Happy Path Programming

We chat with Steve Manuel (of dylibso.com and mcp.run) about LLM "plugins" with Wasm & MCP (Model Context Protocol).Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Justin Reock has spent a lot of his career thinking about how to help developers be more productive. In this episode we learn about the methodologies that can help developers spend more time in "flow state" - happily coding the fun stuff. Further reading: Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4 Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Lize Raes teaches us about AI models, LLMs, Tools, Agents, and MCP.Article from Anthropic on Agent architectures: Building effective agentsDiscuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Join us at the 2025 Winter Tech Forum! www.wintertechforum.com Projects Mentioned: uv for Python TypeScript Effect Pkl CloudFormation Extras Pkl GitHub Actions Other Episodes Mentioned: #81 TypeScript & Effects with Michael Arnaldi #97 The Pkl Configuration Language with Philip Hölzenspies

We chat with Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer, about the joy of programming and the tensions between our and others needs. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Jutta Eckstein is expanding the concepts of Agile to be a company-wide model, instead of a niche process for software developers. We chat with her about the book "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy" which she co-authored on this subject. For more details on the book and many free resources, see: www.agilebossanova.com Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Nathan Sobo is co-founder of Zed, a super-fast, collaborative, AI-powered, code editor. We chat about his journey to build the ultimate code editor: lessons learned from building Atom, Electron and its challenges, CRDTs, Rust native GPU GUIs, AI Code Assistants, and more CRDTs. See also: ⁠Nathan on the Software Unscripted podcast⁠ Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

After 4 years in development, our book is out! Along with our friend and lead-author, Bill Frasure, we we discuss the book, its motivation and the process we used to create it. Now available in digital and print forms at: effectorientedprogramming.com At the end of the episode we step into the "twilight zone" with a 7 minute NotebookLM AI-generated podcast based on the book. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠

⁠Stephan Janssen⁠ is always on the bleeding edge of both helping developers grow and with how he uses technology to accomplish amazing things. He led the creation of Devoxx but is a coder at heart. Stephan shares his journey with AI, both as a "library" in his applications and also as an "assistant" that helps him iterate and program more quickly. Resources: DevoxxGenie IntelliJ Plugin Ollama LangChain for Java LMstudio Llama.cpp James on The AI Native Dev Podcast: Rethinking Software Development: James Ward on AI's Role in Software Testing and Coding Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠

We chat with Venkat about his upcoming dev2next conference and the new Stream Gatherers API (preview in JDK 22). Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

Johannes Schickling (@schickling | schickling.dev⁠) gets us up-to-speed on Effect, the ZIO-inspired Effect System for TypeScript, and the Local-First movement. Resources: Local-First Podcast: www.localfirst.fm Ink & Switch's Local-First Essay: www.inkandswitch.com/local-first Effect (TypeScript Library): effect.website Riffle research project: riffle.systems LiveStore: github.com/livestorejs Overtone: overtone.pro Related Episodes: #81 TypeScript & Effects with Michael Arnaldi #62 Musing About Local-First Sync & CRDTs with Mark McGranaghan Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

Diana Montalion teaches us about Systems Thinking and why it matters for those of us building software. Diana is founder of ⁠Mentrix⁠, which teaches "systems architecture skills for an increasingly complex world." Pre-Order Diana's book: Learning Systems Thinking: Essential Nonlinear Skills and Practices for Software Professionals Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with Trond Hjorteland about Agile and why it hasn't led to successful outcomes in many traditional organizations. Mentioned and related resources: Trond & João Rosa's training on Agile + DP2 Open Systems Theory LinkedIn Group for Open Systems Theory More material on Open Systems Theory Resource List from Trond Some of Trond's recorded talks

We chat with Valentina Servile about her upcoming book on Continuous Deployment and reducing the risks to keeping HEAD not just always deployable, but automatically deployed to production. Book for preorder on Amazon: Continuous Deployment: Enable Faster Feedback, Safer Releases, and More Reliable Software Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with Philip Hölzenspies, one of the maintainers of the new Pkl configuration language (pkl-lang.org). Resources: James' Pkl for GitHub Actions: github.com/jamesward/pklgha Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with April Wensel, founder of Compassionate Coding, about helping programmers bring more compassion to themselves and others. Resources: Confessions of a Recovering Jerk Programmer Marshall Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication Kristin Neff - Self-Compassion Karen Armstrong - Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center definition of compassion Oren Jay Sofer's Needs & Feelings Lists Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with Gwen Shapira, co-founder of Nile, about her journey to creating a virtualized, serverless Postgres database service. We also dive into the challenges with traditional data architectures and approaches like ORMs. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with Trisha Gee about Test Driven Development (TDD), flaky tests, ops & observability for builds, and developer productivity. Mentioned TDD Article: The beautiful theory of TDD and the reality check of practice Discuss this episode: ⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

When Gunnar Morling announced the 1 Billion Row Challenge a few weeks ago, he had no idea it'd go crazy viral. Resources: Challenge details: www.morling.dev/blog/one-billion-row-challenge Rust 1BRC Blog: aminediro.com/posts/billion_row/ Cliff Click's implementation walkthrough: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJNIbgV6j-Y James' very slow Scala ZIO implementation: github.com/jamesward/1brc-zio/blob/main/src/main/scala/Main.scala Discuss this episode: discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

