Ep. #4, Backend Development with Paul Biggar of Dark

On episode 12 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Dexter Horthy of HumanLayer. They explore the promise and limitations of autonomous coding, including why today’s models excel at bounded programming tasks but struggle to account for the long-term consequences of architectural decisions. The conversation covers dark software factories, code review bottlenecks, program design, technical debt, and the continuing importance of experienced engineers.

On episode 11 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio speaks with David Crawshaw about the shift from traditional developer infrastructure to agent-native computing. David traces lessons from founding Tailscale to now building exe.dev around the idea that “agents need a computer.” The conversation explores why VMs may be the right primitive for AI coding agents, why deployment friction becomes unacceptable when software can be generated in minutes, and how agent-driven development changes code review, production workflows, security, and the economics of personal software.

On episode 10 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Steve Krouse to discuss the rapidly evolving relationship between AI and programming. Steve shares lessons from building Val Town at the center of the AI tooling wave, why he believes better abstractions will define the future of software, and how engineers can avoid becoming passive operators in an increasingly agent-driven world.

On episode 9 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Simon Willison to unpack the rapid evolution of AI coding tools and what they mean for software development. They explore the shift from vibe coding to agentic engineering, how coding agents are reshaping workflows, and why experience still matters. The conversation dives into trust, security, and what breaks when code becomes cheap.

On episode 8 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Scott Hanselman for a conversation that goes far beyond prompts and productivity gains. They talk about craftsmanship, learning by doing, the long-term talent pipeline for engineering teams, and how AI could either free people to do more meaningful work or simply accelerate existing inefficiencies. From pair programming to Star Trek economics, this episode examines the bigger human questions behind the current AI boom.

On episode 7 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Peter Bell to explore how the CTO role evolves from early-stage founder to enterprise leader. They unpack what it really takes to scale AI adoption across an engineering organization, and why simply buying tools isn’t enough. The conversation dives into agentic software development, observability, context engineering, and what happens when production code is generated without direct human review.

On episode 6 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Carl Lerche, Principal Engineer at AWS and creator of Tokio. Carl shares his journey from Ruby and Rails into Rust, and explains why memory safety, fearless concurrency, and async runtimes matter for modern infrastructure. The conversation dives deep into the origins of Tokio, lessons from building foundational open source software, and how Rust’s guarantees are shaping the future of systems engineering.Want 10% off your ticket to TokioConf? Use the discount code: Heavybit10

In episode 5 of High Leverage, host Joe Ruscio and special guest Eliran Mesika of GitLab pull back the curtain on company acquisitions, build vs. buy considerations, and the complex inner workings of merger agreements.

In episode 4 of High Leverage, Joe is joined by Paul Biggar, CTO and Co-Founder of Dark, to discuss the challenges of backend development, and how Dark aims to simplify them with a new, streamlined programming language.

In episode 3 of High Leverage, Joe speaks with Grant Miller, Replicated founder and creator of EnterpriseReady, on how companies are taking a new approach to running third-party applications.