Book Overflow

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups interview Apple Design Award Winner Devin Davies! Devin won the Apple Design Award for his recipe app Crouton, which was featured prominently by the Wall Street Journal for its creative use of the visionOS platform. In keeping with the podcast theme of continuous education, Devin tells the story of how he started Crouton, what he needed to learn to create it, and how he learned it.

This episode is a little outside of our usual fare, so please let us know in the comments if you'd like more of them!

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups discuss "Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better" by Jennifer Pahlka. This book was personally recommended by Brian Kernighan and is about what processes and cultures make government technology so woefully inadequate. Join Carter and Nathan as they discuss agile vs. waterfall, the importance of a good business culture, and possible infringements on civil liberties!

In this very special episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups are joined by the prolific Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin to discuss his book "Clean Coder." Join them as Uncle Bob talks about his thoughts on the "flow zone," humility, and what coding has to do with flying an airplane!

Links to all the books mentioned in the episode can be found in the YouTube episode description: https://youtu.be/wf68VDObVX0

00:00 Intro

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups finish up their discussion of "Web Scalability for Startup Engineers" by Artur Ejsmont. Join them as they discuss caching strategies, async messaging, and managing burnout in your career!

In this special episode of Book Overflow, Michael Feathers joins Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups to reflect on his book "Working Effectively with Legacy Code." Join them as they discuss the pros and cons of TDD, the dangers of AI hallucination, and why Michael became a software engineer!

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups discuss "Web Scalability for Startup Engineers" by Artur Ejsmont. Join them as they discuss how to build a stateless front-end, the benefits of microservices, and the differences between SQL and NoSQL!

In this special episode of Book Overflow, Dr. John Ousterhout joins Carter and Nathan to discuss his book "A Philosophy of Software Design." He reflects on why he wrote the book, how he teaches the principles in it to his Stanford students, and what we can learn from our mistakes.

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00:00 Intro

01:18 Motivation for writing this book

06:17 Why No TAs for Stanford Class

08:55 Thoughts on TDD

14:24 Design it Twice

20:30 Most Surprising Feedback

31:46 Taking suggestions with a grain of salt

33:20 Curiosity and Humility

36:13 Misunderstandings from the book

39:37 Strong opinions, humility, and fear of being wrong

44:35 Unconventional Career Paths

50:13 What are you reading?

51:22 Thoughts on Clean Code

53:50 Advice for new software engineers

58:00 Closing Thoughts 

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups discuss the second half of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael Feathers. Join them as they discuss how to keep up a good attitude while working on legacy code, how to get started when you're intimidated, and some of the legacy and greenfield projects they've worked on in their careers!

In this special episode of Book Overflow, Neal Ford joins the podcast to reflect on his book "Fundamentals of Software Architecture!" Join Carter and Nathan as they discuss the challenges of compromising with the business, what shifts AI is bringing to the software architecture world, and what sci-fi Neal's been reading lately!

Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups read and discuss the first half of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael Feathers. Join them as they reflect on dependency inversion, the importance of interfaces, and continue their never-ending debate on the pros and cons of Test-Driven Development!

(The audio gets a little de-synced in the last three minutes. Carter isn't talking over Nathan on purpose!)

Chapter markers:

00:00 Intro 

04:51 Thoughts on the book

10:54 Defining Legacy Code

21:53 Quick Break: Pull Requests

22:38 How to change software

44:30 Quick Break: CI/CD

45:15 Testing Legacy Code

1:15:10 Quick Break: Linting

1:16:01 Closing Thoughts