We chat with Adam Warski about Loom, Virtual Threads, and his Loom-based Scala library, Ox, for structured concurrency & Go-Like Channels. Referenced articles & code: Ox EasyRacer Client Go statement considered harmful Go-like selects using jox channels in Java Limits of Loom's performance Fast and Scalable Channels in Kotlin Coroutines Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Announcing Graboo, a collection of experiments to reduce friction with Gradle. Repo: https://github.com/jamesward/graboo Buy your Happy Path Programming Shirt: https://happy-path.printify.me/products Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Most of us have managers but they aren't always great. We chat with James' best manager, Sushila Sahay, about what makes her such a great manager. We also dive a bit into open source business models since Sushila has deep experience in that realm. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We learn about Algebraic Effects with the Scala library Kyo ( getkyo.io) from the creator, Flavio Brasil. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Arty Starr is a PhD student and entrepreneur focused on helping developers thrive. We chat about her research on developer momentum and ways that developers can find joy through more time in the flow state. Referenced resources: SpringOne Talk Arty's Idea Flow Book FlowInsight Discuss this episode: ⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Zalim Bashorov (@bashorov) works on Kotlin/Wasm at JetBrains and answers our many questions about Wasm, GC, the Component Model, and other future proposals. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Sabine went from acedemia and a PhD in formal methods, to Python, Elm, Haskell, and now OCaml. We chat about this journey and some of the reasons why OCaml is an awesome modern language. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Our chat with John De Goes starts with his Scala & Rust journeys, then goes into Golem Cloud, a serverless durable computing platform underpinned by Wasm, and ends with a discussion about whether business applications really need parallelism. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We chat with Dormain Drewitz about failure and reliability. Ironically our recording software crashed near the end of the episode but we recovered and wrapped things up. Referenced Article: 10 Years of Failure Friday at PagerDuty: Fostering Resilience, Learning and Reliability Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

At the Rust Developer Retreat we explored Structured Concurrency with Tokio. With the attendees we chat about our projects and things learned, liked, and disliked about Rust. Then dive into Structured Concurrency generally and specific implementations. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Bruce and James chat about the future of programming. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Michael created Effect, a functional effect system inspired by Scala ZIO, for TypeScript. We chat about Functional Programming, the TypeScript language, and Effects. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Renee Shah is a partner at Amplify Partners, an early stage venture capital firm. We discuss some broad industry trends: Edge, Wasm, Distributed Systems, Functional Programming, and much more! Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We chat with Oliver Drotbohm about what Domain-Driven Design is and how it might intersect with Microservices, Monoliths, or Moduliths. Mentioned resources: Parnas on modularity Chris Richardson – Introducing Assemblage - a microservice architecture definition process Spring Modulith Project Introducing Spring Modulith Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

First a short rant about mutability followed by learning about Smithy, an Interface Description Language (IDL), with Jakub Kozłowski. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Holly Cummins, a Senior Principal Software Engineer on Quarkus at Redhat, joins us to chat about Microservices and Quarkus. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

WebAssembly (Wasm) finds a way for the web to move forward to near-native performance while avoiding the limitations of JavaScript. In this episode we chat with Vivek Sekhar, a product manager on the Chrome team, about all the Wasm things and how they relate to a better foundation for cross-platform, high performance apps, in the browser, on the cloud, and maybe just everywhere. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We learn the motivations behind Haskell and why it is the pinnacle of Functional Programming from Kris Jenkins, a Developer Advocate at Confluent. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE) is a set of tools & practices that help engineers be more productive. We chat with Justin Reock, field CTO at Gradle, about why more organizations need DPE and what that really means. Learn more at: https://gradle.com/developer-productivity-engineering/ Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

After being told many times that Nix is all we dream for when it comes to software packaging, we finally chat with Domen Kožar and learn all about Nix. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

The Pants build tool is polyglot (Python, Java, Kotlin, Scala, Go, etc) and focused on helping developers be more productive and happier. We chat with a co-creator of Pants, Benjy Weinberger, about the history, motivations, and future of the build tool. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Simon Vergauwen shares about Arrow, a collection of Functional Programming libraries for Kotlin. Sincere apologies for Bruce & James' bad audio. We forgot to change our input device but figured we'd still publish this as it is tolerable and Simon has so much good stuff to say. (His audio is great) Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Grace Jansen joins us to chat about how bees and biology can help us better understand software development tools & paradigms like Reactive, Kubernetes, and maybe parts of the 15 Factor App methodology (a modernized version of the Twelve-Factor App methodology). Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Bruce continues his archaeological dig into the foundations of mainstream programming. Referenced blog: Why Are There Functions? Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Andrew Harmel-Law shares a better way to make decisions in software teams using the "Advice Process" which he has used in a number of teams resulting in happier, more productive programmers. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Finally Bruce gets a whole episode about Python with our friend Luciano Ramalho, author of Fluent Python. In the words of Luciano: "Thanks James and Bruce for the most enjoyable podcast panel I ever had!" Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

No doubt that Rust is hot right now. We chat with Christopher Hunt about his journey through Java, Scala, and many other languages and learn why he is now using Rust. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Rod Johnson (creator of Spring Framework) reflects on his programming and chess journeys. References: ScalaDays 2013 Talk Stockfish Chess Engine Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Bruce and James often rant about build tools but it turns out they are hard to get right. We dive into the reasons with Josh Suereth who maintained sbt (a Scala build tool) for a number of years. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Our co-author on Effect Oriented Programming, Bill Frasure, joins us to chat about his programming journey and his involvement in last week's ZIO 2.0 release. Book repo: https://github.com/EffectOrientedProgramming/book Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Mark McGranaghan joins us to talk about how the Muse app uses Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) for local-first data synchronization. More details on Local-first: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ Referenced article about hybrid logical clocks: https://archive.jlongster.com/using-crdts-in-the-wild Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Tonya Moore has been helping build developer communities for years. We discuss how to deal with jerks and the importance of building on a foundation of compassion. Referenced blog from Bill Venners: https://www.artima.com/articles/compassion-in-our-community Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF