Maintainable

About

Feel like you’re hitting a wall with your existing software projects? You're not alone. On the Maintainable software podcast, we speak with seasoned practitioners who have worked past the problems often associated with technical debt and legacy code. In each episode, our guests will share stories and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability. We're in this together. Enjoy the show!

Martin Emde - Ruby Central and the Art of Being Tolerant to Change
Join Robby as he dives deep with Martin Emde into the intertwined world of maintainable software, the crucial role of testing, and the vibrant life of open-source projects within the Ruby ecosystem. Discover the heartbeat of legacy code and the rallying cry for community contributions.
Esther Olatunde - AI's Role in Evolving Software Engineering Practices
In this eye-opening episode, Robby dives deep with Esther Olatunde, exploring the nuances of well-maintained software and the balance between user satisfaction and developer ease. They also venture into the future of AI in software development and share tips on advocating for essential maintenance work.
Robbie Wagner - Whiskey, Front-End, and Whatnot
Dive into a world where code and whiskey collide! Join Robby Russell as he chats with Robbie Wagner about the art of maintaining software, the quirky realities of tech debt, and their shared love for a good rye. It's a conversation that's as rich and complex as the whiskey they savor. Don't miss out!
Irina Nazarova - Investing in Innovation: The Consultancy's Guide to Growth
In this episode, Robby Russell sits down with Irina Nazarova, CEO of Evil Martians, to peel back the layers of leading a software consultancy, the essence of maintainable software, and the journey from open-source projects to commercial success. Dive into a discussion filled with insights on balancing innovation with maintainability, the evolution of a consultancy, and the art of turning challenges into opportunities.
Kyle Daigle - Scaling Up with AI: A New Era of Code Maintenance
Robby has a chat with Kyle Daigle, the Chief Operating Officer at GitHub, about the evolution of software development from the perspective of maintaining and scaling software within large organizations, the balance between innovative and maintainable software,the significance of simplicity, readability, and clear naming conventions in software development, drawing on his experiences at GitHub and so much more.
Jon Moniaci - Can We Draw A Boundary?
Robby speaks to the Senior Software Engineer at Perchwell, Jon Moniaci, about the delicate balance between innovation and stability in software development, the importance of fostering an environment where engineers can experiment without fear, advocating for a culture of defensive programming to mitigate the fear of breaking things in production, and so much more.
Chad Fowler - How Small Can We Make This Problem
Robby has a candid chat with Chad Fowler, the General Partner & CTO at BlueYard Capital, about the importance of building software in small, manageable pieces to facilitate easy updates or replacements, the counterintuitive perspective on unit testing's impact on maintainability, strategies for keeping software up-to-date by redeploying to new platforms, and so much more.
John Nunemaker - How Scary Is This Change?
Robby has a conversation with John Nunemaker, the Owner at "Box Out Sports" and "Fewer & Faster", about the crucial importance of keeping dependencies and versions up to date when maintaining software projects, the benefits of using tools like Dependabot to help with dependency management, how dangerous a change is from a dependency, how John enjoys seeking out the dark corners of a codebase to improve those areas, and much more. Stay tuned!
Jemma Issroff - Running the Parser in the Rain
Robby has a conversation with Jemma Issroff, a Senior Software Engineer, speaker and the author of the book, “Ruby Garbage Collection in Under Two Hours”, about the contrasting dynamics of maintaining software in C versus Ruby, their approaches to utilizing advanced tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot in their respective workflows, Jemma’s upcoming transition into the realm of artificial intelligence, and much more.
Jeanine Soterwood - Helping Clients Understand Maintenance Work
Robby has a chat with the Software Development Team Lead at Thoughtbot, Jeanine Soterwood, about the intricacies of Ruby on Rails, how to be a commendable guest in another team's code base, navigating the challenge of conveying that software is an ever-evolving entity, the nuances of pairing with junior developers, and so much more.
Andrew Atkinson - Maintainable... Databases?
Robby engages with independent consultant and author, Andrew Atkinson, delving into the intricate world of software development and database maintenance. The episode is a treasure trove of insights, covering everything from optimizing database performance with rules to navigating the tricky terrain of advocating for codebase improvements in the face of reluctant stakeholders.
Jimmy Koppel - Aspects of Good Code
Robby engages in a captivating conversation with the CEO at Mirdin and UpToSpeed, Jimmy Koppel, about the transformative power of evolvable code, shedding light on its myriad benefits and how it contributes to an enriching coding experience. They will also explore the external qualities of code and the profound impact of crafting code that is not just functional, but a joy to work with. Tune in for that and more.
Hila Fish - Maintainable Infrastructure Code, Culture, and Documentation
Robby has a chat with Senior DevOps Engineer, Hila Fish about the key characteristics of maintainable infrastructure code, tactics for giving software engineering teams enough space to explore while still providing guardrails before pushing things to production, providing engineers with useful metrics and dashboards to measure their load and stress tests, hiring for potential versus hiring for expertise, and so much more.
Jacob Aronoff - At Least One Person Who Cares To See It Through
Robby has a chat with Staff Software Engineer at Lightstep from ServiceNow, Jacob Aronoff, about the vital signs of a thriving open source software project, the importance of a passionate community behind such projects, why understanding an open source project's own dependencies is crucial before adopting it, the nuances of evaluating a project's health through performance metrics, the organizational dynamics of the OpenTelemetry community, and so much more.
Oliver Drotbohm - Modulithic Applications
Robby has a chat with Oliver Drotbohm, a Staff 2 Engineer at VMware, about the essence of maintainable software and why understandability and modifiability are its foundational pillars, the historical context of technical debt and its relevance in today's fast-paced software development environment, the critical role that clear documentation of architecture design decisions plays, and much more. Tune in and enjoy!
Colin Campbell - The Daily Habits of Effective Engineers
Robby has a chat with Colin Campbell, the Director of Engineering at Tucows, about the professional ethos of software development and why the caliber of an engineer’s work is a reflection of their daily habits, the importance of humility for software engineers, the strategic approach of doing nothing during Sprint Zero, the practical aspects of software engineering, and so much more.
Dave Bryant Copeland - Quantifying the Carrying Cost
Robby has a chat with the Author of Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails, Dave Bryant Copeland (he/him/his), about writing software that people understand how it works, the challenges that developers face when trying to retrofit software with more testing, how software engineers should engage with the experienced practitioners who advice them, and so much more. Stay tuned!
Cameron Jacoby - Am I Learning From This?
Robby has a chat with Cameron Jacoby (she/her/hers), a Senior Full-Stack Engineer at BetterUp, about software engineering topics such as why procedural code can often be easier to communicate with, the importance of having helpful data metrics for most new features one works on, real-world approaches to tracking metrics for monitoring purposes, and the benefits of using feature flags, especially within internal-facing software applications.
Adriana Villela - On Being a Serial Refactorer
Robby has a chat with Adriana Villela, a Senior Developer Advocate at Lightstep, about coding software “beautifully”, why she values being a serial refactorer, the importance of a debugger, her involvement with the OpenTelemetry project and the standardization of observability protocols, trace-based testing, and so much more. Tune in to benefit from the software engineering wisdom she had to share.
Ahmed Wasfy - Thriving as an Engineering Manager
Robby has a chat with Ahmed Wasfy, the Senior Development Manager at Amazon, (he/him/his), about why software should serve a purpose in terms of what values it adds and the trackable business goal it fulfills, legacy code 101, proper management of technical debt, how to strike a good balance between new feature development and incremental improvements, challenges that large organizations face when recruiting a lot of engineers in a short period of time, and much more.

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Episodes