You can't get 10x with AI coding. Not today. Dex Horthy (Human Layer) makes the case for 2-3x if you refuse to ship slop, and why a perfect spec still produces garbage if you give the model permission to skip quality. That permission is how you burn a codebase into ash.

Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.wordman.dev/podcast/dex-horthy-what-actually-gets-you-2-3x-with-ai-coding/

Everyone is selling 100x developer productivity, but David Cramer runs production software at Sentry and says LLMs are not making his own work faster. We talk about what actually holds up when AI meets real codebases, security review, open source economics, and why verification beats generation.

Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.wordman.dev/podcast/david-cramer-ship-real-production-code-with-ai/

Mario Zechner has watched people generate 500,000 lines of code in a week with a swarm of agents. He'll tell you exactly how that ends.Mario is the creator of Pi, the minimal, self-modifying coding agent that took off after Claude Code stopped fitting his workflow. He now builds it alongside Armin Ronacher at Earendil. This one is a grumpy, honest conversation about where AI coding is actually heading, and the places the hype quietly falls apart.We get into:- Why "code is never free," and how a lot of today's productivity just delays the bill- The case that spec-driven development is hyper-waterfall, repeating a mistake the industry thought it solved 30 years ago- Why an army of parallel agents wrecks his brain, and the "absolute caveman" workflow he actually uses to ship- Running AI fully local on a normal MacBook, and why that future is closer than most people think- The clanker problem- What we lose when AI strips out the friction we used to learn fromThe tension we kept circling: agents make exploring solutions faster than ever, but the thinking was always the hard part, not the typing. 0:00 Intro2:20 Why Pi Fits Workflows8:53 What Success Looks Like for Pi10:58 Building Beyond the Coding Agent13:13 Local AI Is Getting Real20:13 How Mario Actually Works26:38 Discipline, Atrophy, and Juniors29:08 Spec-Driven Dev Is Just Hyper-Waterfall35:03 Code Isn't Actually Free37:56 Async Agents and Thinking Time44:42 Learning Without the Pain49:13 AI's Sloppy Software Wave52:11 GitHub Under Clanker Load53:31 Family, Work, and Balance57:05 The Pi Team and Leadership58:52 Refactoring Pi's Core1:03:32 Security, YOLO, and Trust1:06:27 Taming the PR Flood1:12:11 Token Prices and Budgets

In this episode, I sit down with Minko Gechev — Google Engineer, former Angular team lead, and one of the most thoughtful voices on AI and developer productivity.We get into why AI won't replace engineers anytime soon (and what that actually means for your career), how Google's Angular team is affected by AI, the security risks of the current AI coding wave, and the single most valuable skill developers should be building right now.If you're a developer trying to figure out where you fit in the age of AI, I hope this one helps you.Connect with Minko:X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/mgechevGitHub: https://github.com/mgechevLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mgechev

Topics covered:

AI-powered developer productivity • LLM skill evaluation • Angular + AI • Software engineering career • Imposter syndrome • Open source security • Future of coding

Micro-frontends promise to help teams scale development, but AWS Principal Architect Luca Mezzalira has seen some succeed and some just fall apart. In this conversation, he shares what he's learned from years of implementation work at companies like DAZN and through consulting with Fortune 500 organizations.
Luca explains why micro-frontends are fundamentally different from components—something many teams get wrong from the start. He discusses the common pitfalls he encounters: teams treating them like distributed components, sharing state across boundaries, and copying architectures from companies with completely different constraints and resources.
The discussion covers practical implementation details—from communication patterns and tooling strategies to when approaches like iframes actually make sense. Luca also touches on newer developments in server-side rendering and how they're changing the micro-frontend landscape.
This isn't about micro-frontends being good or bad, but about understanding when and how to use them appropriately. Luca emphasizes the importance of context and organizational design in making these architectural decisions work.

Our Fantastic Guest - Luca Mezzalira
I’m a software architect with over 20 years of experience helping organizations—from startups to Fortune 500s—design scalable, resilient, and modern architectures. My focus: evolving frontend systems, driving cloud-native modernizations, and enabling autonomy at scale through architectural clarity.
As Principal Serverless Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS, I advise global enterprises on designing and implementing efficient, event-driven systems. I specialize in serverless, micro-frontends, and distributed architectures that align technology strategy with long-term business outcomes.

LinkedIn
X/Twitter

Links and Resources
Luca's Newsletter 
Single-spa 
Module Federation 
Native Federation 
Web Fragments (Microsoft) 
Astro Server Islands 

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Why CSS is Now the Fastest-Moving Space in Web Development (with Una Kravets)


While everyone's talking about AI disrupting development, Una Kravets from Google Chrome reveals a surprising twist: CSS has quietly become the fastest-evolving part of web development. In this conversation, Una breaks down how features that required months of JavaScript engineering are now landing as native platform capabilities. Think customizable dropdowns, anchor positioning, and scroll-driven animations. She shares insights from working directly with Chromium engineers and explains why senior developer expertise is becoming more valuable than ever, even as AI lowers the barrier to building applications.
Una walks through her process for identifying platform gaps and working with standards bodies like Open UI. She also tackles the unique challenge of scaling web platform knowledge in an AI-driven development landscape, sharing her mixed feelings about AI's current applications. From her success building Chrome extensions with Gemini to her frustration with chat-based customer service, Una argues for using AI where it makes sense while maintaining the human elements that make the web engaging. Whether you're skeptical about AI's role in development or curious about the cutting-edge of CSS, this conversation offers a grounded yet forward-thinking perspective on the future of web development.


