinking-in-ux-with-thelma-van/
Thu, 14 Mar 2024
Several years ago, Stack Overflow noticed a small but surprising trend within their 2017 Developer Survey data. Even when attempting to adjust for several factors, it seems that the programmers who indent their code with spaces (as opposed to with tabs) have a higher earning potential. As an example of programmers who love using tabs, the hosts of the show offer up theories about this strange finding. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/169-buffer-overflow-tabs-vs-spaces/
Wed, 06 Mar 2024
On today's show, we talk about two major announcements relating to the technology world. First, the government released a report calling on programmers to start using memory safe languages (see: Future Software Should Be Memory Safe). Second, Apple announced that it will halt work on Titan, its autonomous electric vehicle project. We also talk about the pros-and-cons of a Computer Science degree in relation to the web development industry. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/168-memory-safety-mandate/
Wed, 28 Feb 2024
The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered. - Oscar Wilde You may never think about it or even be aware of it; but, you have a personal brand. A brand is not something you can opt into or out of. It simply exists. The only choice that you have is how you manage - or choose not to manage - your brand in relation to other people. On today's show, we talk about our own personal brands; how they can help us; how they sometimes hurt us; and, how the goals of brand-building can change over time. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/167-everyone-likes-their-own-brand/
Wed, 21 Feb 2024
On today's show, we respond to a listener question from Kamil Maraz: I have started a Developer experience initiative in our company. We started with a survey, which led to many 1-on-1 meetings; and, one thing that came up a few times was onboarding. Long story short: it's not ideal. I was wondering if this topic could be an inspiration for one of the episodes. For example what is an onboarded colleague to you?; do you care about time to first commit?; what does the onboarding process in your company look like? And so on. As I say often, in our company we love our users, and our developers should get the same treatment. Often the journey starts with onboarding. Thank you for hearing me out. We love the fact that Kamil is taking an iterative product mindset; and, is trying to apply those same principles to the company, treating engineers as the recipients of the product experience. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/166-whats-onboarded-to-you/
Wed, 07 Feb 2024
For the most part, software engineers like the concept of Agile methodology; and, they have a sense that agile development practices are the best way of getting work done. But, that doesn't mean we know how to put these agile practices in place (especially at scale). Today, we talk to Brian Sadler (@brian_sadler) - a seasoned software developer and Agile coach - about what Agile is, what parts of it work the best, and where teams often go wrong in their interpretation of best practices. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/165-agile-methodology-with-brian-sadler/
Wed, 31 Jan 2024
On this week's show, we explore a variety of topics. Ben wants to perform a mini retrospective on his desire to support the legacy platform at work. Carol is feeling isolated as the only engineer on her team - her dog is a good listener, but isn't very helpful when it comes to brainstorming. And, Adam wants to talk about the browser landscape; and see which browser(s) everyone is currently using. Also, Ben offers up some high praise for Lenny's Podcast - a show in which Lenny Rachitsky interviews top Product and Marketing leaders in our industry. This show is absolutely dripping in value! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/164-solo-programming-chrome-monoculture-and-more-potluck/
Wed, 24 Jan 2024
In web development, we tend to hold learning as a virtuous activity that's worthy of our spare time. In fact, there can be a lot of pressure on us to always be learning; and, to some degree, those of us who don't ride the wave of cutting-edge tech are "othered". But, is dabbling in new technology really moving the needle? Does learning a little of this and little of that really make for a more robust engineer? Or, is there more value to be gained from depth of understanding? And, at the end of the day, does the biggest impact on what we know actually come from switching jobs and joining new teams? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/163-exposing-yourself-to-new-tech/
Wed, 17 Jan 2024
Ben never has enough time to accomplish everything that he wants to accomplish. On its own, this isn't necessarily a "bad thing". But, it can quickly lead to feelings of guilt: is he not good enough, is he not effective enough, is he letting everyone down? So much of this angst is emotional. And he knows this. But, he doesn't have the wherewithal that he needs to evolve his own perspective. The crew tries to help him out. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/162-a-question-of-time/
Wed, 10 Jan 2024
As we jump into the new year, the crew talks about their new year's goals—both for the podcast and for themselves. We strongly believe in the power of "learning in public". And, to that end, we've created a Google Form in which you can submit suggestions on how to improve the show: what do you like, what do you not like, what can we be doing better? No suggestion is off limits, so long as no people or animals are harmed! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/161-2024-goals/
Wed, 03 Jan 2024
Happy New Year! This week, we ease into 2024 with a variety of topics. Adam is building a new design system at work using Svelte and Tailwind CSS. Ben wonders if there's any way to create an "Overview Effect" in the world of programming. And Tim discusses a few philosophical fallacies in a work context: planning fallacy, overconfidence effect, automation bias, and plan continuation bias (aka, the sunk cost fallacy). Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/160-design-systems-and-coding-philosophy/
Wed, 27 Dec 2023
After a stressful year, we happily ease into another round of "No Effort December" in which the conversations flow without concern or constraint. Carol is excited to go ice skating for the first time in her life. Tim is trying to teach his kids about financial literacy. Ben shares his limited ability to fantasize. And Adam wonders why his computer gets so sticky. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/159-no-effort-december-returns/
Wed, 20 Dec 2023
In episode 154, we discussed the concept of a project premortem. That discussion inspired Carol to schedule her own premortem for a new 2-year project that her company is about to undertake. Given the fact that her team's work won't be sharable for at least 18-months, she's wants to make sure that her premortem is as effective as it can be. As such, we're going to have ourselves a little premortem premortem discussion on the show. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/158-the-premortem-premortem/
Wed, 13 Dec 2023
On this week's show, Adam Tuttle and friend-of-the-show, Adam Cameron, go in depth on Dead Man's Snitch - a software service that triggers an alarm if your application doesn't "check in" with high enough frequency. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/157-dead-mans-snitch-deep-dive-with-adam-cameron/
Wed, 06 Dec 2023
On today's show, we cast off the social filters and lay down some hot takes! This journey of spice serves up the separation of concerns, the future of StackOverflow, the value of comments, the necessity of testing, the role of extracurricular coding, the beauty of clean code, the meh of JSON, and the challenge of building truly great products. Some of these hot takes are clearly wrong; but, I'll never tell! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/156-json-stackoverflow-testing-hot-takes/
Wed, 29 Nov 2023
Coming out of the Thanksgiving holiday (and still recovering from our food comas), we wanted to have some fun today and talk about all of the software that we're thankful to have in our lives. These aren't sponsors of the show (yet); but, we love them so much that we wanted to share them with the rest of the world. Topics include Dead Man's Snitch, Overcast podcast player, git source control, GitHub, Snagit and Skitch screen capture tools, 1Password for password management, PlexTV for media management, video chat, IDEs and code editors, and basically everything that enhances the day-to-day lives of us developers. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/155-software-were-thankful-for/
