Working Code

267: Prove You Are Human 16.07.2026 53мин

Tim is trying to hire remote developers, but the interviews have started to feel like one long CAPTCHA. Before he can decide who's right for the job, he has to figure out whether he's interviewing the candidate or ChatGPT. This week the hosts discuss the state of remote developer interviews in the AI era. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Mostly Technical #29: “Super Epic Crazy” — the source of the cover-letter story about most applicants missing simple instructions Roberto Serrano on AI fraud at Brown University — the course whose take-home exams triggered the in-class-final story With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/267-prove-you-are-human/

266: Strugglemaxing 09.07.2026 49мин

They say history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, and apparently so do show topics. A year on from our episode on the value of friction, the crew are back to discuss value of struggle. The question this time: now that AI will cheerfully do the hard part for you, which struggles are worth keeping, and which you can finally hand off? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Ronny Chieng's Harvard Class Day speech — the "your generation's job is to kill AI" address. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/266-strugglemaxing/

265: Knowing When to Stop 02.07.2026 53мин

Eighteen weeks ago Adam handed his decade-old ORM layer to an AI agent. This week he kills the whole refactor — and the feeling that comes isn't regret, it's relief. Somewhere in the grind he realized he'd only ever weighed two options, push through or admit defeat, and both assumed he had to see it to the end. This week is about sunk cost — how being partway down a road can convince you that you owe it the rest of the way, and how freeing it is to decide you don't. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: 249: 10 Years of Tech Debt — where Adam first handed the ORM layer to an agent With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/265-knowing-when-to-stop/

264: Look Busy, Claude's Working 18.06.2026 1ч 1мин

The promise was that AI would take the grunt work off your plate and leave you the good stuff. This week is the part no one advertised: you got into this to make things — but what comes instead is the restless guilt of sitting there with nothing to do while the agent works, and the slow realization that when it finishes, the job left for you is mostly reviewing. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: xkcd: "Compiling" With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/264-look-busy-claudes-working/

263: Intimacy with the Code 11.06.2026 1ч 6мин

Getting unstuck has gotten so cheap that Ben can't remember the last time he actually learned something at work — and the struggle he's skipping was where knowing the code, and caring about it, used to come from. This week is a conversation about what software craftsmanship even means anymore, when the tools are happy to do the caring for you. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/263-intimacy-with-the-code/

262: Zen and the Art of AI-Driven Maintenance 06.06.2026 1ч 2мин

This week is the quiet worry underneath all the productivity gains: that every time you hand the boring work to a machine, you're handing over a little of the curiosity that made you good at the work you care about, until one day the well of ideas just runs dry. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Taffy — the REST framework for ColdFusion and Lucee Rest Assured by Adam Tuttle Postman Engineering Explained With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/262-zen-and-the-art-of-ai-driven-maintenance/

261: The Ben Turing Test 28.05.2026 1ч 2мин

Adam trained an AI on twenty years of Ben's blog, then asked Ben to pick his own words out of a lineup of forgeries. This week the hosts play a game of Ben or Bot, and you can play along too! Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Play "Ben's Blog or AI?" yourself The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans MassTransit With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/261-the-ben-turing-test/

260: Reinventing the Wiki 23.05.2026 1ч

What's the point of a personal wiki when AI agents have already read the entire internet? This week is about patterns for co-maintaining a personal wiki with an AI agent, and where its job ends and yours begins. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Karpathy's LLM Wiki gist With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/260-reinventing-the-wiki/

259: Walling Off Your Mental Garden 14.05.2026 1ч 5мин

This week is a philosophical conversation about what you let into your head — the podcasts, the influencers, the political figures, the friends — and the difference between a snapshot you can hold at arm's length and a living relationship you're quietly being shaped by. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Fritz Haber (YouTube) With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/259-walling-off-your-mental-garden/

258: On the AI of It All 07.05.2026 57мин

Adam wrote a blog post this week about why AI keeps making him feel worse. This week is an honest conversation about the hypocrite's bind: needing to use the thing you recognize the harm of, and what that does to you. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. Mentioned in this episode: Adam's blog post: "On the AI of It All" Impeccable Style Mental Notes With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/258-on-the-ai-of-it-all/

257: We Solved Everything 30.04.2026 1ч 9мин

"We have solved all of the world's problems." Observability past the point where more logs stop helping, continuous deployment when the customer is the federal government and the change-management board is a real room with real people in it, JSON's loose schema as a load-bearing feature rather than a quirk to apologise for, and the awkward question of who actually owns the code you wrote on a work-issued machine. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/257-we-solved-everything/

