Ben & Ryan Show Episode 19
In this episode, your hosts Ben Nadel and Ryan Brown catch up after a short hiatus with a wide-ranging, unscripted conversation covering everything from the latest ColdFusion trends to personal experiments with AI and vibe coding. With no guest this time, it's a freestyle episode filled with developer insights, community stories, tech musings, and even a few nostalgic tangents about their careers and upcoming conferences.
Key Points
• Ryan shares insights from attending Into the Box
• Ben discusses his limited but productive use of AI, leveraging pseudocode to retain creative ownership of his code.
• The hosts dive into technical and philosophical challenges around AI-assisted development, including context limits, prompt strategies, and tooling.
• Fun anecdotes cover experiments with vibe coding, from building a bingo app to letting kids iterate on games in Replit.
• They preview plans for ColdFusion Summit, hinting at retro themes and marketing tactics like well-chosen swag.
The hosts kick off their catch-up with banter about attending Into the Box
• Into the Box was professionally run with in-depth sessions and tons of fun like mariachi karaoke.
• Ryan explores the idea of xByte Cloud sponsoring future ColdFusion events.
• Discussion of possible future guests from the "Box" ecosystem
• Ben shares his troubles getting BoxLang running in CommandBox due to Java version conflicts.
They reflect on how AI is influencing development workflows, particularly through testing and safe deployments.
• Testing is increasingly seen as essential, especially with frequent Adobe ColdFusion patches.
• Ryan mentions synthetic testing tools like Datadog as helpful for customer QA.
• Ben confesses he’s historically done manual testing, though AI might shift that.
• They explore release practices and breaking changes in Adobe CF updates.
• xByte Cloud supports parallel environments to ease upgrade testing.
The conversation shifts to vibe coding, with examples from both hosts of small projects and the value of playful iteration.
• Ben and Ryan explore Replit and building simple games or utilities with ChatGPT.
• Ryan’s son built a Flappy Bird-style game, iteratively adding features via prompts.
• Ryan vibe-coded a virtual bingo game when the usual service went down.
• They appreciate the immediacy of coding with AI assistance and rapid prototyping.
AI’s limitations and best uses become a recurring thread, as Ben and Ryan wrestle with how to use AI tools without sacrificing learning or control.
• Ben prefers using AI to generate pseudocode but insists on doing the final implementation himself.
• Prompt engineering emerges as a key skill—Ryan tests role-based agent workflows.
• They debate the fear of losing mastery versus gaining productivity.
• Ryan tries auto-correcting code through multiple AI agent passes.
• Both agree curiosity and experimentation are crucial to productive AI use.
Security and maintenance surface toward the end as they react to the latest data breach news and dream of AI-powered password management.
• A recent leak of 16 billion passwords prompts questions about best practices.
• Ben considers how 1Password’s Watchtower could integrate AI to rotate credentials.
• They riff on AI agents auto-managing security tasks like 2FA and password changes.
• The conversation ties back to larger questions about trust, safety, and AI autonomy.
Wrapping up, they share a few final thoughts on CF Summit, marketing swag wins, and what listeners might want from future episodes.
• CF Summit 2025 will celebrate ColdFusion’s 30th anniversary.
• They’re expecting retro-themed parties and looking to bring value as vendors.
• Ben’s wife loves the travel mug from xbyte Cloud—a marketing win.
• The episode ends with a call for listener feedback and a promise to keep the show going.