Code for Thought

English Edition: Just in time for the RSE conference in Sheffield 2026 here a portrait of one of the larger groups of digital research professionals in the UK: the team of the Advanced Research Computing Centre (ARC) at University College London (UCL). Because of its size, I met with a number of staff from different parts of the departments: Jonathan Cooper, Harry Moss, Mahmoud Abdelrazek, Milan Malfait, Stella Prins, Camilla Harris and Hollie Rowland.

Links:

• https://www.ucl.ac.uk/advanced-research-computing
• https://www.ucl.ac.uk/advanced-research-computing/our-people 
• https://www.pris-managers.ac.uk the PRISM network in the UK

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: what do rivers have in common with online communities? This, and other questions, is something I will be talking about with my two guests Nathan Matias (CatLab, Cornell Uni. US) and Bastian Greshake Tzovaras. 

It all started with a blog post, which you find below in the list of links:

• https://citizensandtech.org/2025/12/online-communities-as-ecosystems/ the original blog post
• https://citizensandtech.org/
• https://citizensandtech.org/author/j-nathan-matias/  Nathan's bio
• https://tzovar.as/ Bastian's homepage
• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ an online community mentioned in the interview
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streeter%E2%80%93Phelps_equation Streeter Phelps equation to quantify river pollution - also known as the “DO (dissolved oxygen) sag equation” 
  
  

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: welcome back from your summer holidays. And what a summer this has been! In this short trailer you'll find out what's in store between now and the end of this year. 

I hope you find something interesting in there. 

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Deutsche Ausgabe: In dieser letzten Folge vor der Sommerpause (und der letzten dieser Halbjahresserie) schaue ich mir, zusammen mit meinen Gästen Florian Mannseicher und Falk Schlegelmilch, das Projekt FutuRSI an. Brauchen wir eine nationale Einrichtung zur Forschungssoftware. Und wie soll die aussehen und funktionieren. Viel Spaß beim Zuhören.

Links:

• https://klaus-tschira-stiftung.de/ Klaus Tschira Stiftung
• https://www.futursi.de/ Homepage von FutuRSI
  • https://www.futursi.de/partner/ Partner Organisationen

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: making your code and data safe(r) is the theme of this ByteSized online class and podcast episode. Madalyn Hardaker and Ellie Sheppard from King's College London will tell us why it is crucial to do something about it right from the start. 

Links:

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: I want to come back to agile development practices with my guest Dave Thomas, or Pragmatic Dave as he is also known in the trade. Dave is one of the authors of the manifesto for agile development - and we talk about what has become of the aims and aspirations of agile development since the manifesto's publication in 2001. 

Links:

• https://agilemanifesto.org the manifesto of agile software development
• https://pragdave.me/ Dave's home page
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M Agile is dead by Dave Thomas - YouTube

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Versión  en espagñol: El software se está comiendo al mundo, y esto incluye al mundo científico. En estos días, hacer ciencia requiere también desarrollar software, ya sea usando Python para analizar datos, o construyendo aplicaciones web en JavaScript para compartir modelos computacionales con expertos. Mientras muchos científicos se encargan ellos mismos de estas tareas, otros las delegan a especialistas en desarrollo de software científico. Estos especialistas tienen el título de "ingenieros de software de investigación".

En esta edición del podcast, Sofía Miñano y Carlos Gavidia-Calderón, ambos ingenieros de software de investigación trabajando en el Reino Unido, conversan sobre su profesión. Entre otras cosas, comentan:

• Cómo se puede hacer carrera en ingeniería de software de investigación.
• Las diferencias que ven entre construir software dentro y fuera de la comunidad científica.
• Los retos de la ingeniería de software y de la ciencia en Latinoamérica..
• La comunidad de ingenieros de software y científicos hispanohablantes.