256: The Productivity Trap: How Optimizing Everything Broke Us 23.04.2026 47мин

It's 11:30 PM and you're still prompting. The code is better than anything you'd have shipped a year ago. The output is prolific, the roadmap is moving, the tooling is miraculous. So why are you still here at 11:30 PM? This week is an honest conversation about the strange shape of burnout in the AI era — the productivity that keeps compounding, the bar that keeps rising right along with it, and the quiet feeling that somewhere in the last year the craft stopped feeling quite like yours. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/256-the-productivity-trap/

255: AI in the Streets 09.04.2026 1ч 1мин

You spend all day steering AI through code. Then you step outside and it's steering everything else. AI is listening to therapy sessions and suggesting treatments to your therapist. Your spouse is arguing with a chatbot about where Savannah, Georgia is. You call a company for help and get handed from one AI pretending to be human to another AI pretending to be human. The crew has been noticing it everywhere, and this week they compare notes on what it actually feels like when AI stops being a tool you chose and starts being a thing that just happens to you. Links mentioned in the show: hairstyles.net RunPee.com Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/255-ai-in-the-streets/

254: Claudependent 02.04.2026 53мин

The productivity gains are real. So is the nagging feeling that something else might be happening. The crew use AI every day, and this week they sit with a question they can't quite shake: when the tool handles more and more of the thinking, what does that do to the person using it? Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/254-claudependent/

253: The Adversarial Agents Are Arguing Again 26.03.2026 1ч 6мин

What if the best way to get good work out of AI is to stop being nice to it? Adam and Tim have both landed on the same uncomfortable discovery: when you pit AI agents against each other, with fake points, opposing incentives, and competing models, the output gets dramatically better than anything a single polite prompt can produce. Adam's bug-hunting pipeline hands fake rewards to sycophantic agents and then throws the scores in the trash. Tim made Claude and ChatGPT argue for twelve rounds straight until they both said "ship it". Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/253-the-adversarial-agents-are-arguing-again/

252: Meet Showbot 19.03.2026 1ч 2мин

Tim spent a single Sunday afternoon with Claude and built Show Bot -- a sarcastic Discord bot trained on every Working Code transcript, complete with a Dungeon Crawler Carl personality, fallacy detection badges, and a talent for roasting anyone who tries to prompt-inject it. The conversation turns into a deep technical walkthrough of RAG pipelines, local models, cross-encoder reranking, and what happens when you just start building things that make you laugh. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/252-meet-showbot/

251: Ben vs. Tests 12.03.2026 1ч 3мин

Testing sounds simple until you actually try it. Private methods that can't be reached without hacks. Dependency injection that doubles your architecture's complexity before a single assertion runs. Production code that slowly warps around your test suite instead of the other way around. Ben has spent his entire career shipping code without tests, and this week he decided to change that. The crew walks him through every trap he steps on, and a few they've been stuck in themselves. Links Ben Nadel's Blog Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/251-ben-vs-tests/

250: Stuff, Things, WIP: Commit Messages 06.03.2026 47мин

Do commit messages even matter anymore, or did pull requests kill them? Ben works one commit per PR and thinks the commit message is the PR description. Carol and Tim put all the context in the PR and treat commits as disposable breadcrumbs. Adam's somewhere in between — when he's not pushing thirty knife emojis and "nope, still not working" to QA. Meanwhile, Tim's back from emergency eye surgery with a gas bubble floating around his eyeball. Links Ben Nadel's Blog Conventional Commits Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/250-stuff-things-wip-commit-messages/

249: 10 Years of Tech Debt 26.02.2026 1ч 13мин

For ten years, Adam's codebase has carried an ORM layer that everybody knew was wrong and nobody was touching. Nine hundred functions. Fifteen hundred files. The kind of job that gets solemnly nodded at in architecture meetings and quietly dies on the roadmap — every single year. So he stopped waiting for a volunteer and handed it to an AI agent instead. Claude's problem now. Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/249-10-years-of-tech-debt/

248: AI All the Way Down 12.02.2026 1ч 1мин

Ben had been riding high on vibe coding—throwaway scripts, zero attachment, pure productivity magic. Then he tried the same approach on a project he actually cares about and watched that 10x feeling crater to something closer to 10%. The bottleneck, it turns out, was never the typing. The hosts dig into what it feels like to let go of code you used to care about, whether "write-only code" is actually the future, and the growing gap between building software and keeping it alive. Links Vibe Coding by Gene Kim & Steve Yegge - The audiobook on AI-assisted development 1Password: From Magic to Malware - How OpenClaw's agent skills became a supply chain attack surface TLDR Newsletter - Source of the "write-only code" concept Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday. 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: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/248-ai-all-the-way-down/

Working Code

Епизоде

Популаран у

Working Code

Епизоде

Слични подкасти

Популаран у