271: Slop Is the New Clean

There's never been a better time to build software, and that might be a problem. Each skill you hand the AI makes the next one easier, each task you offload frees you to start three more, yet somehow we're working more than ever. This week we discuss building out our skills, and how to tell when it's time to close the laptop.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Matt Pocock's code-review skill — the two-axis review skill Adam's is based on.ub-mode — Uncle Bob's agent skill for CRAP scores, mutation testing and duplication checks.The CRAP metric — how complexity and test coverage combine into one risk score.Gherkin reference — the Given/When/Then syntax for acceptance tests.Black & White 1 Decompilation — the community decompilation of Lionhead's 2001 god game.Reverse centaurs — Cory Doctorow on humans working as a machine's assistant.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

How are we doing? No, really. The world moves fast, and keeping up doesn't leave much time to check in. This week, Adam and Ben settle in for a little podcast therapy.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Compiling — an xkcd comic about waiting for code to compile.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Has a year of talking to LLMs changed the way we talk to people? Great question, and you're absolutely right! And when the models write all the code, what's left for us? This week the hosts answer more listener questions.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:T3 Code — an app for running coding agents.Proxmox — splits a physical machine into virtual machines and containers.Tailscale — private network access to your machines without opening ports.Jellyfin — self-hosted media server.Pi-hole — network-wide ad blocker.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

What would you do if your manager asked you to make the audit trail editable? Why would Carol rather be evil? And would you still want to be a software engineer in five years, or is it finally time to buy the ice cream truck? This week the hosts answer listener questions on ethical lines, career pivots, and the future of software engineering.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:starry-night - the syntax highlighter behind Ben's new blog API.DEF CON - the hacking conference behind the red-teaming and social-engineering discussion.271: Slop Is the New Clean - the earlier discussion of Uncle Bob and Matt Pocock's interview that Ben revisits.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

LLMs have read everything, but they haven't spent fifteen years at the company learning which rules actually matter. Can a model ever bring a career's worth of experience to a decision, or is human wisdom overrated to begin with? And now that every answer starts with "let me ask Claude", are we really more productive than ever, or have we all just hired a ghostwriter? This week we discuss the abdication of opinion.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Matt Pocock's skills — grill-me and Wayfinder.cron-job.org — the cron host Adam landed on.openblack — the open-source Black & White engine Tim is vibe-coding on.The Trevor Project — where Adam's thirty dollars from Infisical went.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Uncle Bob wrote the book on clean code, and the whole argument rests on one number: you read code ten times for every time you write it, so you'd better make it readable. His agents write it now, and he doesn't read a line. This week we discuss who clean code is for now that machines are the ones reading it.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Uncle Bob on Software Fundamentals in the Age of AI — the Matt Pocock interview the whole episode is a reaction to. Yes, he's in a bathrobe.Infisical — where Adam moved his secrets after a long-running agent read his .env and cheerfully told him so.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

We're back after a week off and we have some things to get off our chest. Carol's agent doesn't understand auth, Ben explores the nature of performative coding, Adam agreed that meetings are for decisions, then spent two hours writing an email to prove it, and Tim's AI is better than yours. This week we have a grab bag of hot takes and hot takes on hot takes.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Taffy — Adam's CFML REST framework, the counterexample of a public repo whose product is the API, not the sourceSubway Takes — the 100% agree / 100% disagree format the table falls into mid-meeting-takesAdam's dotfiles blog post — the git bare repo trick for tracking a gitignored personal CLAUDE.md, promised on airWith audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Worrying about AI is the easy part. Everyone already has a list. The interesting part is what lands on it, what doesn't, and why. From military use, to an AI slop takeover, to the possibility that the tools are making us stupider.This week, the hosts respond to a question from the State of Devs survey: “Which of these general AI risks and issues are you most concerned about?”Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:State of Devs 2025 survey — the questions that set off the discussion; the survey itself is now closedOpenAI's Hugging Face security incident — what happened when agents escaped a constrained cyber evaluationLinkedIn's campaign against AI slop — the official explanation of its new reporting controlCloudflare Pay Per Crawl — tools for publishers to allow, block, or charge AI crawlersWith audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Nobody went to conferences for the talks. You went for the hallway, and for a roomful of people who'd made the same odd career bet you had. We didn't know how good we had it. COVID hit, AI is now everyone's best buddy, and now all these meetups and spaces are slowly disappearing. This week the hosts go looking for what's left of the developer hang.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Anthropic's Project Vend — the AI-run shop behind the tungsten cube storyWith audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Tim is trying to hire remote developers, but the interviews have started to feel like one long CAPTCHA. Before he can decide who's right for the job, he has to figure out whether he's interviewing the candidate or ChatGPT. This week the hosts discuss the state of remote developer interviews in the AI era.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.Mentioned in this episode:Mostly Technical #29: “Super Epic Crazy” — the source of the cover-letter story about most applicants missing simple instructionsRoberto Serrano on AI fraud at Brown University — the course whose take-home exams triggered the in-class-final storyWith audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.