Wed, 22 Nov 2023
On today's show, we talk using pre-mortems to weed out potential ways a project could go wrong, and Adam wants to know how the crew has their logging set up. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/154-what-could-go-wrong-premortems-and-log-levels/
Wed, 15 Nov 2023
Inspired by a 4-part series on "Failure" produced by the Freakanomics radio podcast, we went around the table and talked about our own failures. This helps to remove the social stigma associated with failure; and, helps other people process internal conflicts of emotion. Tim talks about failing to sell websites in the early dot-com boom; Adam talks about failing to create a ColdFusion package manager; and, Ben talks about the years he lost trying to learn Object Oriented Programming (OOP). Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/153-our-biggest-failures/
Wed, 08 Nov 2023
This week on the show, the hosts talk about what they have going on. Adam is trying to better understand the cadence with which his scheduled tasks are executing; and, has built a visualization tool using Svelte and D3. Tim has signed up for CS50 at Harvard - an online course introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Python. And, Ben has a working draft for the first half of his Feature Flags book; and, is now considering some sort of pre-sale (if he can figure out how to turn his Markdown files into something consumable). Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/152-cron-heatmaps-harvard-ai-bens-book-whats-on-your-workbench/
Wed, 01 Nov 2023
When you build a system that is wholly contained within a single process, life is quite clean and predictable. But, the moment you reach outside of your process in order to get work done, you realize how messy the world is. Communication between systems can breakdown for any number of reasons. Often times, we try to create resiliency within the chaos by apply technology. But, sometimes, it makes more sense—and is far less expensive—to fix these problems using a human-oriented solution. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/151-async-human-solutions/
Wed, 25 Oct 2023
This week we go around the table and see what the hosts have going on. Carol got a promotion in her first week back at work, despite the fact that she's had to emotionally suppress everything she once knew about dotnet. Adam is now - finally - at 100% SOC compliance (and is awaiting a 3-month review period). Tim has been wrestling with APIs and bending them to his will (to receive JSON payloads). And, Ben is considering different ways in which to package his Feature Flags book. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/150-whats-on-your-workbench-3/
Wed, 18 Oct 2023
In this episode, Adam and Tim talk about margin for error in various aspects of software development, business and our personal lives. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/149-margin-for-error/
Wed, 11 Oct 2023
In this episode, the crew speculate on what would happen if every coder just stopped coding. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/148-the-day-the-code-stood-still/
Wed, 04 Oct 2023
This week, we go around the table and talk about a variety of topics. Ben talks about Transactive Memory Systems Theory and how it might be applied in an engineering context. Carol—having moved into a new home and a new job—talks about the joys of starting something new in her life. Tim talks about the short-comings of a ticketing system; and, Goodhart's Law (which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"). And, Adam considers what his life would look like if he took on more of a leadership / force-multiplier role at work. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/147-potluck-9/
Wed, 27 Sep 2023
The products that we build can become quite complex and involve many interconnected parts. Due to this complexity, and to the properties of the natural world, these products will begin to fail in new and exciting ways. There's really no way to stop a system from failing; but, we can build systems that are more resilient to failure. That said, this is oftentimes much more challenging than we expect. On today's show, we talk about the complex systems that we've built personally; and, how we attempt to keep them online in the face of uncertainty. As a funny aside on the topic of complexity, checkout Tom Scott's video: The Problem with Time & Timezones. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/146-resiliency-is-hard/
Wed, 20 Sep 2023
Adam, our early-adopter in residence, talks to Carol about Bun, Skeleton, and Svelte. With a focus on introducing new tools to an existing team, the two mainly talk about Bun, a hot new all-in-one JavaScript toolkit that is simultaneously a runtime, a server, a package manager, and a test runner. Come find out why its feature-set and speed leave Adam singing, My application don't want none unless you got Bun, hun! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/145-shiny-new-things-bun-svelte-skeleton/ With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Wed, 13 Sep 2023
In a perfect world, we always do our best. But, our capacity for "best" changes on a day-to-day basis. On some days, doing our best means jumping out of bed and absolutely crushing the day! On other days, doing our best means that we rallied just to get out of bed. And, that's OK. When we're in the slog - when our "best" is degraded - it can be helpful to identify a single, small challenge for the day; a challenge that can be accomplish and celebrated. This technique is what Carol calls the "Power of One". Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/144-the-power-of-one/ With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Wed, 06 Sep 2023
While change is inevitable, managing and adapting to change is always a challenge. Change represents the end of something we knew and - at least for some period - loved; and, ushers in the start of something completely unknown. On today's show, we explore the difficulties in "moving on" using several different contexts: Jobs, tech stacks, video games, API implementations, front-end frameworks, and more. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/143-moving-on-rewriting-replatforming/
Wed, 30 Aug 2023
When Carol's not here to keep us in line, the show quickly flys off the rails. So much so, in fact, that we never made it to the intended topic - it's just tangents upon tangents upon tangents. We touch upon "vendoring" of our external libraries, installing dependencies with apt-get, dictation app differences between macOS and iOS, the regret of not building features sooner, building the perfect demo for clients, and the "trap" of having to innovate. And that's not even everything! Carol - we need you! You're our only hope! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/142-tangents-all-the-way-down/
Wed, 23 Aug 2023
Inspired by an article from Dimitri Glazkov: Build a thing to build the thing, we talk about the importance of consuming of our own products. Often referred to as "Dog Fooding", this means that we must try and build something in the same way that our customers would be expected to build something. And, in doing so, better identify the feature gaps and the points-of-friction. In order to best meet our customers where they are, we have to - in a sense - become our customers. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/141-building-stuff-so-you-can-build-stuff/
Wed, 16 Aug 2023
If a property is exposed on the internet, people will try to take advantage of it. This might be in the form of sending spam through a communications portal, scamming cellular providers via SMS tolling, or using payment forms to validate stolen credit cards. And that's just to name a few possible attack vectors! It appears there's no hurdle too high nor process too tedious for the fraudsters to circumvent. On today's show, we share our own war stories about detecting, preventing, and dealing with the aftermath of fraud on our own web-facing applications. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Wed, 09 Aug 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/139-new-tables-vs-new-columns/
Wed, 02 Aug 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/138-ben-goes-streaking/
Wed, 26 Jul 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/137-the-grug-brained-developer/
Wed, 19 Jul 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/136-words-do-they-matter/
Wed, 12 Jul 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/135-note-to-self-v0-3-0/
Wed, 05 Jul 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/134-ben-goes-to-a-conference/
