This Old App

How do you get things back on track when everything from the engine to the caboose is falling off? We discuss steps to take when everything and anything is spiraling downward on a tech project.

After giving birth to her fourth child, and suffering a serious medical issue in the process, Bekah Hawrot Weigel coped by finding a new path in life as a software developer. We talk about how she joined Moms Can: Code, founded by Erica Peterson, and began a new career as both a mother and a developer. We discuss how she got started with Etherium, Solidity, and coaching other folks to follow her path.

We discuss the various types of stakeholders that a technology leader may need to deal as being part of a company or a particular product. We discuss the various motivations and communication techniques necessary across Executives, Investors, Regulators, Managers, Engineers, Current Users, and Potential Users.

We discuss the asynchronous nature of JavaScript, the old-person method of callbacks, the evolution to Promises, and then the shiny new car of Async/Await. We whine about the learning curve of all three approaches and try to figure out why so many blog posts teach it all wrong.

We yell at document datastores to get off our lawns! We talk about the joys of SQL and 50-year-old relational databases we grew up with, trying to make sense of why MongoDB, Firestore, and Dynamo are necessary, and Randy's unhealthy love for Materialized Views. In addition, Lotus 1-2-3 is a database, no matter what Don says.

What are the considerations do you need to make regarding third-party services and software? We talk about relying on Github after the Microsoft purchase, using AWS or Firebase, and the world of JavaScript, Node, and NPM. And Randy talks about his pet peeve of co-located servers sitting under an upstairs office kitchen.

What are the considerations do you need to make regarding third-party services and software? We talk about relying on Github after the Microsoft purchase, using AWS or Firebase, and the world of JavaScript, Node, and NPM. And Randy talks about his pet peeve of co-located servers sitting under an upstairs office kitchen.

We yell at document datastores to get off our lawns! We talk about the joys of SQL and 50-year-old relational databases we grew up with, trying to make sense of why MongoDB, Firestore, and Dynamo are necessary, and Randy's unhealthy love for Materialized Views. In addition, Lotus 1-2-3 is a database, no matter what Don says.

We talk about Alexa development, the strong developer ecosystem Amazon is investing for it, some of the privacy problems it's facing, and a few quips about Apple, Google, Microsoft, and even Samsung.

We speak with Griffin Caprio of Dante32 about his experiences building trust and psychological safety, accepting failure in a positive way, and creating a learning-based culture on teams from the top-down.

We discuss our prototype of Chasms as it's used in the wild, successfully supporting a real business.

We lament about the recent GDPR hullabaloo, our initial reactions to the new regulations, and how we approach projects that we don't have any business handling in the first place, but still fall onto our shoulders.

We talk about Alexa development, the strong developer ecosystem Amazon is investing for it, some of the privacy problems it's facing, and a few quips about Apple, Google, Microsoft, and even Samsung.

April Wensel started a company named Compassionate Coding, which aims to "humanize the tech industry." We discuss why she started the firm and how she goes about making the tech industry a better place to work. We also learn that using the term "soft skills" is not the right way to talk about the people side of things if you want to earn buy-in towards change.

We talk about Firebase as a new backend tool for a few projects we're working on and cover many of its features, what is weird about it, and why this seems to be a product in which Google is making a big investment. Hint: It's about the Person, er, people!

We talk about meetings, the negative vibe the tech industry has taken against them, how to best run meetings, or finding ways to communicate without wasting so much time.

In another installment related to the Chasms app, we discuss errors with the prototype, finding the right balance of customer/product fit, and the need to brainstorm without adding requirements to the ideas.

Listen as Don and Randy begin a new side project together from problem/solution explanation, planning, and build approach. We aim to reduce the product scope and target a quicker launch of the prototype.

People (and ourselves) have been asking: Why are you all doing this? What is motivating you to podcast? In this episode, we discuss our motivations for podcasting, our side projects, and why we're doing multiple challenges at the same time.

Would you hire Kanye West if he was a great programmer, despite his social media presence? This week, we talk about social media quality control, public personas, and the challenge of being inclusive while trying to maintain a steady team dynamic. We also somehow bring up Pink, Tim Tebow, and James Damore into the conversation.