Code with Jason

In this episode I talk with Andrea Laforgia about programming principles, why good code is code that's easy to change, and his motto: "write your code so it can be easily deleted." We discuss technical debt as an operating model, the fallacy of sacrificing quality for speed, and AI's impact on learning fundamentals.

Links:

• Andrea Laforgia on LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Wale Olaleye about finding consulting clients through referrals and word of mouth. We discuss the "hunting vs farming" analogy for marketing, simplifying your pitch, filtering clients with deposits, and how genuine community relationships lead to business over time.

Links:

• railsfever.com
• Wale Olaleye on LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Dave Thomas about why code reuse is overrated, the economics of programming principles, and why we can't empirically test whether practices work—we have to scrutinize the arguments behind them. Dave also discusses his new book Simplicity and his "developer without portfolio" concept.

Links:

• Simplicity
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Cory Zue about his solopreneur journey building SaaS Pegasus, a Django boilerplate product. We discuss AI's potential impact on the business of selling code, the financial anxiety that persists even when things are going well, and content marketing strategies for technical products.

Links:

• coryzue.com
• SaaS Pegasus
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Kendall Miller about MCP (Model Context Protocol) and why AI agents need third-party guardrails. His company Maybe Don't sits between AI agents and MCP servers to prevent disasters—because AI sometimes solves problems in creative and terrifying ways.

Links:

• Maybe Don't, AI
• Kendall Miller on LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Joel Drapper about defect-free development—not just automated testing, but the full spectrum: linting, static typing, database constraints, and especially runtime assertions. Joel's library Literal lets you define type expectations that blow up immediately when violated, catching bugs before they spread.

Links:

• literal.fun
• phlex.fun
• joel.drapper.me
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Chris Gaffney about Dead Man's Snitch, a cron job monitoring service he's run full-time for six years after Collective Idea acquired it at a very early stage. We discuss the five-year path to profitability, SaaS being harder today, and dopaminergic personalities in tech.

Links:

• Dead Man's Snitch
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Lio Lunesu, CTO of Defang, about infrastructure as code, Docker, and Docker Compose. Defang compiles Docker Compose files into cloud infrastructure code.

Links:

• Defang
• Lio Lunesu on LinkedIn
• SaturnCI
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Ryan Frisch and Brendan Buckingham from the Rails Business Podcast about whether info products are viable in the Rails community, how business ideas emerge from personal pain points rather than brainstorming, and I give an update on SaturnCI sales.

Links:

• Rails Business Podcast
• Locable
• SaturnCI
• Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Jeff Casimir, founder of Turing School, about why AI is far down his list of reasons for the tech job market downturn—he points instead to macroeconomic policy, copycat layoff culture, and companies using layoffs to suppress worker organizing. We also discuss aptitude vs. belief, why school is mostly daycare, and his prompt injection resume experiment.

Links:

• Jeff Casimir on LinkedIn
• Nonsense Monthly