Working Code

Latest Episodes:

035: Being a Swamp Guide Aug 11, 2021

Show notes

Software is never "done". And, as it continues to evolve over time, it often gathers a lot of accidental and essential complexity. This makes it harder to on-board new engineers into a legacy application (and a legacy organization). Enter swamp guides: the aged and battle-hardened staff who know where all the bodies are buried. These guides can hand-hold new team-members as they walk fresh-eyes through the fog of war, helping them to understand where everything lives and how everything works. And, hopefully, leave the swamp a little cleaner than they found it.

Notes & Links

Stack Overflow for Teams
Big Ball of Mud
Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or, leave us a message at (512) 253-2633‬ (that's 512-253-CODE). 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.

034: Some of My Best Friends Are React Developers! Aug 04, 2021

Show notes

This week, Adam talks about his "obnoxious optimism": his general tendency to believe that all problems can be solved and that everything will just sort of work itself out. This optimism allows him to take action and make decisions quickly. However, it also means that he may not be fully considering the future cost of his choices.

This is not uncommon in the programming world. Engineers are often criticized for choosing technologies based solely on their merits and almost never on their drawbacks. Of course, we don't want to be so cautious that all productivity grinds to a halt. The best possible scenario is to have a team with diverse personalities that can all temper each other. Every team needs an Adam; but, every team also needs a few curmudgeons.

Notes & Links

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

033: Software Patents Jul 28, 2021

Show notes

Do you write "new and original" code that is "useful" and has a "non-obvious function"? If so, your code may qualify for a patent. A patent can help prevent other people from using or selling your software. That said, which engineer among us isn't write new and original code every day? Software patents are weird and fuzzy and open for way too much interpretation. And, in the software industry, they seem to give "patent trolls" a lot of unpleasant leverage.

This week, the crew - which has absolutely no legal training whatsoever - talk about patents, copyrights, research & development tax credits, building software, job hopping, and best practices. And, if you don't care at all about software patents, level-up your view of the world with this quote from Adam:

People don't burn-out from too much work, they burn-out from too much unfulfilling work.

Notes & Links

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

032: What Comes After Senior Developer? Jul 21, 2021

Show notes

The world of web development is still a nascent industry. According to Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, the number of programmers roughly doubles every 5-years. Which means that most of the developers that you interact with are relatively new and relatively young. It's not often that you look around and see developers in their 40s, 50s, and beyond; because, frankly, the web - as we know it - isn't even that old.

Because of the ongoing evolution of our field, it can be unclear as to what a web developer's professional journey can or should look like. A lot of engineers seem to end up in management; but, for those of us that want to continue coding, what comes after Senior Developer? And, is climbing that technical ladder even something that you want to do?

This week, the crew talks about the career path of web developers; how some positions allow you to be a "force multiplier" and have a bigger impact; and, how dopamine affects your sense of work satisfaction.

Notes & Links

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

031: To The Cloud! But Why? Jul 14, 2021

Show notes

There is no one thing that is "The Cloud". Instead, there are a set of general characteristics that underscore cloud technologies: we can provision, deprovision, and scale resources at will; we don't need to manage those resources; and, we only pay for the resources that we use. But, even within this definition, there is a broad spectrum of technologies that more-or-less fit the bill. From Geocities, to managed hosting, to elastic clouds, to distributed edge-computing, lots of things kind of look like "The Cloud", depending on how hard you squint.

This week, the crew talks about what The Cloud is and why people are so keen to adopt it. And, of course, since nothing is truly free, we'll also take a look at the drawbacks of cloud-based architectures.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

030: Carol's Consult Catch-Up Conversation Jul 07, 2021

Show notes

Ten weeks ago, in Episode 20, Carol described a problem at work in which her customers were using Support Tickets as a means to look-up information in lieu of logging into the customer dashboard. This email-based workflow has been putting a large burden on the Support staff. And, Carol wanted to brainstorm on ways in which she could improve the overall situation and the efficiency of her team. Today, we circle back with Carol to see how it's going. Which is to say, to see just how hard Carol is crushing it!

It's amazing to see how much Carol has accomplished in just a few months. Topics include natural language processing, AWS SAM, AWS Lambda, AWS S3, AWS SNS, AWS EventBridge, AWS CloudWatcher, AWS Parameter Store, Sumo Logic, and much more! It's kind of mind-boggling to see it all coming together so quickly.

Notes & Links

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

029: Potluck #2 Jun 30, 2021

Show notes

This week on the podcast, the crew discusses various topics: What would you do as an engineer if you knew you couldn't get fired? What conscious and unconscious fears might be holding you back from executing on tasks that you know are important? What does a healthy work-life balance look like after Covid-19? Are you one of the estimated 40% of employees that are considering quitting their job now that they've had the opportunity to work from home? In an increasingly remote-friendly culture, how are you taking care of your employees and making them feel wanted? How do you stays focused at work when you're feeling stuck? What strategies for success can you employ when you hit a wall and can't seem to motivate?

All that and more on this week's show!

