In this episode, I talk with Dave Thomas about RubyConf 2026, the essence of a good conference, and the philosophy of programming, including abstraction and the art of using AI in coding.

Links:

• The Pragmatic Programmer
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• PragDave.me
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with David Santoro, CTO of Carwow, about his journey from startup co-founder to leading a large engineering team. We discuss carwow's evolution, their focus on scalability, and how they tackled growth challenges across different countries. David also shares strategic product and technical decisions.

Links:

• Carwow
• David Santoro on LinkedIn
• Carwow Product Engineering Blog
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with John Gallagher about changes in AI over the last 18 months and the impact of luck on success.

Links:

• John's Linktree
• Joyful Programming
• John's LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Tyler Ewing about Ductwork, his innovative workflow framework for Ruby and Rails. We explore its unique position between background job libraries like Sidekiq and heavier solutions like Temporal, and how Ductwork aims to streamline complex workflows with a focus on durability and usability.

Links:

• Ductwork Website
• Ductwork GitHub
• Ductwork Docs
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Brad Taylor about his journey as a fractional CTO and advisor for various companies. We discuss his experience with open source medical records, the importance of business objects, and navigating complexity in software projects. We also touch on storytelling in code and managing technical debt.

Links:

• Brad Taylor's Company
• Brad Taylor's Substack
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with JP Camara about RubyConf 2026, submitting CFPs, and why everyone should give talks. JP shares his experience using SaturnCI on the Mastodon project, and we dig into Saturn CI's Docker-based setup, Kubernetes architecture, and test-focused UX philosophy.

Links:

• jpcamara.com
• SaturnCI
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Christian Genco about IQ, the pros and cons of high intelligence, the Big Five personality traits, evolutionary differences between men and women, hypergamy, the origins of money, and whether Yuval Harari's "shared fiction" concept holds up. We never got to the AI topic we planned.

Links:

• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Cody Kendall about building software for his dad's HVAC business, learning usability testing, pivoting from contractor software to AI-generated code, and why he built LlamaPress.

• LlamaPress AI
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Steve Pike, founder of Infield, about dependency management and automated Rails upgrades. We discuss the tradeoffs of taking on dependencies, authorization libraries like CanCanCan versus Pundit, open source maintainer obligations, and how AI is changing the upgrade automation landscape.

• Infield
• Once a Maintainer
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Sean Schertell about his return to Rails after many years in JavaScript, the pain of node module hell, Kamal for deployment, and Sean's new startup ZiaMap for land surveyors.

Links:

• Codepilot
• ZiaMap
• Nonsense Monthly