Our Fantastic Guest
Una Kravets
Una Kravets leads the Web UI Developer Relations Team at Google Chrome with a mission to make the web platform easier to build on and more powerful. She hosts the CSS Podcast and has spoken at over 100 conferences around the world helping folks build better web interfaces. When Una isn't online, she loves to craft and recently became a mom.

X
Bluesky
Website


Links and Resources
Emil Kowalski's React motion course animations.dev
Google's web development guidance and feature announcements
Open UI Community Group
CSS Working Group GitHub
Web Platform Tests

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What does it take to build a web browser when everyone says it's impossible? In this episode, we sit down with Andreas Kling, the engineer behind Ladybird—the only major browser project that doesn't take money from Google.
Andreas breaks down a uncomfortable truth: Google funds every major browser through search deals. Chrome, Firefox, Safari—they're all dependent on Google's advertising revenue. Ladybird is building the first truly independent alternative since the early Firefox days.
We dive deep into the technical challenges of implementing web standards from scratch, why their 700,000 lines of code can compete with Chrome's 100+ million, and how they're making browser code that actually mirrors the specifications. Andreas reveals why they switched from UTF-8 to UTF-16, why they didn't choose Rust, and how they handle the constant evolution of living web standards.
From the "draw the owl" problem of CSS specifications to building a sustainable nonprofit model with sponsors like Shopify, Andreas shares the engineering and business decisions behind their ambitious timeline: alpha in 2026, beta in 2027, and v1.0 by 2028.

Our Fantastic Guest
Andreas Kling
President of the Ladybird Browser Initiative.

X

Links and Resources
Ladybird Browser Website
Web Platform Tests
Fil-C (memory-safe C++ compiler)

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What does it take to accidentally become the maintainer of one of React's most popular libraries? In this episode, we sit down with Dominik Dorfmeister (aka. TkDodo), maintainer of React Query (now TanStack Query), to unpack his unexpected journey from answering Discord questions during COVID to maintaining a library with 10 million weekly downloads.
Dominik reveals how spending months just helping people on Discord led to becoming a core maintainer of the TanStack ecosystem. We dive deep into React Query's stability-first approach, the challenges of managing breaking changes across multiple frameworks, and why the React adapter is surprisingly the most complex to maintain.
From deleting 20,000 lines of dead code at Sentry to building platform teams that enable developer productivity, Dominik shares insights into maintaining software at scale.

Our Fantastic Guest
Dominik Dorfmeister
Software Engineer from 🇦🇹, working at Sentry, maintaining TanStack Query

BlueSky


Links and Resources
Dominik's Blog
Query.gg
Knip Docs 

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Homepage - https://www.weeklybrew.dev/

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What does it take to build one of the fastest-growing database ORMs from scratch? In this episode, we sit down with Andrii Sherman, co-founder of Drizzle, to unpack their philosophy: "If you know SQL, you know Drizzle."
Andrii breaks down why their "headless ORM" approach is winning over developers frustrated with traditional ORMs. We dive deep into Drizzle's smart migration system, the growing ecosystem (DrizzleKit, DrizzleStudio), and how they've built a sustainable business model around open source with a 15-person team—all while working from Ukraine.
From SQL template tags to building developer tools that don't get in your way, Andrii reveals the engineering decisions behind Drizzle's rapid adoption. We explore their unique approach to database migrations, why they're still not v1.0, and how they've created an entire ecosystem of tools that just work.
Whether you're curious about modern database tooling, open source sustainability, or building developer-first products, this conversation offers rare insights into creating technology that developers actually love using.

Our Fantastic Guest
Andrii Sherman
Drizzle Team co-founder

X (formerly twitter)

Links and Resources
Drizzle Team
Drizzle ORM Documentation
Drizzle ORM v1 Roadmap
Deep State Project
Sponsor Drizzle

Thank you very much for listening!

We are also pretty much on all social media platforms, so make sure to like and subscribe!

Homepage - https://www.weeklybrew.dev/

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Ever wondered who actually decides how JavaScript evolves? In this episode, Jan-Niklas Wortmann sits down with Daniel Ehrenberg, President of Ecma International and long-time TC39 contributor, talking about how the language evolves—from vague idea to official spec.

We unpack how proposals move through the stages, the philosophy behind JavaScript’s gradual evolution, and why some ideas never make it into the spec. From syntax debates to ecosystem pressures and the role of Babel, bundlers, and browser vendors—this conversation gives you a rare inside look at how your favorite language changes.

Whether you’re a JS nerd, framework author, or just curious about why import() works the way it does, this episode pulls back the curtain.

Our Fantastic Guest
Daniel Ehrenberg
Daniel Ehrenberg is a software engineer on Bloomberg’s JavaScript Infrastructure & Tooling Engineering team. He serves as the Vice President of Ecma International and contributes to Ecma TC39, the JavaScript standards committee. Daniel has dabbled in WebAssembly and web standards as well, both while at Bloomberg and in his previous positions at Igalia, a free software cooperative, and at Google on the V8 team, the JavaScript engine in Chrome.

Bluesky

Chapters

00:00 - Welcome & Inside TC39: How JavaScript Evolves
08:03 - The Politics of Proposals & Consensus Building
16:05 - Syntax Innovation and Ecosystem Challenges
24:06 - Influencers of the Spec: Babel, Bundlers & Beyond
32:09 - Future Features: Import Defer, TS Gaps & Module Plans
40:00 - Community Involvement & What Comes Next

Production support for this video was kindly provided by WebStorm. Thanks for helping bring this idea to life!

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