Wed, 28 Jun 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/133-the-final-stretch/
Wed, 21 Jun 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/132-virtual-reality/
Wed, 14 Jun 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/131-starting-from-scratch/
Wed, 07 Jun 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/130-book-club-the-phoenix-project/
Wed, 31 May 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/129-new-features-vs-maintenance/
Wed, 24 May 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/128-potluck-8/
Wed, 17 May 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/127-how-tech-interview-is-broken-with-sean-corfield/
Wed, 10 May 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/126-documenting-decisions/
Wed, 03 May 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/125-whats-on-your-workbench-2/
Wed, 26 Apr 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/124-we-are-juniors-for-life/
Wed, 19 Apr 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/123-negative-10x-developers/
Wed, 12 Apr 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/122-coding-hot-takes/
Wed, 05 Apr 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/121-bens-testing-tribulations/
Wed, 29 Mar 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/120-freelancing-with-nolan-erck/
Wed, 22 Mar 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/119-potluck-7/
Wed, 15 Mar 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/118-things-we-should-be-doing-but-you-know-reasons/
Wed, 08 Mar 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/117-champions-of-truth/
Wed, 01 Mar 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/116-the-state-of-developer-conferences-with-brian-rinaldi/
Wed, 22 Feb 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/115-self-care-for-developers/
Wed, 15 Feb 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/114-carol-got-laid-off/
Wed, 08 Feb 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/113-surviving-a-layoff/
Wed, 01 Feb 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/112-listener-questions/
Wed, 25 Jan 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/111-how-to-learn-stuff-good/
Wed, 18 Jan 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/110-measuring-impact-at-work/
Wed, 11 Jan 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/109-best-of-2022/
Wed, 04 Jan 2023
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/108-2022-year-in-review/
Wed, 28 Dec 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/107-through-the-wormhole/
Wed, 21 Dec 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/106-a-cascading-cataclysmic-christmas/
Wed, 14 Dec 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/105-no-effort-december/
Wed, 07 Dec 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/104-alexa-make-a-podcast-about-ai/
Wed, 30 Nov 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/103-birdsite-go-boom/
Wed, 23 Nov 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/102-upgrading-mysql-for-poop-emojis/
Wed, 16 Nov 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/101-error-error-message-not-helpful/
Wed, 09 Nov 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/100-the-spicetacular/
Wed, 02 Nov 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/099-technical-debt-isnt-always-a-choice-or-is-it/
Wed, 26 Oct 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/098-in-defense-of-working-on-the-legacy-platform/
Wed, 19 Oct 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/097-expectations-of-professional-software-engineers/
Wed, 12 Oct 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/096-why-do-you-write/
Wed, 05 Oct 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/095-potluck-6-unpopular-opinions-edition/
Wed, 28 Sep 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/094-disagree-and-commit/
Wed, 21 Sep 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/093-sounds-easy-sure-isnt/
Wed, 14 Sep 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/092-the-power-of-no/
Wed, 07 Sep 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/091-side-project-therapy/
Wed, 31 Aug 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/090-passion-projects-and-beer-money-side-hustles/
Wed, 24 Aug 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/089-what-makes-a-good-roadmap/
Wed, 17 Aug 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/088-todo-documentation/
Wed, 10 Aug 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/087-note-to-self-v0-2-0/
Wed, 03 Aug 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/086-the-working-code-test/
Wed, 27 Jul 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/085-shipping-complexity/
Wed, 20 Jul 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/084-the-architectural-support-team-with-jason-henriksen/
Wed, 13 Jul 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/083-alternate-timelines/
Wed, 06 Jul 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/082-github-copilot-is-it-worth-it/
Wed, 29 Jun 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/081-total-randos/
Wed, 22 Jun 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/080-other-duties-as-assigned/
Wed, 15 Jun 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/079-potluck-5/
Wed, 08 Jun 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/078-ux-pushing-users-into-the-pit-of-success/
Wed, 01 Jun 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/077-mid-manager-blues/
Wed, 25 May 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/076-ben-needs-a-minute/
Wed, 18 May 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/075-what-problem-does-this-solve/
Wed, 11 May 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/074-whats-on-your-workbench/
Wed, 04 May 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/073-our-golden-parachute/
Wed, 27 Apr 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/072-too-many-hats/
Wed, 20 Apr 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/071-potluck-4/
Wed, 13 Apr 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/070-self-reflections/
Wed, 06 Apr 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/069-now-im-catching-events/
Wed, 30 Mar 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/068-hire-women-inspire-women/
Wed, 23 Mar 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/067-we-have-feelings-on-logging/
Wed, 16 Mar 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/066-make-meetings-suck-less/
Wed, 09 Mar 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/065-tdd-in-the-trenches-with-scott-stroz/
Wed, 02 Mar 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/064-should-i-stay-or-should-i-go/
Wed, 23 Feb 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/063-nobody-makes-it-out-alive/
Wed, 16 Feb 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/062-note-to-self/
Wed, 09 Feb 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/061-software-is-for-people/
Wed, 02 Feb 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/060-technical-debt/
Wed, 26 Jan 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/059-everything-old-is-new-again/
Wed, 19 Jan 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/058-do-10x-developers-exist/
Wed, 12 Jan 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/057-goals-for-2022/
Wed, 05 Jan 2022
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/056-best-of-2021/
Wed, 29 Dec 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/055-sales-fails/
Wed, 22 Dec 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/054-were-so-quacked/
Wed, 15 Dec 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/053-product-management-with-adam-lehman/
Wed, 08 Dec 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/052-starting-your-own-business-with-steve-rittler/
Wed, 01 Dec 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/051-you-are-replaceable/
Wed, 24 Nov 2021
Read the show notes line: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/050-where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years/
Wed, 17 Nov 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/049-revisiting-replatforming/
Wed, 10 Nov 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/048-todo-microwave-todo-list/
Wed, 03 Nov 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/047-email-ruins-everything/
Wed, 27 Oct 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/046-secrets-management-vs-premature-optimization/
Wed, 20 Oct 2021
Because this week's episode was short, and because we've wanted to give the public feed a taste of what's in the aftershow, here's a bonus episode. This is the aftershow from episode 43.
