Dead Code

In this episode of Dead Code, Jared and guest Mond explore how James C. Scott’s concepts of legibility, metis, and episteme apply to tech interviews, arguing that standardized hiring processes prioritize what’s easy to measure over what truly reflects engineering skill. They critique the over-reliance on algorithmic interviews, noting that senior engineering work often depends on tacit knowledge—metis—that can’t be captured in rubrics or LeetCode problems. The conversation touches on Goodhart’s Law, the risks of over-optimization, and how attempts to make human processes more legible through metrics can backfire. Jared shares how his company experiments with more realistic code assessments, though both acknowledge the challenges of scaling less standardized approaches. They conclude by warning that technological standardization of social systems, like hiring, can entrench flawed norms and obscure what actually matters.

Links:

James C. Scott

Seeing Like a State

Legibility (as a concept)

Goodhart’s Law

The Cobra Effect

LeetCode

YAML

Mond’s Blog – Here Comes the Moon

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared speaks with Jens Oliver Meiert and Fabien Basmaison, co-maintainers of CSS Naked Day, a long-standing web tradition that invites developers to strip CSS from their websites for one day to emphasize semantic HTML, accessibility, and the separation of concerns in front-end development. Originally launched in 2006, the event encourages developers to reflect on the underlying structure of their sites and how well they function without styling. Meiert and Basmaison discuss how modern tools like Tailwind, CSS-in-JS, and component-based design both challenge and occasionally align with the event’s philosophy, and they explore reasons for the decline in participation, from increased reliance on frameworks to the rise of AI-assisted development. Looking ahead to the 20th anniversary in 2026, they hope to inspire more developers to join in, even in small ways, as a reminder of the enduring value of accessible, maintainable, and standards-based web design.

Links:

Jens' Blog

CSS Naked Day

CSS Zen Garden

Frontend Dogma

PandaDoc

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews Ivo Anjo, a Ruby performance expert at Datadog, about Ruby’s concurrency model and his work improving visibility into it. They discuss the Global VM Lock (GVL), which simplifies Ruby’s internals but hinders multithreading, and explore the promise and current limitations of M:N scheduling, now partially implemented via Ractors in Ruby 3.4. Ivo created the gvl-tracing gem to visualize thread behavior and uncover subtle bugs, advocating for a more intelligent, OS-like scheduler to improve performance fairness. He also shares insights from building Datadog’s always-on production profiler and his direct-bind gem, which allows low-level access to Ruby internals when official APIs fall short. Overall, the episode highlights a growing movement of developers modernizing Ruby’s internals and pushing past its reputation for being slow.

Links:

gvl-tracing

direct-bind

StackProf

rbspy

Ractors

YJIT

RubyConf

RubyKaigi

EuRuKo 2025

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared talks with Marco Roth about Herb, a new fault-tolerant parser for HTML and ERB designed to improve the developer experience in the Rails ecosystem. Unlike tools like Deface or Nokogiri, Herb doesn’t auto-correct or mask errors—it parses templates exactly as written, enabling better diagnostics, formatting, and linting for server-rendered views, especially in Hotwire, Turbo, and Stimulus contexts. Built in C for portability and speed, Herb can be used across Ruby, JavaScript, and browsers via WebAssembly. Marco created it after running into limitations with existing tooling while building the Stimulus LSP. Future plans include deeper integration with tools like Ruby LSP and possibly enabling LiveView-style reactive rendering in Rails. Developers can try it today via a VS Code extension or the interactive web playground.

Links:

Deface

Spree

Solidus

Nokogiri

RuboCop

Prism

Herb

Herb Playground

Herb VS Code Extension

Hotwire

Turbo

Stimulus

StimulusReflex

Phoenix LiveView

Ruby LSP

Episode 10 with Kevin Newton on Prism

Episode 38 with Carson Gross on HTMX 

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared talks with Alan Ridlehoover, Senior Engineering Manager at Cisco Meraki, about managing software complexity through clear abstractions and thoughtful design. Using a metaphor of a vending-style coffee machine, Alan explains how complexity often arises not from algorithms but from code that’s hard to understand due to excessive abstraction or poor structure. He emphasizes focusing on the readability of what’s directly in front of you, using tools like flog and the ABC metric to quantify complexity, while also trusting gut instinct and applying heuristics like Sandi Metz’s five-line rule. Alan discusses minimizing over-engineering, favoring well-named private methods over inline comments, and stresses that code and commit messages—not comments—should tell the story. He also introduces “rehydration,” the process of adding back duplication to reveal better abstractions, helping developers make their code more maintainable and easier to change over time.

