Code with Jason

301 - Bekki Freeman, Staff Software Engineer at Caribou and Co-Organizer of Rocky Mountain Ruby

In this episode I talk with Becky Freeman, staff engineer at Caribou and co-organizer of Rocky Mountain Ruby, about legacy code, refactoring long-running applications, and the psychological skills required to get team buy-in for technical improvements.Links:Bekki Freeman on LinkedInRocky Mountain RubyCaribouNonsense Monthly

300 - TDD and AI with Paul Hammond

In this episode I talk with Paul Hammond about TDD as a discoverable principle—something alien programmers would independently arrive at. We discuss my "specify, encode, fulfill" formulation, why programming needs theory instead of rules of thumb, and the business payoff of technical quality: Paul returned to a well-built project after 18 months and delivered months of planned work before Christmas.Links:ScenaristNonsense Monthly

298 - AI-Assisted Rails Upgrades with Ernesto Tagwerker

In this episode I talk with Ernesto Tagwerker about using AI for Rails upgrades, AI as an unblocking tool rather than just a speeder-upper, and the dangers of AI-generated "speculative code" that adds liability without value.Links:FastRuby.ioOmbuLabs

297 - AI-Assisted Coding with Steven Diamante

In this episode I talk with Steven Diamante about coaching teams on XP practices and AI coding agents. We discuss why change is so hard (people have to want it), his success turning an underperforming team around through weekly learning hours, and how to use TDD with AI—including "predictive TDD" where you have the agent guess if tests will pass or fail.Links:Diamante Technical CoachingSteven Diamante on LinkedInNonsense Monthly

296 - Software Design Principles with Andrea Laforgia

In this episode I talk with Andrea Laforgia about programming principles, why good code is code that's easy to change, and his motto: "write your code so it can be easily deleted." We discuss technical debt as an operating model, the fallacy of sacrificing quality for speed, and AI's impact on learning fundamentals.Links:Andrea Laforgia on LinkedInNonsense Monthly