Wed, 20 Oct 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/045-join-our-discord/
Wed, 13 Oct 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/044-facebooks-no-good-very-bad-week/
Wed, 06 Oct 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/043-relay-race-programming/
Wed, 29 Sep 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/042-potluck-3/
Wed, 22 Sep 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/041-the-third-age-of-javascript-with-shawn-swyx-wang/
Wed, 15 Sep 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/040-automaticity-is-a-weird-word/
Wed, 08 Sep 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/039-bens-future-at-invision/
Wed, 01 Sep 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/038-holding-developers-accountable/
Wed, 25 Aug 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/037-brian-klaas-talks-cloud/
Wed, 18 Aug 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/036-blogs-and-digital-gardens/
Wed, 11 Aug 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/035-being-a-swamp-guide/
Wed, 04 Aug 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/034-some-of-my-best-friends-are-react-developers/
Wed, 28 Jul 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/033-software-patents/
Wed, 21 Jul 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/032-what-comes-after-senior-developer/
Wed, 14 Jul 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/031-to-the-cloud-but-why/
Wed, 07 Jul 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/030-carols-consult-catch-up-conversation/
Wed, 30 Jun 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/029-potluck-2/
Wed, 23 Jun 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/028-buy-vs-diy/
Wed, 16 Jun 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/027-giving-technical-presentations/
Wed, 09 Jun 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/026-passwords/
Wed, 02 Jun 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/025-breaking-up-with-your-stack/
Wed, 26 May 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/024-the-archetype-of-an-effective-developer/
Wed, 19 May 2021
Read the notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/023-book-club-1-clean-code-by-uncle-bob-martin-pt2/
Wed, 12 May 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/022-book-club-1-clean-code-by-uncle-bob-martin-pt1/
Wed, 05 May 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/021-listener-questions-2/
Wed, 28 Apr 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/020-carol-needs-a-consult/
Wed, 21 Apr 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/019-makefiles/
Wed, 14 Apr 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/018-feature-flags-finally/
Wed, 07 Apr 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/017-premature-optimization/
Wed, 31 Mar 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/016-interviewing/
Wed, 24 Mar 2021
Read the show notes on our website: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/015-potluck-1/
Wed, 17 Mar 2021
View the notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/014-zen-and-the-art-of-pull-requests/
Wed, 10 Mar 2021
Read the show notes online: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/013-do-what-you-love-and-youll-never-work-a-day-in-your-life/
Wed, 03 Mar 2021
Show notes: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/012-idiomatic-code/
Wed, 24 Feb 2021
Show notes available at: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/011-listener-questions-1/
Wed, 17 Feb 2021
An engineer at SquareSpace once referred to his company as "an overnight success, 7-years in the making." This cheeky insight pays homage to the marathon of work that is often required when building a successful product and / or business. Which begs the question: when is it appropriate to start thinking about scale? Should you be taking it into account during early ideation and the construction of your MVP (Minimum Viable Product)? Or, should you kick the can down the road with the assumption that you can always throw money at the problem later (either by hiring smart people or by vertically scaling your existing compute resources)? This week, the crew talks about their experience in scaling web application systems; what they have - and haven't yet - had the need to consider; and, how they calculate the return on investment (ROI) when it comes to adding complexity to a potential solution ("innovation tokens", anyone?). If you like this episode about scaling, you may also enjoy our previous episode on Monoliths vs. Microservices (episode 5). Triumphs & Failures * Adam's Triumph - After switching to a new platform, his ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) code stopped working for "reasons". And, instead of spending a whole week trying to figure it out, he just spent a single day replacing the problematic ORM queries with native SQL statements. This was a veritable "Master Class" in pragmatic problem solving. * Ben's Failure / Triumph - This week has been kicking his butt! He's exhausted and stressed out - even his feet hurt. This is due, primarily, to the HTML emails that he's been crafting at work. That said, he's been able to take his "failure" and transform it into a "triumph" by channeling that frustration into an exciting new approach for building HTML emails that's powered by ColdFusion Custom Tags. It's still early, but he's hella stoked on the concept! * Carol's Triumph - She wrote some rather complicated code that dealt with edge-cases in her application that weren't really ever going to happen. And, when her teammates discussed this with her, she did the honorable thing and removed her code, leaving in its place a much simpler solution. The real triumph here is that she was able to overcome the "sunk cost fallacy" we engineers often succumb to when having to confront the questionable value of our own solutions. * Tim's Failure - What started out as a thrilling exploration of Redis has turned into a battle for sanity! For reasons that he has not yet been able to understand, the data that he's been writing to a Redis cache isn't always available for immediate read. This is in his local development environment and he's the only one hitting the code. It just doesn't make any sense! Notes & Links * Redis: https://redis.io/ - a blazing-fast in-memory data structure store. * CFRedis: https://github.com/MWers/cfredis - a ColdFusion client for the Jedis Java driver for Redis. * Jedis: https://github.com/redis/jedis - a blazingly small and sane Java client for Redis. * Mango Blog: https://www.mangoblog.org/ - an extensible blog engine released under the Apache license, built with ColdFusion. * CockroachDB: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ - a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. * Dan McKinley: Boring Technology Club: http://boringtechnology.club/ - a spoken word version of Dan's essay, "Choose Boring Technology". * Ben Nadel: "Enterprise" is not a dirty word: https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3976-enterprise-is-not-a-dirty-word.htm - a blog post discussing the merits of "enterprise" software. * FrameworkOne (FW/1): http://framework-one.github.io/ - a light-weight conventions-over-configuration framework for ColdFusion web applications. * Blocking-Request Budget - a concept in which serving a user's request can only entail a limited number of blocking requests. * AWS Fargate: https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/ - services compute for containers. * AWS Lambda: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ - a "functions as a service" (FaaS) platform. * Mailgun: https://www.mailgun.com/ - an email service provider (ESP) built for developers. * Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/ - a nonprofit Certificate Authority that has brought free TLS certificates to the masses. Follow the show! Our website is https://workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/workingcodepod
Wed, 10 Feb 2021
There are very few people in the programming world who will argue against the idea of testing software. But, when it comes to the mechanisms though which code is tested, the conversation starts to get interesting. There are those who feel that TDD - Test Driven Development - is "the way"; and, that any divergence from TDD is not only laziness but is, in fact, borderline malfeasance. At the other end of the spectrum are the people who perform all their testing manually; often, relying on QA (Quality Assurance) teams and smoke tests to find regressions before each deployment. Most people sit somewhere in the middle of these extremes. This week, the crew talks about their own views and experience with testing; and, how they currently implement testing at work. Ben swings heavily towards the manual testing end of the spectrum; Adam and Carol swing heavily towards the automated end of the spectrum; and Tim, who often feels very hypocritical, sits somewhere in the middle. Triumphs & Fails * Adam's Triumph: He's been working hard to get his company's application migrated over to a new open-source software stack. And, as of this recording, he's successfully moved 9 of his 13 production servers over to the new setup; and, everything seems to be running smoothly! He's feeling very strong on hitting his goals of migrating the rest of the servers by the end of January. * Ben's Failure: This week has been kicking his butt! He hasn't been sleeping well, he can't get comfortable in his chair, and everything seems to hurt. He's carrying a boat-load of tension in his neck and shoulders and he just can't seem