Links:

Flog (Ruby)

ABC Metric

Gerrit

DRY Principle (Don’t Repeat Yourself)

Domain-Driven Design (DDD)

Polymorphism

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared chats with Scott Werner, CEO of Sublayer, about his experimental AI web framework, Monkey’s Paw—a Ruby-based tool that uses natural language prompts to generate web pages, embracing LLM “hallucinations” as a creative feature rather than a flaw. Designed to bring back the playful spirit of early Web 2.0, Monkey’s Paw allows developers to prototype ideas quickly and unexpectedly, often resulting in delightful, unintended features like auto-generated tooltips. Scott explains how the project reflects a broader shift toward ephemeral, AI-assisted development and introduces Sublayer, his minimal agent framework built for AI generation. Both Jared and Scott agree that while LLMs may not produce enduring art, they offer fun, whimsy, and new ways to experiment in coding, highlighting how these tools can be valuable outside of pure productivity or profit-driven goals.

Links:

Monkey’s Paw

Sublayer

Artificial Ruby

Works on My Machine (Substack)

Websim

TRICK Competition

Rails Generators

PowerPoint Copilot

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In this episode of Dead Code, host Jared chats with Noel Rappin, Staff Engineer at Chime and co-author of the updated Programming Ruby (“The Pickaxe Book”), about revitalizing Ruby’s most iconic reference. Rappin explains that despite claims Ruby is “dead,” it’s still widely used by startups and major companies like GitHub and Shopify. He took on the update to bridge the gap between Ruby 2.0 and 3.3, modernizing the book to reflect new features like pattern matching and changes in the ecosystem, while keeping it relevant for today’s developers, many of whom are coming from JavaScript, Python, or Java. They discuss the balance between Ruby’s flexible syntax and emerging norms via tools like RuboCop, the cautious use of metaprogramming, and how Ruby’s expressive power still stands out. Rappin hints at a future Ruby 4 update and encourages developers to embrace Ruby’s strengths, especially for teams valuing agility and clarity.

Links:

Noel Rappin

Dave Thomas

Programming Ruby (The Pickaxe Book)

why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby

Bundler

RuboCop

StandardRB

Ractors

Pattern Matching in Ruby

Sorbet

RBS

Steep 

Dry-types

Sinatra

RSpec

Concurrent Ruby

Fibers

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared is joined by Lucian and returning guest Joel to debate a classic Ruby dilemma: whether to access instance variables directly or use getter methods. Lucian advocates for getters, especially in large, fast-changing codebases, arguing they help catch subtle bugs and improve maintainability, as well as insights drawn from his time at Cookpad and the Short Ruby newsletter. Joel, while appreciating the clarity and performance of direct access, introduces his gem strict_ivars, which raises runtime errors for undefined variables, offering a hybrid solution that improves safety without sacrificing flexibility. The conversation expands into the future of Ruby developer experience, discussing AST-based tooling, the role of testing, and how small, intentional coding choices can add up to more resilient and readable software.

Links:

Short Ruby Newsletter

Show Ruby YouTube Channel

Joel Draper’s Website

strict_ivars Gem

Joel on Bluesky

Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) by Sandi Metz

Prism

Bootsnap

ruby-require-hooks by Vladimir Dementyev

AST (Abstract Syntax Tree)

Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MCDC) – advanced testing technique

Ruby Keyword Arguments

Cookpad

Plane

Shopify

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews Heydon Pickering about his satirical strategy to sabotage AI web crawlers by generating nonsense versions of his blog posts. Using Eleventy and JS DOM, Heydon replaces keywords in his content with absurd alternatives from a static lexicon, creating grammatically broken, jargon-filled text that wastes crawler resources without harming his SEO. Frustrated by how LLMs scrape web content without consent, he frames his approach as both a protest and a creative, Dadaist rebellion against exploitative tech norms. While the method won’t cripple AI models, it reflects a broader resistance to the unchecked harvesting of human-created content.

Links:

“Poisoning the Well” (Heydon’s article)

“Please Stop Externalizing Your Costs Directly In My Face” – The article that partly inspired Heydon’s efforts to push back against LLM scraping.

Heydon’s Blog

Webbed Briefs (Heydon’s video series)

Eleventy (11ty)

JS DOM

robots.txt

nofollow attribute

Dadaism

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared talks with Stevan about building reliable distributed systems using Erlang-inspired design patterns. Stevan shares how his background in functional programming and formal verification led him to simulation testing—a deterministic approach to testing distributed systems that avoids the flakiness of traditional CI environments. He emphasizes that Erlang’s true innovation lies not in lightweight processes, but in its structured behaviors (like gen_server and supervisor), which make systems easier to reason about, test, and verify. These behaviors support a more disciplined approach to concurrency, enabling reproducible fault injection and better simulation frameworks. Stevan advocates for programming languages that natively support deterministic testing and model checking, suggesting that the future of distributed systems lies in building on these structured, verifiable foundations.

Links:

Stevan’s Blog

Erlang

Elixir

Agda

Idris

TLA+

Roc

Jepsen

Antithesis

BEAM

Let it crash philosophy

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