Links

• Seminario “Charlas RSE en espanol”: https://charlas-rse-espanol.github.io/ 
• Conferencia RSLA 2026: https://rs-latam.org/ 
• ixpantia: https://www.ixpantia.com/en/ 
• Link a la transcripción en español:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/charlas-rse-espanol/codeforthought-transcripts/refs/heads/main/20-S11-ES-RSEEspagnol_reviewed_ES.txt 

• Link to the translated transcript in English: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/charlas-rse-espanol/codeforthought-transcripts/refs/heads/main/20-S11-ES-RSEEspagnol_reviewed_EN.txt 

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: floppy disks, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, SSD drives - no matter what you choose to store your data on - ultimately they all decay. With my guests Callum McKean, Leontien Talboom and Adrian Page-Mitchell, we're going to talk about what kinds of data we find on old drives, why we want to get them in the first place, and what can go wrong with the storage media. To all of you who love all things retro - we'll be talking about floppy disks a bit. 

Links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A PDF A format
• https://www.ibm.com/history/floppy-disk history of floppy disks
• https://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=2140 The BBC Domesday project
  • https://domesday.computinghistory.org.uk/
• https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/ The excellent Centre of Computing History in Cambridge, UK
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4849567/ stability of DVDs and CDs
• https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec5/ how environmental conditions affect optical drives

Conference announcements

• https://rse.swiss/swiss_rse_day Swiss RSE Day, 31 August 2026
• https://www.researchsoft.org/irsc/ International Research Software Conference 7-8 September 2026, Sheffield, UK
• https://rsecon26.society-rse.org/ UK RSE Conference (the 10th anniversary) in Sheffield, UK 9-11 September 2026
• https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2026/ 9 June 2026, Tromsoe, Norway
• https://events.hifis.net/event/3249/overview deRSE Collaborations workshop in Goettingen, Germany 23-25 September
• https://us-rse.org/usrse26/ US RSE Conference, 19-21 October 2026, San Jose, CA, USA

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: Will spec-driven development replace agile processes? My guest Graham Lee  (https://chironcodex.com/ ) and I discuss if there is still a place for agile software engineering in a world of AI assisted coding.

Links:

• https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/sdd-3-tools.html the discussion on spec driven development by Brigitta Boeckeler 
• https://dev.to/cleberdelima/the-end-of-agile-when-the-assumptions-beneath-your-methodology-collapse-3g12 the blog post by Cleber de Lima quoted in the episode
• https://www.sicpers.info/2025/12/is-spec-driven-development-the-end-of-agile-software-development/ Graham's blog post on spec driven development

Discussions on Spec Driven and agile development:

• https://www.inflectra.com/Ideas/Whitepaper/Is-Agile-Dead.aspx
• https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/blog/agile-engineering-practices/spec-driven-development-unpacking-2025-new-engineering-practices
• https://dev.to/jmontagne/mckinsey-just-killed-agile-why-commando-units-are-the-only-way-to-survive-legacy-migration-40lk
• https://marmelab.com/blog/2025/11/12/spec-driven-development-waterfall-strikes-back.html
• https://ronjeffries.com/categories/dark-scrum/ "dark scrum"
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adamsandman_is-agile-dead-is-ai-killing-agile-development-activity-7367308312620527616--3-2/ 
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/death-agile-story-points-why-im-trading-sprints-spec-driven-park-6dfke/

Some tools for spec driven development

• https://kiro.dev/ KIRO
• https://github.com/github/spec-kit GitHub’s spec-kit
• https://docs.tessl.io/ Tesla

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Deutsche Ausgabe: Seit über 25 Jahren bringt die Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften (LNDW) Forschungsprojekte und ForscherInnen der Allgemeinheit näher. Zusammen mit Christina Quensel, die die LNDW leitet, habe ich mich über Ursprünge, Herausforderungen und wie es mit der LNDW weitergeht unterhalten. 

Die LNDW in Berlin findet am 6. Juni 2026 statt und Tickets noch am selben Tag zu haben. Also nix wie hin...

Links

• https://www.langenachtderwissenschaften.de/  
• https://www.langenachtderwissenschaften.de/programm hier ist das Programm zur LNDW
• https://lndw-tickets.reservix.de/p/reservix/event/2535589 Tickets
• https://www.campusberlinbuch.de/de/Index
• 
  

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/