to get past it. The only saving grace is that he can use his "standing desk" controls to select the perfect height for sitting. * Carol's Failure: She's also having a tough time getting comfortable! Her body hurts from her tail-bone up to her head; and, the heating pad she's using just ain't doing it. She's currently on the hunt for a new chair that might help offer some relief. But, being the Amazonian warrior that she is makes things a bit more challenging. As she says: > I can't help it - I have six feet of legs and they have to go somewhere! And, as the icing on the cake, she accidentally deleted the configuration settings for all seven of her home networks. She had automatic backups configured; but, she accidentally turned them off 3-months ago. * Tim's Triumph: It's been a while since he was able to get into a groove; but, this week, he finally achieved flow state: that moment when the world disappears, time loses meaning, and all you can see is the code in front of you as it appears to pour out of your hands without effort or thought. He summed this feeling up quite nicely: > I feel less like I'm pushing a stone uphill and more like there's a river just flowing through me. I mean, come on, he even wrote a Regular Expression! Notes & Links * Pure Function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function) - a function that produced no side-effects; and, whose outputs are determined entirely by its inputs. * Jest (https://jestjs.io/) - a popular JavaScript testing framework. * Unit testing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing) - a low-level test of an individual unit of code. * Integration testing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_testing) - a mid-level test of a group of software units running together. * End-to-End / Functional testing - a high-level test of an entire software system, typically looking at happy paths through an application. * Manual testing - using human to run tests on a piece of software. * Automated testing - using computers to run tests on a piece of software. * Static testing - evaluation of code without having to execute it (think linters and strongly typed languages). * Testing budget - a concept in which the tests that can block a deployment have to run within a certain time window. * Rich Hickey (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rich+hickey) - please, just go watch all of his videos. * Software regression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_regression) - a bug that appears, and often breaks, a previously-working piece of code. * Guillermo Rauch (https://rauchg.com/) - CEO of Vercel (https://vercel.com/). * REST Assured (https://rest-assured.io/) - a testing framework for application APIs. * Gatling (https://gatling.io/) - load testing software. * Feature flags (https://launchdarkly.com/features/feature-flags/) - tooling that allows you to turn parts of an application on or off without having to redeploy it. * Strangler pattern * Ben Nadel: My Personal Best Practices For Using LaunchDarkly Feature Flags (https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3766-my-personal-best-practices-for-using-launchdarkly-feature-flags.htm) - a tome that Ben wrote on how he uses feature flags. * Kent C Dodds: Testing JavaScript (https://testingjavascript.com/) - a popular online course about about testing JavaScript. * EggHead.io (https://egghead.io/) - a popular subscription service that provides tutorials on web application development. * MockBox (https://testbox.ortusbooks.com/mocking/mockbox) - a module within TestBox that allows the internal execution of a software module to be observed. Follow the show! Our website is https://workingcode.dev/ and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter & Instagram. New episodes weekly on Wednesday. If you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod
Wed, 03 Feb 2021
All super heroes have an origin story. And, so do nerds. Many of us can remember back to that moment when we realized that there was magic in the world - magic that we could be part of; and, magic that we could help create. This week, we get personal with the crew and learn more about where they came from, what kind of stuff makes them tick, and what it is that they love about being web application developers. This Part II of a two-part series. Part II will includes Carol and Adam. Part I was Ben and Tim. But (drum roll please) thank you to our first patrons! You are helping us make this podcast better. For anyone who wants to know more, check out our Patreon listed at the end of the show notes. Triumphs & Fails - Ben's Failure: He, like many of us, just doesn't "people" well at times. He makes an effort to improve this by staring emails with the goal being a reply. But with weeks of stared emails lacking replies, the effort feels a tad null. Maybe he should accept this flaw and consider it a feature. And... if he hasn't replied to your text message yet, don't feel bad, yours is only 1 of 1248. - Carol's Triumph: She mentioned last week that she was feeling a tad bit down at work, struggling to learn the business side as fast as she expected herself to. The self-induced kind of worries. This week during her 1-on-1, she was provided feedback which put that worries to rest. She is feeling less stress and more fresh. - Tim's Failure & Triumph: Boy oh boy, has Tim failed. He turned the chipper marketing team at work into a slightly less chipper set of people by avoiding delivering of a marketing approach he was on the hook for. No sweat team, he will get around to it. His Triumph for the week stem from our previous episode about 2021 Hopes and Goals. He wrote his own blockchain! The man is non stop! He also revels a great idea for using his new found blockchaining power. Perhaps a podcast coin? - Adam's Triumph: He's seesawing on if his triumph is a real triumph or not, and it is! He made it an entire day without sitting down. He is making an effort to stand more with the assistance of a electric sit/sand desk. Notes & Links - Tinker (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tinker) Means: to work in the manner of a tinker especially : to repair, adjust, or work with something in an unskilled or experimental manner - The Oregon Trail (https://classicreload.com/oregon-trail.html) A popular game for kids of the 90's to play. The game was released in 1990 and was developed by MECC. - Tent.io (https://indieweb.org/Tent.io) Was a suite of distributed networking protocols which had a goal to provide a consistent data layer that any app could tie into. In 2019 they closed shop due to funding. - Our first search engines: Carol: Ask Jeeves, Tim: Altavista, Ben: HotBot, Adam: Dogpile - Welcome to the Machine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-udg9zQSE) - Terminal Velocity (https://www.gog.com/game/terminal_velocity) - Teach yourself VB4 in 21 days (https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/550306) - Adams entry book into learning how to write code. - Church of Mountain Dew (http://tutt.xyz/churchofdew) Web archive to the original church of mountain dew webpage - First stop to find the church of dew (http://tutt.xyz/dew1) - Another relic to the church of dew (http://tutt.xyz/dew2) - 12 year old Adam created his own Church of Mountain Dew in a notepad text editor. - The token ring network (https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/Token-Ring) A token ring network is a local area network (LAN) in which all computers are connected in a ring or star topology and pass one or more logical tokens from host to host. Only a host that holds a token can send data, and tokens are released when receipt of the data is confirmed. - REST Assured (https://restassuredbook.com/) If you think rest is napping, pick up Adams book to understand Rest and API Design. - Taffy (https://taffy.io/) Adams REST Web Service Framework for ColdFusion and Lucee - Christian Ready (https://christianready.com/) is a great friend of ours. We all love his work and listening to him present any chance we get. Check him out on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/christianready Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod
Wed, 27 Jan 2021
