The Rabbit Hole: The Definitive Developer's Podcast

Today we’re talking about the Zombies of the developer’s world — dead code and how to get rid of it once and for all. What happens to dead code is that it dies and then rises again to wreak havoc on your codebase! In this episode, we get into why you should attack your dead code with a vengeance and talk about the tools you need to find the Zombie code living in your codebase.

Caching is notoriously difficult. In fact, according to Dave, it might be one of the two (or three) hardest problems in computer science. In this episode, dedicated to all the cache money millionaires, we are talking about client-side caching. We look at how it’s different from server-side caching and why, if you want to improve user experience, it’s the way to go. While client-side caching only helps the client currently using the machine, there are some definite benefits that we walk through, particularly on larger websites.

On today’s episode, we are joined by special guest, Ben Orenstein, to talk about remote pair programming. Ben is a developer, who after many years of working for other people decided to strike out on his own. He is the co-founder of an app called Tuple, which is specifically for remote pair programming. After Screenhero got shut down, Ben saw that there was a gap in the pairing market which had not been filled.

Working in the hyper-collaborative but dispersed way we tend to as developers, we know it important to track progress both for ourselves and for our teams. There are many ways to do this. We can either make use of physical boards or virtual ones, of which Informative Workspaces are XP’s newest iteration. The idea of these boards and workspaces is to get as much information as fast as possible from the piece of data you’re looking so. So, for instance, if your project manager sees you’re lagging on your sprint, they can crack the whip and make you speed up. In this episode, we will look at some of the common virtual boards and their shortcomings. We know that some software (not mentioning names, Jira) is tailor-made for developers but it is too complicated and can even slow the project down.

No matter how organized you are or how well a project is going, an impending deadline always get hearts racing. While we could argue and say that all projects could do with more time, some deadlines are objectively unreasonable. One app that certainly didn't have enough time or money is the IowaReporterApp, which has been splashed across the headlines. The app, which was developed to help with voters in the Iowa Caucus was riddled with problems.

Today on the show we’ll be talking about Ballmer Peak, the blood alcohol level between 0.129% and 0.138% that gives you superhuman programming ability, and whether or not this has helped us to get better at programming. Ballmer Peak was discovered by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and is certainly a topic of interest to most programmers out there. The concept was made popular by webcomic xkcd who imagined programmers being driven to alcohol by the frustrating task of coding.

Today we’re throwing it back again, this time to our 100th episode where Esther Derby joined us. Esther is an esteemed guide and consultant, specializing in teamwork optimization. She is on a mission to change work environments so that teams and individuals can flourish. In this episode, we discuss responsibility for results versus responsibility for improvement, in terms of management and team style.

Today on The Rabbit Hole, we are doing another remix, this time going back to an episode with Steven Solomon on how the DRY principle is misunderstood. Steven has been a programmer since 2007 and has been fortunate to work in many contexts. In this episode, Steven unpacks what the DRY principle is and clears up some common misconceptions about it. Commonly when developers see two lines of the same code, they are tempted to extract that into a method based on their understanding of DRY-ing.

In the world of open source, finding the cash to stay afloat while still being able to look at yourself in the mirror can be rough. Individual donations are pretty much a non-option and the ethical tradeoffs of paid advertising at the other end of the scale are hard to stomach. Our guest on the show today is Eric Holscher and as one of the co-founders of Read the Docs, sustaining an open-source project is a daily concern for him.

We all know a dog person and some of these dog people happen to be our colleagues, our bosses, our pairing partners, or maybe that dog person is even you! Although it may seem trivial, having pets in the office can be a touchy topic, as they can have a huge impact on your well-being, productivity, and the overall atmosphere of your workspace. Today on the show, we talk about bringing your pets to work: Is it a distraction, is it helpful, how does it make you feel?