This Developer's Life: Recent Episodes
Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman
We are Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman and this is our podcast where we tell stories about things technical and not so technical.
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.
But how much more? We talk to two people who are well into their later chapters. Scott talks to Lawrence Lockhart about reinventing yourself well into midlife. Rob talks to his mom, who, in her early 80s, was far from her final chapter.
Lawrence Lockhart
- TikTok
Music* Whipping the Horse's Eyes - Calexico * Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man), Instrumental - Love and Rockets * Spy Always Dies Alone, 23117649 * Oleksandr Stepanov * Yrii Semchyshyn * NiN, Ghosts
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.
Scott talks to Anjuan Simmons about the power of lending your privilege, lifting people up by getting out of the way.
Rob talks to April Edwards about being an ally, listening, and shutting up. April's blog post about her health battle can be found here.
Music
The music used for this show is shared, kindly, by the following artists - our thanks to them!
- Zakhar Dziubenko
- SPMusic
- OctoSound
- Alexi Action
- Nine Inch Nails (as always)
- Praz Khanal
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. Rob has packed up his family and is travelling the world. He talks about his Faith in his children, recorded in a small town in Greece. Then we talk to Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, aka Sammus, about her crisus of Faith. She's juggling getting a PhD from Cornell while her side career as a musician is starting to take off. Which path is the right path?
- Sammus - Mae Jemison
- Sammus - No Hands
- Sammus - The Father
- Sammus - 1080p
- Sammus - Pity Party
- Sammus - Success
- Sammus - Power Ups
- Sammus - Cybernetic Armor
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.
We were very private about the whole thing and waited to tell anyone until we knew we were mostly OK. However, to my surprise, the day of the diagnosis my wife, who has never shown much interested in podcasting announced "I want to record an audio Cancer Diary. Can you do that?"
So we did.
We honestly didn't know if we were going to publish this when we started but after a month of editing late into the night, we are.
This episode of This Developer's Life takes a half year of our lives and many, many hours of audio and turns it into a single hour show that Mo and I are happy to share it with you today.
I hope you enjoy the show and that you and yours are, and remain, healthy.
Mo and Scott share their thoughts and struggle in this cancer diary they started the day after Mo was diagnosed.
Download Here
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.
Download Here
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.
Download Here
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.
Download Here
Scott and Rob talk to two techie folks about style and taste - how do you get it? Are you born with it? Does it matter anyway?
Download Here
Scott and Rob talk to two developers about the role education has played in their careers
Download Here
In this episode we talk to the StackOverflor team about the day the data died - October 10, 2011 - when their database went offline for 5 hours.
Scott and Rob talk to a team of Top Gun developers - the StackOverflow gang - about the day their database died.
Download Here
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.
Download Here
p.p1 {margin: 5.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}
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.
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.
Download Here
p.p1 {margin: 5.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}
In this episode we have our first listener-submission: 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 leads him to, among other things, stop policemen in the street and ask them about take-downs.
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.
Download Here
p.p1 {margin: 5.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'} 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 Neilsen, Tom Preston-Werner, and Nate and Niki Kohari.
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.
Download Here
This week Scott and I take a look at the Deathmarch, Dead-end projects that we fall into from time to time in our careers. Why do we do it? How do we get out of them and what do we learn?
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.
Download Here
In this episode Scott and I talk to technical folks who have moved on up to Management - and what it means to them.
- Mark Freedman shares his story about clawing his way out of a successful career as a manager at a rather large, growing company. A good job, lots of respect, and he hates it.
- Bertrand LeRoy talks about charting his own path right at Microsoft after graduating with a PhD in Physics and how he maintains a career right down in the middle of manager and coder.
- Todd Baesen talks about moving from Chemical Engineer to Nuclear Engineer on the USS Enterprise (literally), and then to senior management at a big engineering firm in the SF Bay Area.