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

028: Buy vs. DIY Jun 23, 2021

Show notes

Engineers love to build things. Materializing an abstract concept into the form of a working piece of software is one of the most thrilling experiences available on planet earth. As such, we engineers often favor building new software over buying existing solutions. However, doing so takes time and energy; and, incurs a potentially-large opportunity cost for the business. It can be difficult to know if such a trade-off is worthwhile for the business in the long-run. This week, the crew examines the "build vs. buy" dilemma; and, reflects on their own general tendencies.

Notes & Links

Kent Beck: Test Driven Development By Example - a book that teaches programmers by example, so they can painlessly and dramatically increase the quality of their work.

Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or, leave us a message at (512) 253-2633‬ (that's 512-253-CODE). New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

027: Giving Technical Presentations Jun 16, 2021

Show notes

As Jerry Seinfeld joked, when it comes to funerals, most people would rather be the one in the casket than the one giving the eulogy. Because, public speaking isn't easy. And, for many, it's a source of great anxiety. A technical presentation takes that anxiety and compounds it by layering on a need to provide complicated information in an engaging way. Part deep-dive, part story telling, a compelling technical presentation has to present enough information on a topic so as to deliver meaningful take-aways while, at the same time, keeping the information light enough so as not to overwhelm the audience. This week, the crew discusses presentations that they've given. And, shares tips and tricks for making your presentation a real winner!

Triumphs & Failures

Adam's Triumph - Adam was keen to get into testing as a life-style. And, by golly, he's done it! His current project has 100% passing tests with 95% test coverage! He's also been writing blog posts on the topic of testing in order to help keep this momentum going.
Ben's Triumph - It doesn't necessarily feel like a "triumph" in the moment; but, Ben is excited to be giving his first tech presentation in maybe a decade. He has a lot of social anxiety. But, he wants to feel more connected to the larger programming community and he thinks that giving a presentation will help take him a step in that direction.
Carol's Triumph - Carol is winning life! She was selected to run in the Peach Tree Road Race and she's super excited to crush her previous race times! Go Carol!
Tim's Failure - Tim is struggling to bring operational readiness and predictable performance to a legacy system whose architecture and behavior seem to defy reason. He's at the point where a "big bang" rewrite feels like the most viable path forward. This is generally considered a taboo move in the tech industry; but, he's not sure how else he can stabilize the product and provide a good Service Level Agreement (SLA) to his customers.

Notes & Links

Patrick Winston: How to Speak - this talk, 40-years in the making, is intended to improve your speaking ability in critical situations by teaching you a few heuristic rules.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

026: Passwords Jun 09, 2021

Show notes

This week, the crew talks about passwords. Web applications store a great deal of sensitive information. But, there is something categorically different about storing passwords. Because—if compromised—a password from one application may grant a malicious actor access to another application. As such, it is essential that we store our customers' passwords using modern, one-way hashing algorithms that protect the underlying payload against increasingly powerful compute resources. And, that we have a way to evolve our password hashing strategies in order to stay a step ahead of potential attackers.

Of course, sometimes the best password hashing strategies is to not store a password at all. Using a "passwordless login" allows you to defer the responsibility of password storage off to another, trusted vendor.

Also, we've been doing this podcast for half-a-year! How awesome is that! Yay for us!

Triumphs & Failures

Adam's Failure - While Adam has been quite keen on Testing code, he recently ran into a testing scenario that he found very challenging. And, he ended up taking half-a-day to refactor already working code just so that he could add the tests. In the long run, it wasn't a waste of time; but, it was a very humbling experience in the moment.
Ben's Triumph - After weeks of struggling to debug an authentication issue within a Sketch plug-in, Ben and his team finally figured out what was going wrong! As fate would often have it, Ben was the engineer that originally wrote the problematic code - so, that was unfortunate. But, at least they figured out how to fix the user experience!
Carol's Failure - Carol has been having trouble walking away from problems even when she feels stuck. So, instead of stepping back and clearing her head, she continues to beat it against the wall (often to no avail). She knows this is counterproductive; but, sometimes she gets lost in the details.
Tim's Triumph / Failure - Tim finds himself coasting this week. Nothing has been all that note-worthy; either in triumph or in failure.

Notes & Links

OWASP Password Cheat Sheet - industry standard best practices for storing passwords - covers Argon2, BCrypt, SCrypt, and PBKDF2.
Have I Been Pwned - a service that tells you if your password has been exposed in a data breach.
1Password - the world's most-loved password manager.
Authy - a user-friendly two-factor authentication app.
Shibboleth - an identity provider solution.
OAuth - a standard for granting access to a website or application without having to provide it with your password.
SAML - a standard for exchanging authentication between parties.
Diceware - a method for generation secure, random passwords using playing dice.
NIST Password Guidelines - Auth0 explains new passwords guidelines from NIST.
Single Sign-On (SSO) - an authentication scheme in which one login grantes access to several, unrelated applications.
Netlify Identity Management - a solution for user management in a Netlify app.
Firebase Identity Management - a solution for user management in a Firebase app.
XKCD: Password Strength - A web comic about how we make passwords hard for people but easy for computers.