169 episodes

Feel like you’re hitting a wall with your existing software projects? You're not alone. On the Maintainable software podcast, we speak with seasoned practitioners who have worked past the problems often associated with technical debt and legacy code.

In each episode, our guests will share stories and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability. We're in this together. Enjoy the show!

Maintainable Robby Russell

    • Technology
    • 5.0 • 29 Ratings

Feel like you’re hitting a wall with your existing software projects? You're not alone. On the Maintainable software podcast, we speak with seasoned practitioners who have worked past the problems often associated with technical debt and legacy code.

In each episode, our guests will share stories and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability. We're in this together. Enjoy the show!

    Irina Nazarova - Investing in Innovation: The Consultancy's Guide to Growth

    Irina Nazarova - Investing in Innovation: The Consultancy's Guide to Growth

    In this episode, Robby Russell sits down with Irina Nazarova, CEO of Evil Martians, to peel back the layers of leading a software consultancy, the essence of maintainable software, and the journey from open-source projects to commercial success. Dive into a discussion filled with insights on balancing innovation with maintainability, the evolution of a consultancy, and the art of turning challenges into opportunities.

    • 45 min
    Kyle Daigle - Scaling Up with AI: A New Era of Code Maintenance

    Kyle Daigle - Scaling Up with AI: A New Era of Code Maintenance

    Robby has a chat with Kyle Daigle, the Chief Operating Officer at GitHub, about the evolution of software development from the perspective of maintaining and scaling software within large organizations, the balance between innovative and maintainable software,the significance of simplicity, readability, and clear naming conventions in software development, drawing on his experiences at GitHub and so much more.

    • 47 min
    Jon Moniaci - Can We Draw A Boundary?

    Jon Moniaci - Can We Draw A Boundary?

    Robby speaks to the Senior Software Engineer at Perchwell, Jon Moniaci, about the delicate balance between innovation and stability in software development, the importance of fostering an environment where engineers can experiment without fear, advocating for a culture of defensive programming to mitigate the fear of breaking things in production, and so much more.

    • 53 min
    Chad Fowler - How Small Can We Make This Problem

    Chad Fowler - How Small Can We Make This Problem

    Robby has a candid chat with Chad Fowler, the General Partner & CTO at BlueYard Capital, about the importance of building software in small, manageable pieces to facilitate easy updates or replacements, the counterintuitive perspective on unit testing's impact on maintainability, strategies for keeping software up-to-date by redeploying to new platforms, and so much more.

    • 58 min
    John Nunemaker - How Scary Is This Change?

    John Nunemaker - How Scary Is This Change?

    Robby has a conversation with John Nunemaker, the Owner at "Box Out Sports" and "Fewer & Faster", about the crucial importance of keeping dependencies and versions up to date when maintaining software projects, the benefits of using tools like Dependabot to help with dependency management, how dangerous a change is from a dependency, how John enjoys seeking out the dark corners of a codebase to improve those areas, and much more. Stay tuned!

    • 1 hr 3 min
    Jemma Issroff - Running the Parser in the Rain

    Jemma Issroff - Running the Parser in the Rain

    Robby has a conversation with Jemma Issroff, a Senior Software Engineer, speaker and the author of the book, “Ruby Garbage Collection in Under Two Hours”, about the contrasting dynamics of maintaining software in C versus Ruby, their approaches to utilizing advanced tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot in their respective workflows, Jemma’s upcoming transition into the realm of artificial intelligence, and much more.

    • 39 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
29 Ratings

29 Ratings

Garrett Dimon ,

Great Perspetives on Keeping Software Alive

Absolutely my favorite podcast. Robby does a great job covering the breadth of the industry and getting different insights and perspectives about what it takes to ensure a codebase can survive the test of time, employee turnover, industry changes, and so much more.

It’s refreshing to get insights that balance technical idealism with the reality that building software is messy work done by imperfect humans who also have goals outside of writing that next line of code.

Exe Gete ,

So far great!

Listened to a few episodes so far, and there are substantial nuggets in each episode. Loving it!

HigherLower ,

Hidden Gem

There is a treasure trove of insight about the actual technologies developers use to build an application.

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