Download Here - 57 minutes
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
Music The tracks for this week are used under Creative Commons from Magnatunes:
- Daniel Estrem - Asturias (Leyenda) no. 1 from Cantos de Espana
- Harlan Williams - Beneath the Iron Heel of Pagan Rome
- Williamson - a please goodbye from whore
- Urban Response - Hunter Gatherer
- DJ Cary -Termoli
- Fischerspooner - Danse en France
- Jaydiohead - December Backdrifts
- Tool - Rosetta Stoned
- General Fuzz - Beatdown
- Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts
- Jaydiohead - Life There
Sponsorship The bandwidth and other costs for this week’s show were picked up by Twilio:
Need SMS or Voice call capabilities for your application? Check out Twilio.
… and SublimeSVN
Easy Subversion Management for Windows
In this episode Scott and I talk to 2 people with fairly different stories, about what motivates them:
- Scott talks to Brad Wilson, Senior Developer on the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC team about what motivates him to get out of bed and come to work every day at a high-intensity company, surrounded by brilliant people.
- Rob talks to Rub Sullivan, a database administrator at a large company, about what motivates him to make developer's lives miserable in order to keep his job.
Download Here
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
Music The tracks for this week are used under Creative Commons from Magnatunes:
- Urban Response - Hip Hop Nai Hai de Morrer
- General Fuzz - Lay it Down
- Urban Response - Resistencia Nunca Morre
- iNTROSPEKT - Government Road
- Harlan Williams - Gregory IX
- DJ Cary - Overflight
- Brad Sucks - Dirtbag
The following tracks are commercial tracks, used sparingly (30 seconds or so) under Fair Use:
Metric - Love is a Place
Sponsorship The bandwidth and other costs for this week’s show were picked up by Twilio:
Need SMS or Voice call capabilities for your application? Check out Twilio.
… and Umbraco
“Priceless CMS at the cost of virtually nothing”
In this episode Scott and I talk to 3 developers who have pulled off some pretty audacious maneuvers:
- John Resig, Creator of jQuery, decided to write yet another javascript framework when there were already quite a few to choose from. Not only did he succeed, he changed web development forever.
- Alex Payne, former API Developer Lead at Twitter, talks about the (somewhat insane) move to leave Twitter, and (somewhat more insane) choice to "reinvent banking" with BankSimple.
- Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project and creator of Mono talks about creating a clone of the .NET framework - all because he didn't like what else was out there at the time for Linux.
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
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:
- Ward Cunningham - creator of the Wiki and major figure in Agile/XP programming
- Charles Petzold - author of many books about Windows and prominent speaker
- Dan Bricklin - "Superman" according to Scott. Creator of the spreadsheet and all around amazing guy.
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
You can download here - 49 minutes
Most of the music in this podcast is released under Creative Commons, including:
- DJ Cary - Sonic Chiil
- Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts
- John Williams - Dusty Porch
In addition - super short clips of the following songs were used under Fair Use:
- Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator
- Laurie Anderson - O Superman
In this episode Scott and I talk to two developers who created something phenomenal: they hit a Homerun if you will. 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 second story, Scott talks to Dan Bricklin, who in the late 70s and early 80s helped to usher in the computer age, as well as a new industry. Dan is the creator of Visicalc - the first spreadsheet program.
Right click and Download Here: 47 Minutes.
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
The music used in this podcast is released under Creative Commons - specifically:
- Making me Nervous: Brad Sucks
- Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts
- Willamson
- John Williams: Acoustic Country Blues Guitar
Please support these artists.
This bandwidth for this episode is sponsored by Tekpub - purveyors of fine screencasts of every flavor. Save forest, watch a book.
In this episode I’m joined once again by Scott Hanselman and we explore the idea of “being mean” - and what makes people mean in our industry.
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”.
Scott then interviews Cyra Richardson - a program manager at Microsoft with a rather strong opinion about the changes she’s seen in the company over the last 20 years.
Finally, I spend some time talking to Giles Bowkett and his various … “interesting” interactions with the Ruby community.