All super heroes have an origin story. And, so do nerds. Many of us can remember back to that moment when we realized that there was magic in the world - magic that we could be part of; and, magic that we could help create. This week, we get personal with the crew and learn more about where they came from, what kind of stuff makes them tick, and what it is that they love about being web application developers. This Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 1 includes Tim and Ben. Part 2 will include Carol and Adam. # Triumphs & Failures * Adam's Triumph - He moved mountains of data using "pivot tables" in Google Sheets in order to build summaries of his newly-rolled-out test coverage at work! He's a hair's breadth away from fully converting his codebase over to an open-source platform. * Ben's Triumph - He totally built something without JavaScript! I know, it sounds crazy: in the age of Single-Page Applications (SPA) and JavaScript frameworks, reaching for JavaScript is the default. But he managed to build something useful with just HTML and CSS! * Carol's Triumph / Failure - She just passed the 4-month mark at her new job, like a boss! But, she been a little bit down in the mouth, concerned that she's not getting enough done and that she's not learning enough. She managed to turn the week around, however, getting some productive "Design Buddy" work (think "pair programming" for the planning phase) done. * Tim's Triumph - He checked his old Coinbase account from 2015 and the $15 he left in there is now worth $85. He's about to wine and dine himself! # Notes & Links * :target (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:target) - CSS selector that matches elements whose `id` matches the URL fragment. * Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com/) - a place to buy, sell, and manage your cryptocurrency portfolio. * Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html) - New York Times article about a millionaire who has two more chances to remember his password for quarter-billion in Bitcoin. * Google Sheets: Pivot tables (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/1272900) - creating and using pivot tables in Google Sheets. * Aqua Data Studio (https://www.aquafold.com/aquadatastudio) - a versatile database IDE with data management and visual analytics for relational, cloud, and NoSQL databases. * ELIZA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA) - an early natural language processing computer program. * Zork (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork) - one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games. * Kaypro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaypro) - a computer manufacturer from the 1980s known for their line of rugged, "luggable" computers. * dBase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase) - one of the first database management systems for microcomputers. * CP/M (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M) - an early operating system. * Ultima Online (https://uo.com/) - one of the first MMO (Massively Multi-player Online) games. * Adobe ColdFusion (https://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html) - a modern web development language. * Lucee CFML (https://www.lucee.org/) - the leading open-source CFML application server / engine - it's so good you might just freak out! * Sierra Entertainment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Entertainment) - game company famous for King's Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. * Hackers (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/) - one of the best movies in the computer / hacker genre - _Hack the planet!_ * X-Files (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/) - 1990s tv drama about the FBI's paranormal phenomena research - _the truth is out there_! * QBasic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic) - an early programming language and interpreter. * TI-82 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-82) - a programmable calculator. Follow the show! Our website is https://workingcode.dev/ and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram . New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod Your heart matters.
Wed, 20 Jan 2021
Oxford Dictionary included "doomscrolling" in their "word of the year" report for 2020; we're all feeling pandemic fatigue; many people still believe in wide-spread election fraud; the Georgia senate race was a nail-biter; and - oh yeah - we recorded this show the day after the storming of the United States capitol building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol. It's all been more-than-a-bit surreal. But, in the face of such physically and emotionally trying times, we look forward to a new year of possibility. Whether it's taking control of our finances, finding ways to be more active, building up our personal brand, or becoming the blacksmiths that we always knew we could be, the crew shares their personal and professional / technical goals for this burgeoning new year. As the Phoenix rose from the ashes, so too - we hope - 2021 will rise from the smoldering dumpster fire of 2020. We'd also like to give a huge shout-out and thank you to Monte Chan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/montechan/ for being our first Patreon supporter! You are a beautiful, beautiful person; and we hope to make you proud! # Triumphs & Failures * Adam's Triumph - With 2020 just behind us, the Georgia Senate run-off keeping us on the edge of our seats, the insurrection, and plenty of "doomscrolling", he managed to kick off 2021 with a somewhat productive week. He's reminded of a quote from Cory Doctorow's latest book: "I'm not OK, but I'm going to be OK. I'm coping, but I have a lot to cope with." * Ben's Triumph - Coming off the two-week "deployment freeze" at work, he managed to rebase, merge, and deploy the 20-something small git branches that he had amassed over the holiday. It took a few days, but everything went swimmingly! * Carol's Triumph - She accidentally discovered her son (16yo) and his best friend listening to our podcast; and, they loved it! Woot woot! We are totes connecting with the youths! * Tim's Triumph - In the aftermath of the insurrection and storming of the US capitol building, he managed to not curl up in a ball and rock back-and-forth in the corner. Given the context, this was a pretty momentous effort. # Notes & Links * Cory Doctorow (https://craphound.com/) - science fiction author, activist and journalist. * You Need a Budget (https://www.youneedabudget.com/) - award-winning software that teaches you how to manage your money. * Mark Drew (https://markdrew.io/) - a rather amazing chap from the CFML and web programming world. * Devil Forge (http://devil-forge.com/) - full-service metal melting and blacksmithing tools supply company. * Max Cunningham (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqpssdZwH6Lu_JomjxV816Q) - YouTube channel, blacksmith and forge enthusiasm. * Forged in Fire (https://www.history.com/shows/forged-in-fire) - reality show featuring world-class bladesmiths re-creating historical edged weapons in a cutthroat competition. * Alec Steele (http://alecsteeleblacksmith.com/) - blacksmith and YouTube star. * Primitive Technology: Forge Blower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVV4xeWBIxE) - awesome YouTube video in which a guy "invents" the force blower using primitive tooling. * AlumnIQ (https://www.alumniq.com/) - world-class software for alumni and donor engagement. * Brand Frost: Atomic Design (https://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/) - book about building design systems. * Material Design (https://material.io/design) - design system and general design platform by Google. * Angular.js (https://angularjs.org/) - modern application framework for building Single Page Applications (SPA) from Google. * Storybook (https://storybook.js.org/) - an open source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, Angular, and more. * Helios - design system used at InVision. * async / await (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/async_function) - modern JavaScript technique for making asynchronous code read like synchronous code. * Snowpack (https://www.snowpack.dev/) - a lightning-fast front-end build tool, designed for the modern web, allowing you to load JavaScript modules from URLs. * Promise (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Promise) - a proxy for a future, asynchronous value in JavaScript. * Redis (https://redis.io/) - an awesome open source, in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. * BitCoin (https://bitcoin.org/) - is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money. * DogeCoin (https://dogecoin.com/) - an open source peer-to-peer digital currency, favored by Shiba Inus worldwide. * Cryptocurrency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency) - a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange. * Blockchain (https://www.blockchain.com/) - the world's most popular way to buy, hold, and use crypto currencies. * AI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence) - intelligence demonstrated by machines. * AWS Machine Learning (https://aws.amazon.com/ai/) - a machine learning as a service platform. * Machine Learning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning) - the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience. * Boston Dynamic: Do You Love Me? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw) - absolutely mind-blowing video of robots getting their groove on! * Dependabot (https://dependabot.com/) - automatic dependency and security updates in your GitHub repositories. * Kent C. Dodds: Testing JavaScript (https://testingjavascript.com/) - online course for testing JavaScript applications. * TypeScript (https://www.typescriptlang.org/) - popular extension to JavaScript that adds types and other advanced features. * Scala Play Framework (https://www.playframework.com/) - framework that makes it easy to build web applications with Java and Scala. * JSON: JavaScript Object Notation (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/Objects/JSON) - the de facto data exchange format for many networked applications. * Let's not be monsters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62veCinCvc) - adorable toddler telling us to be better! Follow the show! Our website is https://workingcode.dev/ and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter & Instagram. New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod
Wed, 13 Jan 2021
