🔥Hotfix🔥 is back with a new guest! Scott Werner is the CEO of Sublayer, helps organize the Artificial Ruby meetup in NYC, and is the author of the extremely well-named (and well-written) Substack, Works on my Machine.

In this conversation, we jointly grapple with WTF is happening to programming as a career. Did the unprecedented peacetime the software industry experienced from 2005-2022 make us all soft? Is the era of code-writing agents fundamentally changing the nature of the job? Should we be less like DHH/Matz and more like why the lucky stiff?

We'd love to get your feedback to [email protected] — I'll read it all and flag relevant questions and comments for the next Breaking Change.

You can follow Scott Werner online at:

A handful of things we mentioned:

Thanks for writing so many lovely emails to [email protected]. Hell, thanks even for the unlovely ones.

Be sure to look out for me showing up on Dead Code at some point after it records next Tuesday. I'm realizing not all podcasts have a 1-hour-or-less turnaround time like this one does.

As promised, some URLs follow:

I've made it! I'm over the hump! I'm actually writing* my language-learning app in Swift!

Send an email expressing how proud you are of me to [email protected]. Or if there's any news worth following that isn't about AI. Too much AI stuff lately.

*And by "I'm writing", I admit Claude Code is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.

Hyperlinks:

Finally, a recommendation-heavy, full-mailbag show. Been a while.

New to the pod are achievements—watch your BreakingScore™ increase each time you write in to [email protected]. The winner will receive nothing, probably.

Lynx:

Welcome to the first episode of 🔥Hotfix🔥! Breaking Change's first show-within-a-show, wherein I let somebody else talk for once. Each episode will show up as a patch release in the Breaking Change feed and feature guests with Hot takes about a relevant issue and a clear fix in mind for what we can do about it.

That first guest is a long-time collaborator and top 5 all-time colleague of mine named Dave Mosher, who's here to drop some truth bombs labeled "agentic coding" on the unsuspecting populace.

My secret mission on each of these is to lean into the show's E-for-explicit tag and try to get the guest to say something that could get them fired. I failed this time, but in fairness to me, Dave is Canadian.

We'd love to get your feedback to [email protected] — I'll read it all and flag relevant questions and comments for the next Breaking Change.

You can follow Dave Mosher online at:

A handful of things we mentioned:

I have returned to the nation of freedom and tariffs and all my shit has stopped working! Which shit? Why? What did I buy now? Listen and find out.

Remember, listeners who write in to [email protected] will be spared on judgment day.

Website stuff follows:

Spoiler alert: I'm in the same country as I was for v37, but this time from a different nondescript business hotel. Also: I have good personal news! And, as usual, bad news news. I don't get to pick the headlines though, I just read them.

This episode comes with a homework assignment. First, watch Apple's keynote at 10 AM pacific on June 9th. Second, e-mail [email protected] with all your takes. I'd love your help by informing me where my head should be at when I show up on the Changelog next week.

And now, fewer links than usual:

Coming to you LIVE from a third straight week of Japanese business hotels comes me, Justin, in his enduring quest to figure out how to exchange currency for real estate in the land of the rising fun.

[Programming note: apologies, as the audio quality at the beginning of the podcast suffered because I fucked up and left the hotel room's air conditioner on (I caught it and fixed it from the pun section onward)]

Had a few great e-mails to read through this week, but now I'm fresh out again! Before you listen, why not write in a review of this episode? [email protected] and tell me about how amazing it will be before it lets you down like your best friend and/or workplace mentor and/or parent figure.

Href time:

I'm going away on a trip for an unexpectedly long time, and you'll never guess why! (You might guess why.) Anyway, here's something to remember me by.

If you've ever been worried about whether something you cared about would work out okay, email [email protected] and tell me about it so that I can share your story with a bunch of strangers on the Internet.

Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.

References available upon request:

Your favorite podcast about nothing continues to find things to talk about.

Whatever you do, DO NOT e-mail me at [email protected] or else I will read it on air and tell everyone how smart you sound and how good you look.

Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.

Links to follow: