Working Code

Latest Episodes:

144: The Power of One Sep 13, 2023

Show notes

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.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

143: Moving On, Rewriting, Replatforming Sep 06, 2023

Show notes

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 here.

142: Tangents All the Way Down Aug 30, 2023

Show notes

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.

141: Building Stuff So You Can Build Stuff Aug 23, 2023

Show notes

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.

140: Fraud, What is it Good For? Aug 16, 2023

Show notes

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.

139: New Tables vs New Columns Aug 09, 2023

Show notes

Early on in his career, Ben's default behavior was to add new database columns to any existing table that felt "similar enough" in nature. After years of evolving an application, however, this has lead to relatively wide tables with only a loose sense of cohesion. More recently in his career, Ben has started to err on the side of creating new tables in order to house new columns. While this approach adds complexity in some ways, it also reduces complexity in other ways and creates a more clearly defined data model. Or, so he hopes.

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.

138: Ben Goes Streaking Aug 02, 2023

Show notes

As Ben builds-out Dig Deep Fitness, he wants to include an "Activity Streak" indicator as a way for people to feel good about the consistent effort that they've been putting into their workouts. "Streaks", however, are bucketed by "day"; and, said "day" is specific to the user's current timezone experience. Historically, Ben has stored all of his application dates in UTC time; but, he senses that this won't be appropriate for "Activity Streak" tracking. As such, he turns to his brilliant Working Code co-hosts for their sagely advice.

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.

137: The Grug Brained Developer Jul 26, 2023

Show notes

This week on the show, we have Tim—our only host with screen acting experience—read from The Grug Brained Developer, "A layman's guide to thinking like the self-aware smol brained". This guide uses fun, caveman'esque language to point out the challenges and missteps that we often take in software development. And, how keeping things simple - for easy smol brain consumption - will often lead to better software outcomes.

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.

136: Words, Do They Matter? Jul 19, 2023

Show notes

Words aren't just the tools that we use to describe the world around us - they are rich layers of abstraction that carry our cultural histories, our education, and our social norms on their shoulders. When we have a shared understanding of a what a word or turn-of-phrase means, our ability to communicate with each other is robust and unparalleled. But, when our differences our great, we end up talking past each other and going around in circles. Words aren't just effective, they're magical. Take, for example, a simple analogy: "It's the movie JAWS, but with cats!" — this will immediately conjure up entire worlds within the mind of the listener. So, do words matter? You bet your donkey they do!

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.

135: Note To Self v0.3.0 Jul 12, 2023

Show notes

On today's episode, we invite you into another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. Ben's mind. Ben's sick, twisted cavern of decay and depravity wherein we gain insight into what actually makes this man tick. Topics include the slippery slope of the "Shift Left" mentality; over-complicating life with JWTs (JSON Web Tokens); dangerous public-on-public method invocation; and, the inherent cost of everything.

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.

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