Monoliths are bad! Microservices are good! These are the "obvious" truths that many engineers hold close to heart. So, why is it that Ben Nadel (https://www.bennadel.com) has been slowly merging some of his Microservices back into his Monolith (https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3944-why-ive-been-merging-microservices-back-into-the-monolith-at-invision.htm)? It turns out that a Monolith - like a Microservice - is a valid architectural choice that carries its own set of pros and cons. And, for him, his team, and their particular set of skills, the Monolith is proving to contain the right set of trade-offs. This week, the crew talks about Ben's journey; why InVision (https://www.invisionapp.com/) started using Microservices in the first place; and, what made him realize that it was time to start pulling services back into the core Monolith. There are no hard truths here - only thoughtful, context-aware considerations. Follow the show! Our website is https://workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter & Instagram. New episodes weekly on Wednesday. ### Triumphs & Failures *Adam's Triumph - He took the week off! He's usually not that good about taking time off; so, taking a whole week off between Christmas and New Year's was actually quite relaxing. * Ben's Triumph - He managed to stay production at work during the "deployment freeze" that takes place during the holidays! This meant creating lots of small, parallel git branches tied up in a bow, ready and waiting for the 2021 deployments to begin. * Carol's Triumph - She stayed up until 3am writing Unit Tests!. She doesn't often work in an environment that does much testing; so, this was a new and thrilling experience. Who knew that one could be so _happy_ thinking about the unhappy path! * Tim's Triumph - He also took the week off (his company always takes Christmas week off)! But, he's not used to taking so much time off; and, he started to get bored by Thursday (such a classic engineer). ### Notes & Links * GitHub "Draft" pull-requests: https://github.blog/2019-02-14-introducing-draft-pull-requests/ - it's just like a regular Pull Request (PR); but, it's intended to be a "work in progress" (WIP). * Silento - Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjW8wmF5VWc - official music video. * Archer - https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/archer - a wonderfully raunchy animated series about spies (for adults). Sploosh! * Microservices - https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html - an architectural choice, write-up by Martin Fowler * Monolithic application - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_application - an architectural choice. * Conway's Law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law - how organizational structure relates to programming structure: > Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. * Single-Tenant architecture - configuration in which one customer shares no resources with another customer. * Multi-Tenant - configuration in which many customers share the same set of resources (such as all existing in the same database). * Single Page Application (SPA) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application - a common front-end application architecture in which the front-end dynamically re-renders the UI based on data-fetches. * Distributed Monolith / Microlith - an architectural anti-pattern in which you combine the worst properties of both monoliths and microservices while reaping none / few of the rewards. * ColdFusion / Lucee CFML - https://www.lucee.org/ - a modern web programming language for dynamic server-side rendering. * Mark Richards - The Rise and Fall of Microservices - https://learning.oreilly.com/videos/oreilly-software-architecture/9781492050728/9781492050728-video328505 - presentation from O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference 2019. * Sam Newman - Building Microservices - https://samnewman.io/books/building_microservices/ - the canonical book on Microservices. * Sam Newman - Monolith To Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns To Transform Your Monolith - https://samnewman.io/books/monolith-to-microservices/ - Sam's follow-up book to Building Microservices - it should be required reading. * Simon Brown - Modular Monoliths - http://www.codingthearchitecture.com/presentations/devnexus2016-modular-monoliths - presentation from DevNexus 2016 that famously had the slide: > If you can't build a well-structured monolith, what makes you think microservices is the answer? * Amazon AWS Lambda - https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ - serverless compute services. * Amazon AWS Fault-Injection Simulator - https://aws.amazon.com/fis/ - aka, Chaos Monkey as a Service. * Amazon Cloudwatch - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch - a reliable, scalable, and flexible monitoring solution. * Kevin Conway - https://github.com/kevinconway - Principal engineer at InVision and a strong proponent for microservices. * Chris Richardson - https://microservices.io/ - he was doing Microservices before there were Microservices. He's the maintainer of https://microservices.io/. * Hype Cycle - https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle - from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" to the "Trough of Disillusionment" and every emotion in between, this is how the technology world experiences new technology. * Reactive Manifesto - https://www.reactivemanifesto.org/ - an approach to building robust applications. * Lagom Reactive Microservices framework - https://www.lagomframework.com - an opinionated microservices framework.
Wed, 06 Jan 2021
Impostor Syndrome is a psychological pattern in which people doubt their skills, talents, and accomplishments. Most of us have felt something like this in our careers, whether it's a fleeting moment or a persistent fear that we're going to be discovered as frauds. These feelings can be overwhelming, even debilitating; but, they can also drive us towards self-improvement. This week, the crew talks about their own mistakes, feelings of fraud, insecurities, and how Impostor Syndrome manifests in their own careers. ### Triumphs & Failures * Adam's Failure - Adam accidentally destroyed a database by running a migration script on the _wrong database_! Thankfully it was a QA (Quality Assurance) database which could be restored - no critical client-data was lost. * Ben's Triumph - He's deleted 200K lines of unused vendor code. That means shipping less code to production with every deployment. He also merged one of his unnecessary microservices back into the monolith. * Carol's Triumph - She's not dying! Woot woot! She had gotten COVID-19 right on the heels of a kidney infection; but it is currently feeling much better (and is nursing her sons back to health as well). * Tim's Triumph - He's been playing around with Redis as a means to make his applications more resilient. One thing he wants to do is centralize his Session management such that he can pushed new code to production without having to reset user-session data. Notes & Links * Breaking Bad: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/ - critically acclaimed TV drama. * Adam Sandler's Click: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389860/ - comedy about appreciating your life. * Redis: https://redis.io/ - blazing fast in-memory database and data-structure storage. * PM2: https://pm2.keymetrics.io/ - a production-grade process manager for Node.js. * Amazon ECR: https://aws.amazon.com/ecr/ - Elastic Container Registry. * Amazon Fargate: https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/ - serverless compute for containers. * GitHub Actions: https://github.com/features/actions - automation tools for your GitHub workflows. * The Push Train: http://pushtrain.club/ - Dan McKinley's presentation on managing the human side of continuous delivery. * Lagom Framework: https://www.lagomframework.com/ - an opinionated microservices framework for moving away from the monolith. * Little Bobby Tables: https://xkcd.com/327/ - classic XKCD comic. * Multi-Stage Builds in Docker: https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/multistage-build/ * Mike Cannon-Brookes: TED Talk on How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit: https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_cannon_brookes_how_you_can_use_impostor_syndrome_to_your_benefit * WTFs per minute: https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-coding-buddy/ - Coding Horror comic on code quality. * 1 Corinthians 10:12: https://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/10-12.htm - "Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he does not fall." * GoTime podcast: https://changelog.com/gotime - one of the ChangeLog podcasts. * Mythical Man Month: https://amzn.to/3mowUIU - iconic essays on software engineering. * 99 Bugs in the code: https://imgur.com/a/sZLJB - grumpy cat's take on the 99 Bottles song. * Perfect is the enemy of the good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good - trap that many product companies fall into. * Neil Gaiman's address to the University of the Arts Class of 2012: https://youtu.be/2OwRUyZMKwI - "Make good art". * The 10x programmer - toxic programming myth about unicorn developers. * Ruby Rogues EP 220 with Laurent Bossavit: https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/226-rr-the-leprechauns-of-software-engineering-with-laurent-bossavit/ - discusses the book, "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering", which covers among other things the myth of the 10x programmer. * Radio Lab: Lying to Ourselves: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/91618-lying-to-ourselves * The "Peter Principle": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle - people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence". * The Dunning-Kruger Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect - a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.
