Code with Jason

On this episode, I'm joined by Adarsh Pandit, Executive Director of Ruby Central.  We discuss men's fashion, Adarsh's path to becoming a developer, the distinction between contracting and consulting, defining what you do as a consultant, keeping yourself top of mind to potential consulting clients, how Ruby Central is building community among Rubyists, the current state of Ruby meetups & conferences, and my conference, Sin City Ruby.

• Derek Guy on Twitter
• RubyConf
• RailsConf
• rubycentral.org
• Adarsh Pandit on LinkedIn
• [email protected]
• Sin City Ruby

On this episode, Landon Gray and I get together for a conversation that touches on AI consulting, backfilling tests in a system that wasn't developed with TDD, generative AI assisting with testing in data science settings, using AI to develop your product vs using AI in your product, getting clients as an AI consultant, the benefits of remaining a solo contractor over starting an agency, work/life balance as a freelancer, whether charging an hourly rate is the best way to represent the value you provide as a consultant, having a north star to guide your decision making in your work life, what actually comprises risk, how marketing yourself is important regardless of whether you're an employee or a freelancer, how the modern hiring process is broken, value created vs compensation received, and Landon's trip to the AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco.

• The AI Engineer World's Fair
• Madison Ruby
• Landon Gray on LinkedIn
• Landon Gray on Twitter

On today's episode, I sit down with Eric Normand to discuss how to select good customers, the importance of sales and marketing to a freelancer, the importance of imagination, industry, and optimism, the purpose of consulting, how I structure my consulting services, other ideas for consulting structures, domain modeling, tech debt vs dull knives as a metaphor, how product design influences domain modeling, how having a theory of your product impacts domain modeling, the abundance of bad advice for new consultants, and the pros and cons of masterminds.

• Eric Normand.me
• Eric Normand's Newsletter
• Eric Normand's Clojure Guides
• Eric Normand's Clojure Video Courses
• The Eric Normand Podcast
• Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
• 99 Bottles of OOP by Sandi Metz
• Eric Normand on LinkedIn
• Eric Normand on Twitter

On this episode, I'm joined by Joel Hawksley, Staff Engineer at GitHub for a discussion of code ownership with regards to a 3-year WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) project at GitHub, benevolent dictatorship, collective ownability, terrible code vs acceptable code vs the viability of a project, writing good code vs solving problems, defining quality code, quality code resulting from clear conceptualization, the desirability (or not!) of perfect adherence to standards, reducing defect rate, and meaningful testing goals. 

• Code Complete by Steve McConnell
• Joel Hawksley at GitHub
• Joel Hawksley at Twitter
• Hawksley.org
• Episode 88 - ViewComponent with Joel Hawksley
• Live From Ruby Conf 2021, Joel Hawksley Tells Me About His Drink
• Episode 130 - ViewComponent with Joel Hawksley

On this week's episode, I talk with Allison McMillan to discuss working environments, the importance of getting a remote team together on a regular basis, the benefits of a well thought out offsite, not-so-great offsite types, elements of a worthwhile offsite, and more.

• Allison McMillan.com
• Allison McMillan on LinkedIn
• Allison McMillan on Twitter

On this episode, I talk to Matt Kirkland, Founder and Designer at Brand New Box.  We talk about how to get good clients, the utility of reminding people that you exist, reading science fiction, ChatGPT as highly advanced autocomplete, reading history, The limits of ChatGPT-style AI as compared to AGI, and Matt's Dracula read-through newsletter Dracula Daily. 

• Philip K. Dick on Goodreads
• François Chollet on Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast
• Dracula Daily
• Matt Kirkland.com
• Brand New Box
• Matt Kirkland on Twitter
• Matt Kirkland on LinkedIn

On today's episode I talk with Nate Clark, founder and principal software engineer of Brand New Box.  We discuss Brand New Box's early days and what it's like to found an agency, the different ways Nate and I think about acquiring new business,  marketing yourself, how big picture thinking can sharpen your day to day plans, deciding to build a product, the difficulty of finding a problem to solve where it makes financial sense to do so, and how personal relationships beget opportunities.

• Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
• Traction by Gino Wickman
• Brand New Box
• Nate Clark on LinkedIn
• Nate Clark on Twitter

On today's episode, I talk with Alex Bunardzic about TDD (Test Driven Design), separating IO from business logic, configurable dependencies, TCR (Test and Commit or Revert), making many small commits rather than trying to write the whole program right the first time, distributed cognition, order dependency and imperative vs declarative programming, coding speculatively, and coding without shipping.

• The Agile Manifesto
• Alex Bunardzic on Substack
• Software Breakthroughs for the 21st Century
• Coding Interviews with Alex
• Diary of a Perplexed Software Developer
• Alex Bunardzic on Open Source
• Alex Bunardzic on Medium
• Alex Bunardzic on Twitter
• Alex Bunardzic on LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly, my snail mail newsletter

On today's episode, I'm joined by Alan Ridlehoover and Fito von Zastrow for a deep dive on flaky tests.  

• Code with Jason - Testing Anti Pattern: Merged Setup Data
• Code with Jason - Duplication
• Code with Jason - Why Duplication is More Acceptable in Tests
• A Brewer's Guide to Filtering out Complexity and Churn
• Fito von Zastrow on LinkedIn
• Fito von Zastrow on Twitter
• Alan Ridlehoover on LinkedIn
• Alan Ridlehoover on Twitter
• The Code Gardener
• Cisco Meraki
• Jobs at Cisco Meraki

Today Rich Steinmetz returns for a discussion that touches on switching between languages, both spoken and programming, structuring tests, getting the most out of reading a book, buying an existing business, struggles with CircleCI and GitHub Actions,  my project SaturnCI, and the need for better APIs.

• The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
• The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling
• Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling
• Acquire.com
• Flippa.com
• Rich Steinmetz on Twitter
• Rich Stone.io