Ctrl Alt Dev

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes With AI tools like Replit, Lovable, Claude Code, and ChatGPT, anyone can describe an application and watch it get built in a matter of hours . But when a prototype suddenly scales to hundreds of users, an API changes, or a database leaks customer records, who is actually accountable ? In this Milestone Episode, Sean and Paul tackle the ultimate question facing the...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Episode Summary: I magine an application with absolutely no code underneath—no HTML, no JavaScript, and no database. Every single button click, swipe, and frame is being dynamically imagined and painted by an AI in real time. In this "Deep Dive" episode, recorded hot off the press just days after the announcement, Sean and Paul explore Solaris, the revolutionary ne...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Tim Winstanley (Founder of Resolve Tech) The next document your business writes using AI could carry a hidden signature you cannot see—an invisible, statistical watermark designed to prove an AI model was involved. In this milestone episode, Sean and Paul welcome back Tim Winstanley from Resolve Tech to pull apart the massive legal, technical, and operationa...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Episode Summary: Welcome to Episode 35 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Sean is back in the studio, looking relaxed and heavily tanned from a holiday in 40-degree heat, leaving Paul to successfully pilot their very first "Panel Review" format completely solo last week. Today, we are putting high-level future-gazing aside and focusing on the immediate present. We pull apart Grokbot...

Host: Paul Rhodes (flying solo on hosting duties while Sean takes a break). The Panelists: Peter Lowe: Founder of Smart AI Studio, helping SME leadership teams get AI-ready and publisher of security checklists for vibe-coded apps. Craig Hellen: Founder of Bex Media, video production and motion graphics agency in Gloucester (dialing in from his holiday in Denmark). Jeremy "Jez" Strong: Founder and...

Hosts: Paul Rhodes (flying solo this week as Sean is off sunning himself) . Guest: Brandon Himsley (Chartered Accountant and Founder of Golf Duels). What happens when a chartered accountant with zero coding experience, a golf obsession, and a few hundred pounds decides to build a mobile app? In this episode of CTRL-ALT-DEV, Paul Rhodes sits down with Brandon Himsley to unpack the incredible, warts...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Peter Lowe (Marketer, Non-Coder, and AI Builder) Welcome back to CTRL-ALT-DEV! Ten months ago, our very first guest predicted that AI would eventually take a written specification and autonomously build functional software within 18 months. It took just six. Today, Peter Lowe is back in the studio to discuss what he got right, what he missed, and how the bot...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Matthew Turner (Founder and CEO of NovaWIL) Welcome back to Episode 31 of CTRL-ALT-DEV, and Part 2 of our incredible conversation with Matthew Turner, the human rights barrister turned "vibe coder" who is disrupting the 200-year-old will-writing industry! Following up on Episode 29, we explore the critical transition from having a working AI prototype built...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Pete Morgan (Founder, Monkey Pants Productions) Welcome to Episode 30 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! It is a massive milestone for us as we officially celebrate over a year of the podcast. To mark the occasion, we are flipping the script. Every week, someone makes us sound like we actually know what we're doing, and today, we're putting him on the other side of the microp...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Matthew Turner (Practicing human rights barrister, Founder and CEO of NovaWIL) Welcome to Episode 29 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! In today's "Guest Interview" format, Sean and Paul sit down with Matthew Turner, a practicing human rights barrister who built and launched an AI-powered legal platform with absolutely zero coding experience. Matthew shares his journey from h...

Welcome to Episode 28 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Today, Sean and Paul strip back the format for a fireside "Deep Dive" into the reality of AI-assisted software development. With tools like Replit, Lovable, and Bolt, founders are building working software faster than ever. But there is a massive hidden gap between a shiny prototype and a production-ready application. Because AI sounds incredibly confident an...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest: Craig Hellen (Managing Director & Co-Founder, Bex Media) Welcome to Episode 27 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! After rushing off mid-recording in Episode 25, Craig Hellen of Bex Media is back. This time, we step away from the creative outputs of AI (like voiceovers and video) and look under the hood at how Craig is using AI as a deep "operating layer" across finance, opera...