Wed, 30 Dec 2020
Your hosts: Adam Tuttle Twitter: @AdamTuttle Website: https://adamtuttle.codes Ben Nadel Twitter: @BenNadel Website: https://www.bennadel.com/ Carol Hamilton Twitter: @k_Roll242 Tim Cunningham Twitter: @timcunningham71 Follow the show! Website: https://workingcode.dev Twitter: @WorkingCodePod Instagram: @WorkingCodePod Triumphs & Fails - Carol's Triumph: Her college freshman son, majoring in computer science, called mom to ask for comp-sci help! - Ben's Fail: R&D effort exposed that he doesn't remember how to start a new project any more. - Tim's Triumph: He turned in the paperwork to get his team their raises on time. - Adam's Triumph: Testing on a new platform for his giant application has reached 100%, and a looming deadline may actually be met. Notes & Links - Sisyphus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html - Adam's waterproof Bluetooth shower speaker recommendation: https://amzn.to/3mcQdFB . This one isn't particularly special. There are dozens of different cheap Chinese speakers that look just like it. He's had three over the years, but they're all plenty decent. - The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ - TED Talk: Your elusive creative genius by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius - Chuck Close: Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will - through work - bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great "art idea". And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere. ################## Black Lives Matter ##################
Wed, 23 Dec 2020
Your hosts: Adam Tuttle Twitter: @AdamTuttle Website: https://adamtuttle.codes Ben Nadel Twitter: @BenNadel Website: https://www.bennadel.com/ Carol Hamilton Twitter: @k_Roll242 Tim Cunningham Twitter: @timcunningham71 Follow the show! Website: https://workingcode.dev Twitter: @WorkingCodePod Instagram: @WorkingCodePod Triumphs & Fails - Ben's Triumph and Failure: He finally backs up his computer! Only 5 years in the work. - Tim's Triumph: He was invited to speak at a virtual conference this week as a community expert. It was really amazing. - Carol's Triumph and Failure: She was locked out of a database only to realize she configured the connection wrong from the first day. Total face/palm time. - Adam's Failure: He committed to main... tsk tsk. Who commits to main?? Oh yeah, Adam does... Notes & Links - We want discuss how we handle remote working. Adam and Ben are pros at it but Tim and Carol are new. We go over communication styles and how they differ between face to face and virtual. How we balance home life and work life when we work in our home. We might not get it right, but we keep trying. Grab a drink and laugh with us as we figure it all out. - Freakonomics Podcast: https://freakonomics.com - Rich Hickey: Hammock Driven Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc - Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ ############### Black Lives Matter ###############
Wed, 16 Dec 2020
Your hosts: Adam Tuttle Twitter: @AdamTuttle Website: https://adamtuttle.codes Ben Nadel Twitter: @BenNadel Website: https://www.bennadel.com/ Carol Hamilton Twitter: @k_Roll242 Tim Cunningham Twitter: @timcunningham71 Follow the show! Website: https://workingcode.dev Twitter: @WorkingCodePod Instagram: @WorkingCodePod Triumphs & Fails - Adam's Triumph: His team realized that they could write a tool that would log, per controller method, how many times it had been run, whether or not it threw exceptions, and some performance stats, which is reducing the pain of transitioning app server platforms without a comprehensive test suite. They're currently at 90% tested! - Carol's Fail: Having just started a new job, she thought she would make a good first impression by bringing down the production site! - Tim's Triumph+Fail: A product he's been working on developing in secret for FOUR years is finally going to see the light of the day... just not through his years of persistence trying to push it past the finish line. - Ben's Triumph+Fail: A R&D project failed to get any traction, but on the plus side he got to delete thousands of lines of code! Notes & Links - The VS Code plugin that Adam couldn't think of is Git Lens: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=eamodio.gitlens - Cargo Cult Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming - CFML ("ColdFusion Markup Language") a.k.a. ColdFusion (https://coldfusion.adobe.com/) is a web-dev language and app server that the four of us have some shared history with. Lucee (https://www.lucee.org/) is its open source alternative engine. - Spoiler alert: You can write awful code in every language! - "Life with chapters" is a concept stolen from the No Dumb Questions podcast (https://www.nodumbquestions.fm/), which is fantastic, and a huge inspiration for Working Code. If you don't already listen, give them a shot! - There are a variety of different ways people prefer to learn, but teaching a concept is the best way to help yourself find your weak spots. - Never compare your beginning to someone else's middle! - The Martian is a fantastic movie and a better book (https://amzn.to/3g2S3qp); and yes, the audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Martian-Audiobook/B082BHJMFF) was narrated by Wil Wheaton, of Star Trek fame. - GraphQL is an interesting new(ish) idea in the world of web API's. https://graphql.org/ - "The right tool for the job"? NOPE. The right tool for the job, for the team, at that particular point in time. You heard it here second! ############### Black Lives Matter ###############
Wed, 09 Dec 2020
Your hosts: Adam Tuttle Twitter: @AdamTuttle Website: https://adamtuttle.codes Ben Nadel Twitter: @BenNadel Website: https://www.bennadel.com/ Carol Hamilton Twitter: @k_Roll242 Tim Cunningham Twitter: @timcunningham71 Follow the show! Twitter: @WorkingCodePod Instagram: @WorkingCodePod Get subscribed, share with your friends and coworkers, and follow the show! New episodes publish weekly on Wednesday morning! (US/Eastern)