Working Code

Latest Episodes:

104: Alexa Make A Podcast About AI Dec 07, 2022

Show notes

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 "generative art", and complex software modules being created from simple prompts.

It seems that AI/ML is advancing at a breakneck speed, leveraging a rich Venture Capital (VC) space driven by a "move fast and break things" mentality. This can be really effective at creating change; but, we're also seeing lots of AI models becoming so big and so complex that no one really understand how they work. Which is problematic when such models take on the inherently biased tendencies of their creators and moderators.

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.

103: Birdsite Go Boom Nov 30, 2022

Show notes

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 accounts that created a swing in the stock market, it's safe to say that it's been a poop show. It's also pulled-back the curtain, revealing Elon Musk to be more "toxic boss" and less "technology genius".

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.

102: Upgrading MySQL For Poop Emojis Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

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 nights, indexes, and UTF-8 character encodings, oh my!

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.

101: Error - Error Message Not Helpful! Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

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 user. Luckily, Tim has some very practical guidance on the matter that he shares with us on this week's show:

Error messages sent to the end user need to have an appropriate tone, be free of tech jargon and shouldn't pass the blame. They say what happened and why, provide reassurance, be empathetic, tell them how to fix it (if possible) and give them a course for remediation (customer service, support ticket).

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.

100: The Spicetacular! Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

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 the most masochistic way possible, we've decided to ignite our guts and destroy our butts with a Hot Ones-inspired Spicetacular! Come for the AMA (Ask Me Anything) and stay for the schadenfreude!

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.

099: Technical Debt Isn’t Always A Choice. Or Is It? Nov 02, 2022

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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 public, they often try to use financial metaphors; such as taking out a loan in order to buy a house.

These financial metaphors romanticize the notion of technical debt, elevating it into the realm of calculated decision making. But, if we're being honest without ourselves, is any kind of calculation really taking place? Or, are we just trying to do the best that we can with the knowledge and experience that we have? In other words, isn't most technical debt really just the result of engineers writing janky code at the limit of our capabilities?

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.

098: In Defense Of Working On The Legacy Platform Oct 26, 2022

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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. However, over the years, he's become increasingly aggressive about adding features and actively improving the legacy experience. This has caused no shortage of controversy both internally to the company, and more broadly within the Working Code community. In this episode, Adam plays Devil's advocate and gets Ben to justify a mode over operation that seems to be - at times - in opposition to his company's larger goals.

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.

097: Expectations Of Professional Software Engineers Oct 19, 2022

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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 making you and your team fit for building products and dealing with customers. Some of these line-items makes us feel seen while others leave us feeling attacked. Listen to find out which ones are which!

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.

096: Why Do You Write? Oct 12, 2022

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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 advent of Social Media, along with the doubling of new programmers every 5-years, has certainly created a contentious relationship with long-form content. And, is at times, antithetical to our hope of bringing readers along for the journey.

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.

095: Potluck #6 - Unpopular Opinions Edition Oct 05, 2022

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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 (which are dumb), relational databases (which are stupendous), the technical ability of an executive leadership team (which is important), the user experience (UX) of forms (which is often over-thought), automated deployments (which should be based on tags), and code duplication (which can certainly be the right approach).

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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