The Rabbit Hole: The Definitive Developer's Podcast

After discovering that we made it on to a list of awesome podcasts about tech, we decided to use this episode to look at that list and share some of our favorite podcast content and what we are currently listening to! To start off we share different ways and times to consume podcast content, from the shower to the car! We run through the best tech media out there, with Dave talking about Python Bytes and Michael sharing his love for the Ladybug Podcast. Following that we move onto non-tech shows, highlighting The Legion on Zoom and the ever-popular, topical and informative 99% Invisible. To finish off we talk about some funny shows we enjoy, Underunderstood, and how Michael has improved this very show by listening to Your Podcast Coach!

“Agile is a devastated wasteland. The life has been sucked out of it.” Those are the words of Kent Beck, creator of Extreme Programming, and co-signer of the Agile Manifesto. According to Kent, many development teams have adopted Agile methodologies without understanding their purpose. In today’s episode, we’ve recruited Aaron Foster Braylin and Steve Solomon for a deep dive into Agile, with a special focus on comparing Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum. We begin by exploring what stand-ups mean for each guest before discussing Scrum’s openness to incorporate processes, so long as they work.

“We’re stoked to hire a 10x Software Ninja with a coffee obsession who loves to work hard and play harder.” Looking for an engineering job requires you to wade through cringy job descriptions. Inspired by changes in the market, in this episode we explore good, bad, and ugly job descriptions. We start by looking at a recent posting by Tuple, who presents a masterclass in writing good job postings.

Imagine you’re browsing a web page using only a keyboard. A loud and looping video pops up that’s impossible to close without a mouse. Now you’re trapped there. Forever. This horror story is commonly experienced on websites that haven’t been designed with accessibility in mind. This episode continues our discussion on what you should do to improve your accessibility. After talking about using tools like voice-over commands to understand what’s needed from the user’s perspective, we touch on the challenge of learning the right commands to navigate the web with your eyes closed. We then tackle the rest of UC Berkeley’s list on making accessible websites, highlighting key considerations including color choice, how you should design forms, not using tables in place of styling, ensuring that everything can be accessed through a keyboard, and making dynamic content accessible. We also chat about ARIA roles and landmarks and why creating accessible websites leads to a better experience for able-bodied users. Tune in for more insights on making great and accessible websites. Not only will it expand your user-base but it’ll help ensure that no one ends up within the dreaded carousel of modals.

We’ve all been there. You’re trying to close an ad on your browser, but the button is too small and you’ve accidentally opened it instead. Poor web design can easily frustrate even the most agile-fingered, able-bodied techies. Imagine what it’s like for users with challenges that can range from visual impairment to limited motor function. On today’s episode, we explore how and why you should build accessible websites. We start by talking about alt text and how the show’s hosts have, to their shame, often neglected to create informative alt text. We then touch on the work that W3C is doing to establish guidelines on making accessible websites.

More workers are calling for a four-day workweek, with many claiming that it increases productivity, revenue, and workplace satisfaction. In today’s episode, we dive into the subject with show producer William Jeffries who is in the enviable position of having the mythic four-day workweek. While it didn’t seem impactful to him from the outset, William lays down the math showing that moving to a four-day workweek shifts the workday to the weekend ratio from 2.5 to one to 1.3 to one. We talk about William’s other atypical work arrangement, which is that he works in South Korea while his team is in California.

Today’s show marks our reaching of the final letter in our discussion of SOLID, the D, which stands for the Dependency Inversion principle! We kick things off with a bit of research on exactly what the Dependency Inversion principle states, and from there we unpack what implementing it in the real world might look like. Our conversation is all about the idea that pieces of your code should be decoupled and you can do this using interfaces. We discuss how the Dependency Inversion principle might be applied when you are connecting to databases, how it relates to inversion of control and ways of implementing it other than dependency injection.

We’re back on SOLID ground. Today we explore the ‘I’ in SOLID, A.K.A the interface segregation principle or ISP. After debating how inappropriately the principle is named, we dive into what it means, that “no client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use.” We drill even further into what this means by using the metaphor of a Swiss Army knife and what it would take to code an athlete in Java. We discuss why you should apply the ISP and later share experiences where we’ve abandoned the principle, intentionally or not.

Around the globe, tens of millions of students are using Codecademy to learn programming during the pandemic. Just ask MLB pitcher Jared Hughes who learned Python to analyze his performance. This episode, we talk with Zach Sims, co-founder of Codecademy, all about the shifting job market and how people are going online to learn how to code. Early in the conversation, Zach provides his insights into how coding skills can give you a competitive advantage, regardless of your field. Unfortunately, not everyone has equal access to Codecademy though. We speak about the digital divide and how many people don’t have the tech or broadband needed to learn online.

For those of you who have been waiting for the next letter of the SOLID series, we are happy to finally discuss the 'L' in SOLID, which is the Liskov substitution principle, or as we like to call it, the LSP. If you’re like us and the LSP conjures up an image of a long-gone mathematician, think again. It is actually a principle developed by Barbara Liskov, an American computer scientist. In this episode, we get into a simple definition of the LSP, which is that objects should be replaceable with their sub-types, and this should not alter the functioning of the program. To clarify, we use an example of shapes in a program and how the principle would be applied. We also look at how the LSP relates to inheritance, and why inheritance should only be used in certain circumstances. Along with this, we touch on our feelings about interfaces and learn more about William’s experience with TypeScript. Tune in today!