What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company’s fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company culture, and a critical incident that put his principles to the test against the company’s push for speed. Chris’s story highlights the tension between the need for innovation and the importance of project health. This all led Chris to a pivotal decision:...
Mar 04, 2024•48 min•Ep 98•Transcript available on Metacast Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You’ll hear how he revolutionized research computing by showing physicists the power of profilers. How he taught grad students the elegance of s...
Feb 02, 2024•57 min•Ep 97•Transcript available on Metacast What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt his ind and body from scratch - relearning to read, write, even speak. A serendipitous discovery of coding ignited a new passion within Jason. He dove into the world of Python, even writing a popular programming book. His is a story of the incredible ...
Jan 02, 2024•44 min•Ep 96•Transcript available on Metacast From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation. Evan started Vue.js while working at Google, just wanting to scratch his own itch for a lightweight JavaScript framework. But soon Vue started to gain a huge following. Eventually Evan then faced a tough dilemma - should he take a leap of faith and devote himself fully to his fledgling open sou...
Dec 04, 2023•46 min•Ep 95•Transcript available on Metacast How did Spotify scale from 10 engineers to 100s to 1000s ...without slowing down? Without becoming corporate? Facing an IPO deadline, Pia Nilsson worked with 300 teams to transform how Spotify built software. She spearheaded a movement that led them from working in silos to a unified developer platform. Hear the inside story of how Spotify's Platform teams embraced transparency and customer focus to create Backstage — now used by companies worldwide. It's an amazing tale of ingenuity and perseve...
Nov 02, 2023•49 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast Lost treasure. Conspiracy theories. Impossible tech demos. Jan Sloot claimed to have invented revolutionary data compression that could fit a full movie into a tiny smart card chip. Top executives and investors witnessed his demos and became true believers, ready to bankroll this company into the stratosphere. But was it all an elaborate illusion? Join me as I unravel the perplexing story of Jan Sloot, the eccentric Dutch TV repairman who dazzled the tech world with his compression claims. Disco...
Oct 02, 2023•52 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we go behind the scenes at Chef - the game changing infrastructure automation tool. Adam Jacob created Chef, and it became a massively popular DevOps tool. But despite Chef's success, Adam constantly battled self-doubt and finding his footing as a leader. In this raw episode, Adam shares how the pressure of going from sysadmin to startup CEO caused an identity crisis. He opens up about the motivational speech that left him in tears, realizing his self-worth was too tied to Chef's outcomes...
Sep 01, 2023•43 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast Learning to code can feel impossible. Like facing a sheer rock wall with no ropes or harnesses. But what if there was a path up the mountain? A trail blazed smooth by master coders who went before? In this episode, we'll follow that path. We'll hear the stories of legends like Seymour Papert, who championed active, project-based learning. Of Fred Brooks, who discovered that pairing accelerates learning. And more. The research shows that with the right methods, motivation, and support, anyone can...
Aug 02, 2023•51 min•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever been frustrated with your job? Maybe not burnt out, but getting close to there? You used to love what you did, and it felt so creative and empowering, but then it starts to feel a bit more cookie cutter. Have you ever been frustrated with your whole life? The daily grind has taken what you love and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. Some of the magic just has slowly faded away. You don't know when it started, but it did. Today's guest is Amir Rajan. He's hard to describe. Is he...
Jul 03, 2023•41 min•Ep 90•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we meet Ben Dumke-von der Ehe, one of the early developers on the Stack Overflow team. He was on the front lines as the platform transformed how programmers worked. And he embodies the spirit of Stack Overflow: Its transparency, playfulness, and even some of its struggles to be as welcoming and friendly as it should be. But you'll see what I mean. So stick around as Ben takes us on a journey through the building of Stack Overflow. Get ready for a candid inside look at the creation of a pl...
Jun 02, 2023•53 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast How do you accomplish something massive over time? I've had the chance to meet with a number of exceptional software developers and it's something I always wonder about. Today, I might have an answer with the incredible story of Yann Collet. Yann was a project manager who went from being burnt out on corporate life to becoming one of the most sought-after developers in the world. What happens when you build something so impressive and valuable that it essentially becomes invisible? And how do yo...
May 02, 2023•59 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast Today's guest is Douglas Crockford. He's sharing the story of JSON, his discovery of JavaScript's good parts, and his approach to finding a simple way to build software. Also, his battles against XML, against complexity, his battles to say that there's a better way to build software. This is foundational stuff for the web, and Doug is an iconoclast Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Apr 03, 2023•50 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast Shai Almog worked at Sun on Mobile JVMs just as phones started to turn from phones into something else. Sun had deep expertise in mobile development, and amazing engineering driven culture and relationships with manufacturers and operators. And yet interal politics and the collapse of its server market made it hard to get things done. At Sun, as the mobile market changed, Shai and his friend Chen Fishbein launched a popular UI toolkit. Today Shai shares their struggles at Sun and after it to sha...
Mar 02, 2023•52 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast I've been on many projects that get canceled. We're building cool stuff. We're going above and beyond, and we're excited. But the project encounters reality, shifting priorities, or budgeting constraints, and the work never goes anywhere. It always feels tragic, but then I move on. But what if I didn't let a project get canceled? What if I couldn't accept that? That is what Ron Avitzur's story is all about. He is the creator of "Graphing Calculator," and he would not let it be canceled. Episode ...
