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They’re not quite as exciting as pastries, but flaky tests are an important part of the programming process. Flaky tests are those frustrating tests that both pass and fail periodically without any changes to code, and finding the crux of the problem can be time-consuming, confusing, and sometimes costly.

In today’s episode, we’re going to dive straight into some prototyping tips and tricks, what you should do and should not do, and best practices to keep in mind.

While 2020 has been a messy year for all, today we get into the Thanksgiving spirit by celebrating the top things in tech that we’re most grateful for.

Can you imagine a world where you can fast-track your idea, turn it into a feature-filled app, and perfect its development with speed and technical finesse? For Stephen Meriwether, that future is now. As today’s guest, Stephen talks to us about single-page apps, prototyping, and how he uses his skills and experience to help small businesses and entrepreneurs build products.

It’s the middle of the night and you are lying in bed when you get a lightning-strike idea. You reach for your phone and type your idea into Google only to discover that someone has beat you to it. Today we speak about this common scenario and answer the question — should you start something new when all the good ideas have been taken? As we discuss early on, the existence of Ask Jeeves didn’t stop Larry Page and Sergey Brin from creating Google. After exploring this example, we talk about how discouraging it can be to see that someone else has built a company using your idea.

BaaS, FaaS, and ASS. The tech world is inundated with acronyms that often make communication more frustrating. There’s even an acronym for ‘Things Without an Interesting Name,’ or TWAIN. Today we talk about the convenience and cost of acronyms, an important topic considering that software developers spend a lot of energy naming things.

There’s a perception that web development using Ruby on Rails has already peaked, with more damning critics shouting that “Rails is a dying language.” Conversely, Python, and Django by extension, seem to be ever-increasing in popularity.

Is code formatting a blessing or is it killing the art of writing beautiful code? Today we weigh in on the arguments for and against formatting and how this might affect your coding process. An early point against formatters, we talk about how they limit nuance and some of your ability to communicate through your code.

As remote work gains more traction, we have to find the best ways to communicate from a distance, so today on the show we discuss our favorite screen sharing and remote collaboration apps. From pair programming and code sharing software to video chat applications boasting drawing functionality and cool screen widgets, you’ll hear our take on the landscape of tools that allow you to connect with your friends and co-workers from the comfort of your home.

Kubernetes versus serverless – the battle of the decade! Both deserve their status as exciting and powerful platforms that offer organizations tremendous boosts in agility, scalability, and computing performance, but it is easy to forget that Kubernetes offers advantages that serverless alternatives don’t — and vice versa.

After discovering that we made it on to a list of awesome podcasts about tech, we decided to use this episode to look at that list and share some of our favorite podcast content and what we are currently listening to!

“Agile is a devastated wasteland. The life has been sucked out of it.” Those are the words of Kent Beck, creator of Extreme Programming, and co-signer of the Agile Manifesto. According to Kent, many development teams have adopted Agile methodologies without understanding their purpose.

“We’re stoked to hire a 10x Software Ninja with a coffee obsession who loves to work hard and play harder.” Looking for an engineering job requires you to wade through cringy job descriptions. Inspired by changes in the market, in this episode we explore good, bad, and ugly job descriptions. We start by looking at a recent posting by Tuple, who presents a masterclass in writing good job postings.

Imagine you’re browsing a web page using only a keyboard. A loud and looping video pops up that’s impossible to close without a mouse. Now you’re trapped there. Forever.

We’ve all been there. You’re trying to close an ad on your browser, but the button is too small and you’ve accidentally opened it instead. Poor web design can easily frustrate even the most agile-fingered, able-bodied techies. Imagine what it’s like for users with challenges that can range from visual impairment to limited motor function.

More workers are calling for a four-day workweek, with many claiming that it increases productivity, revenue, and workplace satisfaction. In today’s episode, we dive into the subject with show producer William Jeffries who is in the enviable position of having the mythic four-day workweek.

Today’s show marks our reaching of the final letter in our discussion of SOLID, the D, which stands for the Dependency Inversion principle!

We’re back on SOLID ground. Today we explore the ‘I’ in SOLID, A.K.A the interface segregation principle or ISP.

Around the globe, tens of millions of students are using Codecademy to learn programming during the pandemic. Just ask MLB pitcher Jared Hughes who learned Python to analyze his performance.

For those of you who have been waiting for the next letter of the SOLID series, we are happy to finally discuss the 'L' in SOLID, which is the Liskov substitution principle, or as we like to call it, the LSP.

Today, we’re asking the question: What is the best Agile? To help us answer that question, we have invited Diana Larsen to join us for today’s episode. Diana is the co-founder of FutureWorks Consulting in Portland, Oregon, and she partners with leaders around the world to design work systems, improve team performance, and transition to Agile methods.

As developers, we have likely had experiences with remote work before the pandemic, but now, the context of remote working has completely changed. The blurred lines between work and home life have brought an array of stressors that people have to face.

As part two of our series that explores the SOLID software design principles, this episode dives straight into the topic of the open-closed principle — that’s the ‘O’ of SOLID for those who are counting.

Do you know how you can feel overwhelmed when you have too much on your plate? Well, your code can feel the same way.

No-one likes bugs, and while we can’t entirely avoid them, there are some tried and tested techniques to squash those little pests. In today’s show, we dive into some of these strategies. While Mike’s initial reaction is denial and he runs the code repeatedly, there are other techniques as well, like writing tests, Googling, and reading the docs.

A lot goes into writing an application that knocks it out of the park. One of the ways to look at the different components of success is to view programming as a story with three layers. In this episode, we dive into these separate, but very interlinked aspects that go into the storytelling of programming.