Hosts: Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Welcome to Episode 26 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Today, we are stripping back the format—no guests, no slides—to discuss one of the most unexpected and life-changing AI experiments we've built to date: the AI Meal Planner. What started as a simple test to make cooking easier has morphed into a system that slashes food waste, completely eliminates duplicate supermarket purcha...

Hosts:  Sean Sale and Paul Rhodes Guest:   Craig Hellen (Managing Director & Co-Founder, Bex Media) Welcome to Episode 25 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Today, we are stepping away from software development and looking at AI adoption through a completely different lens: the creative agency. We are joined by Craig Hellen, Managing Director of Gloucestershire-based video production and motion graphics company, Be...

Welcome back to Part 2 of our fantastic conversation with Luke Passmore from Yellow Box Software! Last week we talked about the difference between building software that looks good in a demo versus software that survives in the real world. Today, we go even deeper into the messy reality of tech implementation. We explore Luke's "red flag" sheet for new clients, the real value of AI in manufacturin...

Welcome to Episode 24 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Today, we are stepping away from the high-level future-gazing and bringing it right back down to earth with our guest, Luke Passmore of Yellow Box Software. Luke specializes in building bespoke software solutions that turn the chaos of spreadsheets, human memory, and WhatsApp groups into structured, visible operations for SMEs—particularly in the manufacturin...

Welcome to Episode 23 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Today, Sean and Paul tackle the pricing and business model crisis that is quietly terrifying the professional services industry. If AI just compressed your six-week project into 60 seconds, charging by the hour is actively making you poorer. In this brutally honest episode, Paul opens up the Green Gorilla Apps (GGA) playbook to explain why they just slaughter...

Welcome back to Part 2 of our deep dive into Claude Cowork! Building on the use cases from Part 1, Sean shares his real-world results using Cowork for CRM follow-ups and weekly planning. We then pit Cowork against the major alternatives like ChatGPT 5.4, Google Gemini, and open-source frameworks, breaking down the honest strengths and weaknesses of each option for an SMB. We also introduce a new "...

Welcome to Episode 22 of CTRL-ALT-DEV! With our recent future-gazing retrospective officially wrapped, we are kicking off a brand-new two-part series focused on deep dives into specific AI tools. No hype, no landing page fluff, just real, in-the-trenches use cases. Today, we are looking at a tool that has fundamentally changed the way we work: Claude Cowork. We explore how to shift your mindset fr...

Welcome back to the continuation of our journey into 2036! Sean and Paul finish their massive deep dive into the sci-fi future of work, life, and society . From Amazon "stress-testing the future of work" by replacing thousands of developer hours with AI, to the uncomfortable realities of frictionless AI companionship, this episode leaves no stone unturned . Plus, the hosts wrap up with a massive s...

Welcome to a very special milestone episode of CTRL-ALT-DEV! Not only are we officially launching the podcast on YouTube, but we are skipping the day-to-day AI hype and jumping exactly 10 years into the future. Using informed imagination, Sean and Paul explore what life, work, health, transport, and money will actually look like in 2036. If autonomous systems keep accelerating, what kind of societ...

In this episode of Ctrl Alt Dev, Sean and Paul dive into the current state of AI adoption in businesses, debunking hype and sharing practical advice for leveraging AI effectively. They explore how AI is becoming infrastructure, the pitfalls of adding complexity, and the importance of focusing on operational friction to generate real value. Key Topics: The shift from AI as a curiosity to core infra...

In this episode Paul and Sean explore the transformative impact of AI on business, technology, and society, highlighting how AI is shifting from a tool to an ambient, autonomous layer that influences every aspect of our digital environment. They discuss the implications for developers, leaders, and regulators in navigating this rapid evolution. Key Topics AI as a force multiplier for intelligence...

Discover how seasoned software engineer and MSP veteran Tim Winstanley leverages over 40 years of experience to navigate the rapid shifts in AI and software development. He shares practical insights on integrating AI into business processes, evolving from traditional coding to managing AI-driven automation, and the importance of experience in an era of commoditized code. In this episode:   Tim's j...

In this episode, Paul Rhodes discusses the importance of overcoming the trust gap in AI and how businesses can start integrating AI into their operations. He emphasizes the need for incremental changes and finding quick wins rather than attempting to automate everything at once. The conversation also touches on the evolving role of AI in coding and traditional businesses, using examples from Spoti...