Feb 02, 2023•47 min•Ep 85•Transcript available on Metacast Nothing good comes from being insecure about your worth, especially at your job. That's what today's episode is about. That's what today's guest is here to discuss. It's a slow burn, but if you listen to the end, I think you will value yourself more professionally. My Guest is Don Mckay. Someone longtime listeners will undoubtedly know. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Jan 02, 2023•42 min•Ep 84•Transcript available on Metacast Today Rebecca Burger Becky Heineman shares the tale of porting Doom to the 3DO console under extreme conditions. There is an engine to tweak, deadlines to hit, hardware acceleration to get working, and dramatic rock anthems to record. We also learn about how game piracy led her to game development and what it was like to do game development in the mania of the mid-nineties. Finally, we close with Becky's advice on learning bare metal development skills. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To...
Dec 02, 2022•45 min•Ep 83•Transcript available on Metacast Today story is from Son Luong Ngoc who shares what’s it was like for him to work and live in many different countries around the world, including working for AliBaba at the Xixi campus in Hangzhou, China. It’s a story of a software developer finding a place that fits them, a place that suits them. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Nov 02, 2022•49 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast What could you accomplish if your teammates were all excited and determined to hit some project timelines? What is it like for a group of people to give it all they have? That's what today is about. Chet Haase from the Android team is here to share the story of the early days of Android, the mobile operating system that powers the majority of phones worldwide. We'll cover the years from 2005 to around 2011. It's a wild story. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsle...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons. Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in prison for second degree murder. Rick killed somebody and for some that's all they need to know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to redemption him, teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter, and then getting out a...
Sep 02, 2022•47 min•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast CPAN was the first open-source software module repository. And on this day, Aug 1st, in 1995, CPAN was first announced to a private group of PERL users. If you are building things today by pulling in various packages from various open source places – and really, who isn’t – then the history of how this world came to be is essential. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Aug 01, 2022•56 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast I recently got an email from Jeff Shrager, who said he'd been working hard to solve a mystery about some famous code. Eliza, the chatbot, was built in 1964, and she didn't answer questions like Alexa or Siri. She asked questions. She was a therapist chatbot and quickly became famous after being described in a 1964 paper. But here is the mystery. We're not sure how the original version worked. Joseph Weizenbaum never released the code. But Jeff tracked it down, and some of the things we thought w...
Jul 05, 2022•44 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news: "Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width." You probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people started to disagree. The posts spread around the internet. So that is going to be today's show: Let's answer this question. It's a question about traditions and teamwork, and how preexisting idioms shape us and help us, but sometimes restrict us. Episode Page Supp...
Jun 01, 2022•39 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever had a unique approach to a problem and been excited to use it, but you're met with skepticism? Today's story: what happens if you take someone who's passionate about LISP and put them in an organization where that's just not how they write software. Today's story is about getting LISP into space. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
May 02, 2022•38 min•Ep 76•Transcript available on Metacast On this day in 2014 "lame april fools' jokes" were banned from hacker news. Today in our first This-Day-in-History segment, I want to share some of history not just of April Fools', but of tech pranks in general, all leading up to 2014. Why were pranks and April Fools' jokes traditionally celebrated in tech? Why are they now considered as dang said, "lame?"? And is there anything we can do to save them? Those are today's questions. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The ...
Apr 01, 2022•39 min•Ep 75•Transcript available on Metacast Whenever I work on a side project, I can't help but daydream of it taking off in a big way. For today's guests, something like that did happen. When Nadia started building her side project, she didn't know that it would end up spreading virally. She didn't know that it would end up competing with an Amazon product. She didn't know that keeping it up would be something that would drive her close to tears. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Mar 02, 2022•48 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast How would you build an operating system? My answer is I wouldn't. First off, I don't know how. And the second thing is it seems like to large of a task. It took thousands of developers to build Windows XP. But actually, it is possible to build an operating system from scratch. My guest is doing it. Andreas Kling created SerenityOS starting from an empty Git repository. So today, I find out how he did it, how this is possible. But mainly today, I find out why. Why build an operating system from s...
Feb 01, 2022•41 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast Today, I have two of my favorite guests together: Krystal Maughan and Don McKay. We are going to be sharing strange and interesting facts about computing. I'm super pumped about this because, sometimes, I learn something new, and I'm excited about it. And I want to tell people about it. And so today is a chance for Don and Krystal and I to share some of these "Oh, my God. Did you guys see this?" stories. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter...
Jan 02, 2022•42 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast The last episode, I said I wasn't sure there was such a thing as culture, but that's not the case. Every place I've worked has been a bit different, and often those differences had huge impacts on the software we built. The team where people roll their eyes at UX feedback will not have as simple of a product as a team where the user experience is highly valued. If software performance isn't valued, the end result won't be performant. Today, I found an expert on observing developer cultures. Hans...
Dec 02, 2021•44 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s story is an insider view of Debian. One of the oldest Linux distributions and probably one of the longest-running volunteer-based open-source projects. Joey Hess is my guest, and he dedicated significant parts of his adult life to working on Debian. He’s going to share what that was like. The good and the bad, and it’s almost all good. It’s a story about open source software, but it’s also about community and teamwork Links: Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The...
Nov 02, 2021•40 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is about remote work. Well, sort of. I found someone with a different perspective on remote work and a fantastic story to share, Paul Lutus. I think that he might be the original remote software developer. He left California behind for a lower cost of living in Oregon. And from Oregon, he developed software for Apple. But the kind of surprising thing is he did this in the 1970s! And he did it so well he became rich and even briefly quite famous. Episode Page Subscribe To Podcast ...
Oct 04, 2021•41 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast 
