Working Code

Brian Rinaldi , Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly and long time friend of the show, recently wrote a blog post that was picked up in the  TL;DR newsletter . His post, titled  The State of Developer Conferences , shares a theory as to why both online and IRL (In Real Life) conferences are struggling to reach pre-pandemic attendance. Brian, who's been running conferences for 15-years...

After drinking close to 12 Mountain Dews in a single day, Adam started to wonder if — just maybe — he was using caffeine as a way to self-medicate. Upon discussing this with his doctor, Adam was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder) - a condition  very common  in the world of programming (a fact that we inspect on the show). In light of these findings, we thought it woul...

Amid the frenzy of industry lay-offs, we here at the Working Code podcast were devastated to hear that our very own Carol Weiler has been affected by a down-turning real estate market. A few weeks ago, while attending a virtual All Hands meeting, her Slack account was suddenly locked, momentarily followed by her computer. It turns out that she, along with a majority of her engineers, were part of...

Lay-offs are trending in the technology world. And, it's not just the scrappy start-ups being hit - goliaths such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all recently announced large reductions in force (RIF). Getting laid-off can pose a serious financial burden on an individual; but, there's also the psychological burden of self-doubt: Why did this happen to me? Did I deser...

This week, we reach into  our bag of  Listener Questions  and pontificate on such curiosities as: Who would we want to be and what skills would we want to learn if we could step into an alternate reality? Would Danny DeVito make an intriguing Wolverine? Which are the best programming-related movies and shows? And, we all laugh a little nervously as Tim shares  just how much time  he's clearly...

Learning something new - whether it be a language, framework, or library - can be challenging. And, if you're already an expert in some ways, it can be both humbling and frustrating to suddenly feel like a novice in other ways. On top of that, our expectations are often distorted by time; and, we forget how long it took us to amass the understanding that we have today. This can lead to unreali...

Not all days are created equal. Some days, you show up and just crush it non-stop. Other days, it can feel challenging to even type good. On today's show, we look at what goes into making those good days "good" and those bad days "bad". Getting into the zone, meetings, switching modes, interfacing with customers, responding to incidents (and other interruptions) - every little...

On today's show,  Matt Cavender  — the man who turns our incoherent babbling into meaningful thought — is gonna share a selection of his favorite clips from the past year (2022). Adam, Ben, Carol, and Tim are taking the week off to recover from our families and work off some of those food babies. But, fear not dear listeners, the team will be back next week to ring in 2023 - Working Code style...

Happy New Year! We did it! We survived 2022! This has been a rather hard year in many ways and a decent year in some ways. On this episode, the crew reflects on the past year in terms of fitness, technology, personal growth, and reading goals; and, celebrates some wins and laments some losses. Follow the show and be sure to  join the discussion on Discord ! Our website is  workingcode.dev  and we&...

Happy Festivus , dear listeners! Welcome to our last show of 2022! Closing out "No Effort December", we truly run the gamut this time: Ben talks about the crippling attachment he has to his own fingers (and why he won't work with wood); Adam talks about how excited he is for the v1.0 release of  Svelte Kit ; and, Tim reflects on the blinding speed with which people seem to be to making...

This week, we continue to lean into "No Effort December", talking about a hodgepodge of both tech and non-tech topics. Since we're heading into Christmas, we start off talking about how challenging it is to buy gifts, especially for the  grown-ass  adults in our lives. We also share some of our favorite Christmas movies; and, the movies which have absolutely nothing to do with Christma...

Welcome to the start of  No Effort December ! That's the time of the year in which we gather 'round the mics and talk about whatever the heck comes to mind. We just passed two years on the Working Code podcast, it's the holidays, we've been  peopling super hard  with our families, and we all need a little jolly relaxation. On today's show, Carol wonders if she can use Hackathon...

Tim recently read that, "1 in 10 AI (Artificial Intelligence) engineers think that AI will be the downfall of our civilization." But, it's not all doom-and-gloom; he's also been reading about some exciting advances in AI and Machine Learning (ML) such as Amazon Alexa being able to come up with novel bedtime stories for kids, Cosplay stars trying out new outfits using personalized &...

Back in April, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 Billion. He then spent months talking about how terrible Twitter was before finally taking control in October. Everyone knew it was going to be a landmark moment; but, no one quite knew how things were going to play out. With mass lay-offs, a voluntary exodus of talent, threats of "extreme" work hours, and a series of fraudulent accou...

Migrating data is always complicated. And, the more data that you have to migrate, the more complex your migration process becomes. This week on the show, Adam shares the lessons that he learned while performing a  large, multi-client, multi-cluster, week-long database migration  for  AlumnIQ . This included moving roughly a dozen different databases from Amazon Aurora (MySQL 5) to Aurora 8. Late...

Web application developers are notoriously bad about building resilient applications. All too often, we implement the "happy path" and then forget (or simply ignore) that  many things  can go wrong for  any number  of reasons. However, even if we do account for the "sad path", and we do catch and handle errors, it's not always clear how those errors should be presented to the u...

View the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhX08w4yRI It's hard to believe that we made it to  episode 100 ! When we, four, started out on this journey almost two years ago, we were convinced that we'd either get sick of each other or quickly run out of topics to discuss. But, here we are, still loving it and having a great time. And, to celebrate this milestone in...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible This week, we're super excited to be getting the band back together! After several weeks of personal and professional obligations, Adam, Ben, Carol, and Tim are all back at it again. And today, we're talking about  Technical debt . When engineers talk about technical debt in p...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible If you've listened to the Working Code podcast for any period of time, you've no doubt heard Ben mention the fact that he works on maintaining a  legacy platform  at  InVision . His role on the legacy team was originally focused on security, stability, and bug-related fixed. H...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible This week on the show, the crew reviews  Mike Acton's talk, "Everyone Watching This Is Fired" , by way of  Adam Johnson's article, Expectations of Professional Software Engineers . This talk outlines 50 characteristics - both technical and non-technical - that go into...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible A year ago, on Episode 36, we talked about  blogs and digital gardens . Today, Adam and Ben, our resident authors, dive deeper into how they got started writing, what keeps them writing today, and how the act of - and the  engagement with  - writing has changed over the years. The adv...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible This week on the show, we tip our hats to the  Go Time podcast  and have ourselves an  Unpopular Opinion  potluck. This means sharing ideas for which we feel strongly; but, which may not be so popular in the broader programming community. Topics include password rotation policies (whi...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible People don't burn out because they have too much work to do, they burn out because they feel powerless. And, for Ben, feeling powerless correlates strongly with doing work that he doesn't believe in. Which is why he's never understood the notion of, "Disagree and commi...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible On Adam's team, whenever anyone uses the phrase  "just"  to describe a level-of-effort, everyone jumps in and echoes "just" using air-quotes. Because, as many of us have learned over the years, nothing is ever as simple as it seems, especially in the world of web d...

Sponsors Audible  - get a free audiobook from Audible with no strings attached at  https://workingcode.dev/audible This week on the show, the crew talks about the Power of No. For many of us, saying "No" is usually a challenge. Saying "Yes", on the other hand, is usually the path of lease resistance. Saying "Yes" also feels good. In fact, saying "Yes" has so much ap...