Special guest Brian Genisio from Khan Academy joins us to talk about their 3.5 year rewrite that successfully wrapped up this year. Learn how Brian’s team was able to achieve the nearly impossible act of successfully completing a rewrite using many of the techniques we’ve talked about in the past, plus some brand new ones! If you want to learn about what it takes to do a rewrite, buckle up!
Oct 26, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 25
AI tools can now write your incident retrospectives. Do developers lose by not formalizing their thoughts by writing? In this episode Isaac and Jeffrey weigh the pros and cons of having AI write incident retrospectives and documentation.
Oct 20, 2023•20 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Senior DevOps Engineer Rob Gonnella joins us in this special episode to live workshop an example of a rewrite case he believes is valid.
Sep 22, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Jeffrey has been running an iterative refactoring workshop to improve his colleague’s development skills. This episode dives into how the workshop is run, what the developers get out of it, and how it directly improves the company’s codebase. If you’ve ever wanted to help your fellow developers but didn’t know how to start, this show is for you!
Sep 14, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 22
In this episode Isaac defines impostor syndrome and ways to combat the feelings that you aren't qualified for your job.
Sep 08, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Sometimes companies shrink instead of grow, and that impacts your work, your team, and your career. In this episode we discuss what to expect from a shrinking company.
Aug 31, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Jeffrey identifies a strategy we employed in a previous project that helped us dramatically improve the experience of 90% of our customers without requiring a complete rewrite of an email sending engine.
Aug 25, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Isaac discusses strategies he's used to help companies upgrade their software, and Jeffrey helps distill them into a series of steps.
Aug 12, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In this episode Jeffrey discusses a f*ck-up of his own for this special 'F*ck-Up Friday' series - how a develop lost $1 billion (just for a little while).
Jul 28, 2023•19 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Jeffrey suggests using a straw man to help facilitate difficult conversations about how to proceed; Isaac adds further examples and methods by which teams can generate productive conversations.
Jul 21, 2023•13 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode Jeffrey brings up red flag development ideas that should make you second guess whether or not you're making the right decision for your product.
Jul 07, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 15
In this episode Isaac and Jeffrey discuss the concept of a product MVP and misconceptions around what a 'minimum viable product' has to be.
Jun 29, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Josh Beckman is our guest in this episode where we talk about his experience in successfully transitioning multiple micro services back into a monolith - and why it was the right decision.
Jun 14, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode we re-visit the talks about company culture, this time with guest speaker Thomas Morris.
Jun 07, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode Jeffrey talks about an old manager who never seemed to be content with his deliverables, even if he met the acceptance criteria exactly. Isaac adds more to the conversation around managers that are too strict versus managers that are too aloof.
Jun 01, 2023•25 min
In this episode Jeffrey and Isaac discuss the common phases of a rewrite cycle, and how iteration eliminates complexity.
May 24, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In Episode 9 we start our first of many 'F*ck-up Fridays', where we talk about an interesting or crazy thing that has happened to a company we've worked at. Today Isaac talks about an early startup he worked for that ultimately failed after its customers were raided by the FBI.
May 19, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Brian Begy is a guest in this week's episode. Brian shares his experience with companies that have attempted to transform software built for internal processes to using and selling it as a service.
May 11, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Jeffrey brings up the concept of risk in this episode, tying it back to our previous conversation with guests Nathan Keyes and Colleen Grafton in Episode 4 where we discussed their project 'Nozomi'.
May 03, 2023•21 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode Isaac and Jeffrey discuss patterns they've seen in both highly performant and poorly-performing teams - how team culture is shaped, how overall company culture helps shape it, and why trust is one of the most important drivers of great teams.
Apr 27, 2023•51 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Jeffrey introduces the concept of 'perverse incentives' for rewriting - reasons for rewriting that are pushed not for a better product or for the customer, but for the benefit of the engineer or the manager responsible for the project.
Apr 19, 2023•19 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this episode Isaac and Jeffrey invite Colleen Grafton and Nathan Keyes to talk about a shared experience of a rewrite gone wrong - and what to learn from it.
Apr 13, 2023•45 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In this episode Isaac talks about his early experience understanding the importance of testing, and reflects on three distinct reasons why testing seems to be hated by developers.
Apr 08, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In this episode we provide an alternative to rewriting a codebase from scratch: iteratively replacing bits of functionality over time.
Mar 22, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In our pilot episode of “Never Rewrite”, we discuss what we mean when we tell developers to never rewrite code. Isaac reflects on what drives engineers to rewrite, and Jeffrey adds some real-world analogies involving baseball and New York stadiums.
Mar 16, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 1