Right click and Download - MP3 (42 minutes)
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
Tracklist
As always - I encourage you to buy the tracks below if you like what you hear. This is my part to stay within Fair Use of this music. I don’t make any money on this podcast - give your spare change to the artists instead.
- NIN - Ghosts IV
- Band of Horses - The Funeral
How do you solve problems as a developer? How do you tackle issues that seem completely unsolvable - as an individual or on a team?
Download Here
How do you solve problems as a developer? How do you tackle issues that seem completely unsolvable - as an individual or on a team?
In this week’s This Developer’s Life that’s what I take a look at, from 3 perspectives:
- Mike Moore (Ruby developer) talks about personal skills for solving problems, including the ability to ask a different question.
- Javier Lozano (Microsoft developer) talks about teams coming together as a “band of brothers”, solving problems that may, or may not, exist.
- Tamar Cohen (Java developer) shares her story of the unsolvable bug - something she had to solve as the exploration of other planets depends on it. She works at NASA, programming planetary rovers.
Right Click and Download Here (48 minutes)
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
Scott Hanselman finishes things off with a story about what happens when trouble finds you…
Some Notes: I’ve been asked by the producers of This American Life to kindly change my logo as well as podcast title. In retrospect it seems rather obvious that I should have thought about this - but the short answer is that I didn’t know if anyone would really care about this podcast. I also didn’t expect the attention it’s getting.
Oops.
I changed the logo - a name change will come soon. Worry not - the RSS will stay intact, as will the iTunes link.
UPDATE - I’ve remastered the episode and removed some of the music.
Soundtrack: If you like any of the songs - please support my efforts to stay within “Fair Use” by buying them… I’d very much appreciate it.
- Mezmerize - Liz Phair
- Please Me Like You Want To - Ben Harper
- Human After All - Daft Punk
- Too Little Too Late - Metric
- NIN Remixes (under Creative Commons)
In this episode I talk to 2 developers about the fame and how it relates to their career as developers. 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.
The second story comes from Scott Hanselman - one of the biggest names (if not the biggest) in the Microsoft community.
37 Minutes. Right click and Download it here.
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
If you like what you hear and want others to find this podcast on iTunes - please rate it :). It will help others to find it.
Technical Note: You’ll notice that the first story’s audio isn’t ideal. John was using an analog mic that picked up some EM hum that I needed to filter out. I’m committed to spotless audio - but I have to work with what my guests have…
UPDATE: Here’s the track listing…
- Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts 18
- White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
- Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts 12
- Pavement - Grave Architecture
- James Brown - Super Bad
- My Fair Lady - You Did It
In this episode I talk to 2 developers about the fame and how it relates to their career as developers
Download Here
This is the very first episode of a little experiment of mine - telling stories about development following in the footsteps (perhaps a little too closely) of my favorite podcast: This American Life.
The first episode is devoted to a bit of darkness: Thoughts on Getting Fired. Thought it would be an interesting topic… why not…
UPDATE: I’ve remastered this to fix volume levels as well as replace most of the copyrighted music with royalty-free music. I’ve also added an AAC format for iTunes
Right click and Download the mp3 here.
Please consider subscribing with iTunes, or Zune. Or if you have a BitTorrent client and would like to help save us bandwidth money, as well as the bragging rights of downloading legal torrents via RSS, get our Torrent Feed at ClearBits.
I’d love your feedback. If you’d like to hear more, let me know! If not, I’d like to know that too :). It takes a lot of time to do this stuff :).
UPDATE: Here’s the track listing
- Air - Sexxy Boy
- Nine Inch Nails - #6 (Ghosts)
- Electralane - On Parade
- Beta Band - Broken Up a Ding Dong
- Calexico - Minas de Cobre
- Fischerspooner - mega c (bonus track)
This is the very first episode of a little experiment of mine - telling stories about development following in the footsteps of my favorite podcast: This American Life
Download Here