Words aren't just the tools that we use to describe the world around us - they are rich layers of abstraction that carry our cultural histories, our education, and our social norms on their shoulders. When we have a shared understanding of a what a word or turn-of-phrase means, our ability to communicate with each other is robust and unparalleled. But, when our differences our great, we end up talking past each other and going around in circles. Words aren't just effective, they're magical. Take, for example, a simple analogy: "It's the movie JAWS, but with cats!" — this will immediately conjure up entire worlds within the mind of the listener. So, do words matter? You bet your donkey they do!

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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's episode, we invite you into another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. Ben's mind. Ben's sick, twisted cavern of decay and depravity wherein we gain insight into what actually makes this man tick. Topics include the slippery slope of the "Shift Left" mentality; over-complicating life with JWTs (JSON Web Tokens); dangerous public-on-public method invocation; and, the inherent cost of everything.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

After a multi-year global pandemic, preceded by a dearth of ColdFusion conferences in the U.S., Ben finally made it out to Munich, Germany for CFCamp 2023 - Europe's premier CFML-oriented conference. At 130 attendees, it was the perfect place to re-enter society and talk tech with like-minded engineers. Going into it, Ben was anxious. But, by the end of the 3-day event, he ended up having a great time and was privileged to hang out with some truly wonderful people!

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Starting a new project is always exciting: there's so much potential, so many visions of grandeur. Completing a project, on the other hand, is always a challenge. In the engineering world, we often joke that the last 90% of a project takes just as much time as the first 90% of a project. Inspired by the GitHub Guide: Finish Your Projects, we wanted to talk about why finishing a project is always such a slog; and, how we can keep the momentum moving forward in order to get our projects over the finish-line.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

After watching the release event for Apple's new Vision Pro headset, Tim wants to talk to us about both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR); and, get our general take on where this all fits into the future of computing. We each have a different level of exposure to this kind of technology. But, certainly none of us is using any type of headset in an ongoing way.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

After years of wanting to build a fitness tracking application, Ben has finally started to write code for Dig Deep Fitness. But, starting a new project from scratch isn't something that we engineers do very often; and, all of the features that we take for granted - session manage, error logging, rate limiting, email delivery - those foundational aspects all need to be created when we start something new. On today's show, Ben walks us through the pragmatic choices that he's made in order to try and keep progress moving forward even if it comes at the cost of elegance.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, we have our first book club discussion about The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by authors Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. We review chapters 3-6 and talk about how Adam's recent compliance work has given him a fresh perspective on the 190-page spreadsheet of vulnerabilities portrayed in the book. It's interesting how a security team can have a deeply collaborative relationship with a company that feels, at least for some, to be purely adversarial.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

When Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) come together to create the first version of a given piece of software, it feels like everyone is on the same page and has the same priorities. But, once that initial implementation ships to users, the Product and Design departments tend to move on, leaving engineers to maintain the software. This creates an uncomfortable tension between the existing user experience (UX) and the underlying technical details. On today's show, we talk about that EPD tension and how we might work to mitigate it.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

This week on the show, we discuss a variety of web and web-adjacent topics. Adam is feeling dubious about recommending a career in web development to his children (is it still worth it)? Ben legitimately wants to understand why we - the web development community - don't approach Testing with a YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) mindset. And, Tim wants to consider different ways to handle errors in a RESTful API.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, we talk to Sean Corfield about his take on the "Tech Interview" process. With over 40 years of experience at companies like Macromedia, Adobe, and World Singles, Sean has been on both sides of the interview table; and, has been personally responsible for hiring countless engineers. His perspective that most tech interviews are "broken" might be taken with some apprehension if it weren't for the fact that, in 30-years of hiring, Sean has never once had to fire an engineer for lack of ability. So, he's clearly figured out how to hire the right people using a proven and repeatable process.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.