Collin & Brendan
50 episodes listed below
Software arguments at human scale.
1X Developer Podcast treats software culture as something worth slowing down for. Colin and Brendan move from Electron apps, Git LFS, Obsidian, AI coding tools, movie review sites, and laptop hardware into broader questions about taste, tradeoffs, and how work actually gets done.
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1X Developer Podcast is a technology conversation about being a regular developer in a field that often rewards inflated language. Colin and Brendan give the show its shape through steady back-and-forth rather than interviews or monologues. The pace is measured. The opinions are real, but they usually arrive through examples instead of declarations. One episode can start with Electron apps and end up asking when users should care how something was built. Another moves from Obsidian and Notion into the distinction between open source software and open file formats. Git LFS becomes a practical walk through storage, cloning, GitHub behavior, and the strange mental model of large files in version control. AI coding tools lead to a cooler question about what counts as a new skill and what still belongs to ordinary software judgment. The show is comfortable saying that performance matters in some contexts and barely matters in others. It talks about Python, Elixir, Erlang, fault tolerance, systems programming, and expressive languages without turning every point into a lesson plan. It also has room for non-code arguments. Movie rankings, critic lists, IMDb taste, Rotten Tomatoes divisions, and the problem of review scores sit beside discussions of laptops, Framework hardware, Linux distributions, and the split between tech fans and tech professionals. A recurring segment, “Whose Side Are You On,” gives the show a useful device for turning small preferences into larger debates. The best moments come when a familiar developer belief gets slowed down enough to look less obvious. It is not anti-tool and not hype-driven. It is more interested in tradeoffs than in winners. The tone is casual, occasionally dry, and rarely theatrical. Colin and Brendan leave in the pauses, qualifications, and restarts that make technical conversation feel lived in. That looseness is part of the product. The result is a show for people who enjoy software culture most when it sounds like two thoughtful peers trying to find the real shape of a problem.
Made for: For developers, technical hobbyists, and software-adjacent media people who enjoy tool talk with caveats, side roads, and practical judgment. It especially fits listeners who like debates about everyday engineering choices more than polished industry narratives.
What sets it apart: The show makes ordinary developer questions feel worth examining without inflating them. Its strength is the patient movement from concrete tools and media examples into broader claims about work, taste, ownership, and technical tradeoffs.
A podcast not for the 10x software developer, but for the lowly 1x developer.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqasnYHmAYu2-7Ei6Fhh6cwX/Twitter: https://x.com/1xDevPodcastEmail: [email protected]
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Colin and Brendan make developer judgment legible by testing technical preferences against practical constraints, cultural assumptions, and their own uncertainty.
Colin and Brendan approach software development through arguments that begin with ordinary preferences and keep testing what sits underneath them.
Colin and Brendan debate stack-trace order until you start taking sides.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical debate about Electron, Python, and the cost of choosing the wrong tool.
The episode takes on a familiar but still useful question: whether Electron apps deserve their reputation, and how much a framework should be judged as a shortcut versus a fit.
A software debate that uses note apps and film lists to ask what a score is really measuring.
The discussion makes a clear and useful point: open source is not the same as an open file format, and Obsidian stands as the cleanest example.
A stack-trace discussion that opens into a clear-eyed argument about AI skills and shelf life.
Colin and Brendan open with Robert Nystrom's note from Crafting Interpreters and use stack traces to work through order: most languages start with the innermost function, while Python reverses that so the path to the error reads from top to bottom.
Git LFS keeps repos lighter while the image stays tied to the commit being viewed.
Colin and Brendan spend the episode on Git LFS, using a large image file to show how it keeps a repo lighter while still pointing to the version tied to the current commit.
A thoughtful discussion of ambition, invention, and the gap between what is targeted and the path taken to get there.
It begins with the old idea of the aimless youth, then turns that stereotype into a sharper point about ambition. A life aimed at some distant future can still go badly off course when the road to invention looks nothing like invention itself.
A Framework laptop and an EndeavourOS choice sharpen a conversation about what tech interest really means.
This episode draws a useful line between liking technology and working seriously with it. The conversation separates the early adopter who keeps up with new gear from the person pulled toward computer science, programming, and building with hardware, then pushes against the easy…
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Brendan walks Colin through his first Godot project, a hand-drawn cartoon wizard whose magic-ball light pulses to bass between 50 and 200 Hz.
It opens with the hosts sounding like robots before jumping straight into Electron apps.
Colin and Brendan open on open source versus open file format.
Colin and Brendan begin with a note from Robert Nystrom's Crafting Interpreters and use it to talk through stack-trace order.
Colin and Brendan open with housekeeping about Whose Side Are You On?
The episode opens with the stereotype of the aimless youth and the pressure to have a plan.
Two hosts of the 1X Developer Podcast debate the difference between being a tech enthusiast, someone chasing the latest consumer gear, and a tech professional drawn to programming and hardware.