Episodes

Life is long. A series of chapters as you move from one scene to the next. Childhood, becoming a young adult, possibly a parent at some point, and more.

What do you do when your voice gains an audience? Do you rattle cages or open doors? That's what we talk about in this episode.

How does our Faith drive us? Do you have Faith in yourself and your abilities, and how do you know you're on the right path? In this episode of This Developer's Life we offer you two stories. 

In this episode of This Developer's Life we ask the hard questions about space. Why aren't we on Mars? Why haven't we gone back to the moon? We talk to Paul Lutus, Dan Bricklin, Tamar Cohen, and hear from Ray Bradbury.

Big thanks from both my wife and myself for the outpouring of support after our Cancer announcement. Last year was a long year and the Cancer part of the year was particularly long.

Where does drama come from? How do we react to it? How much drama can be created by simple semicolon? This week we explore The Great Semicolon Affair.

How many empty brain cells do you have in your head? How capable are you of learning something completely new, and retaining what you already know? Scott and Rob talk to two developers this week who flex their ability to learn to both have fun, and succeed at their career.

You're so old! What a dinosaur! You're using old software and old languages to do old things! Or are you? Scott and Rob talk to David Sokol, Sean Bamforth and Pete Brown about Fortran, DataFlex and the Commodore 64. All these dinosaurs are doing useful work. Or, are they?

What do you do when you're not staring at your computer screen? What obsession grips you as you drive home? In this episode we ask David Heinemeier Hansson and Pete Brown this very question.

Who cares about typefaces and why should you? Well, these guys do and you should start caring. Rob and Scott explore the world of reading online with one of the godfathers in the world of typeface and fonts.

What is taste? What is style? Do you have it? Scott and Rob have no idea what it is or how to get it - but they know it's important. In this show they talk to a designer who flexes his good taste for a living - and a developer who is committed to spreading good taste where he can.

Scott and Rob discuss the value of a degree - and talk to two developers who used their passion to pull them through school and into their careers.

Scott and Rob talk to a group of Top Gun developers: the StackOverflow team, about the day their database melted - and how the team responded.

In this episode we talk to three developers about criticism - some they've given and some they've received. In addition we talk to a very vocal critic of this podcast.

In this special episode we explore the Egyptian revolution. We talk to Remon Zakaria about his experience writing software for a day job and overthrowing the government at night. Big thanks to Ahmed Remy and Reem Ahmed for their help. We recorded hours and hours of content to bring you this show. We wish we could have used everyone's story - there were so many.

Rob Sullivan talks about his obsessiveness and how it helps him, and hinders him in his job. Rory Blythe and Scott then talk openly about Rory's compulsion to keep learning - which he has embraced completely.

In this episode we talk to competitors who are also programmers. Or, programmers who also compete. Are coders pre-wired for this? Jon Skeet, David Fowler, Aaron Jensen and Danielle Banks share their stories.

In this episode Scott and Rob talk to 4 entrepreneurs about the risks they take, and what's happened as a result. Dave Nielsen, Tom Preston-Werner, and Nate and Niki Kohari.

In this episode Scott and Rob talk to Chad Myers, Chad Fowler, and Doug Rohrer about the scars they've received from dead end projects they've been on. In addition - Sara Chipps contributes her first story for us - interviewing Scott Reynolds.

This week it's just Scott and me - Scott gets to go off to Disneyland with his wife and 2 boys, and I get to hang out with my girls for a week as their mom goes on a retreat in California.

In this episode Scott and I talk to technical folks who have moved on up to Management - and what it means to them.

In this episode Scott and I talk to 2 people with fairly different stories, about what motivates them

In this episode Scott and I talk to 3 developers who have pulled off some pretty audacious maneuvers.

In this episode Scott and I discuss "what you need to know as a software developer". How many layers of abstraction do you need to understand? How many geek trading cards should you have in your collection? To find out more, we talked to 3 prominent, living-history developers.

In the first story, I talk to David Heinemeier Hansson creator of Ruby on Rails, partner at 37Signals and author of Rework about the inspiration and shepherding of Ruby on Rails.

In the first story Scott shares his experience on being 'outted' at a former company, where his name sat beside 7 of the 10 top entries on a list of 'what not to do to code'.

In the first story I talk to John Sheehan, a developer who's active on Twitter and is establishing himself in the Open Source community.

I talk to 2 developers in this episode, and toss in a story from myself at the end: