Practical software talk with an analog streak.
Code with Jason centers on candid conversations about programming topics. Episodes range from refactoring and technical debt to AI-assisted coding, freelancing and consulting, Ruby events, Dead Man's Snitch, and the odd charm of a paper programming newsletter.
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Code with Jason is a programming interview show built around the lived texture of software work. It is not only about tools. It is about the reasons developers reach for those tools, the compromises they inherit, and the labels they use to explain messy code to themselves and to clients. Jason's conversations often sit in the space between craft and practicality. A standout exchange with Adam Dawkins treats refactoring as an investment decision rather than a moral obligation, with technical debt, old TODO comments, and agency billing pressure all becoming part of the same problem. The point is concrete. Real applications keep changing, and the code that looked sharp enough earlier can feel like the wrong edge later. The show is especially interested in how developers talk about those shifts. It questions familiar teaching examples, including inheritance lessons built around animals, and asks what needs to be untaught when metaphors stop helping. Recent episode titles suggest a broad but coherent programming beat: AI-assisted coding with Steven Diamante, Dead Man's Snitch with Chris Gaffney, freelancing and consulting with Wale Olaleye, fractional CTO work with Brad Taylor, Ruby events with Jim Remsik, and product or leadership conversations with people such as Kody Kendall and Todd Kaufman. The tone is relaxed, direct, and mildly eccentric. Jason's repeated promotion of a snail mail programming newsletter gives the feed an intentionally analog counterpoint to screen-heavy developer life. That detail says a lot about the show's sensibility. It likes programming, but it does not treat software culture as the only interesting thing in the room. Philosophy, evolutionary theory, business, marketing, economics, psychology, music, cooking, history, geology, language, culture, robotics, and farming all appear in the orbit of the newsletter pitch, giving the show a wider curiosity even when the episodes stay technical. Code with Jason works best for developers who enjoy hearing experienced people reason in public. It favors judgment over hype. It gives space to uncertainty, half-formed models, and the kind of practical vocabulary teams need when the code still runs but the situation around it has changed.
Made for: Built for developers, technical leads, consultants, and founders who like reflective engineering conversations grounded in maintenance, tradeoffs, and real project pressure.
What sets it apart: Its best moments turn familiar programming ideas into practical judgment calls, especially around refactoring, technical debt, and how teams explain the cost of better code.
On the Code with Jason podcast I discuss technical topics with interesting people. Guests include people from companies like GitHub, Google and Stripe.
A five-year-old TODO might be your best evidence that the code is perfectly fine.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose, practical talk about refactoring, technical debt, and the real cost of keeping old code alive.
Jason and Adam Dawkins spend the episode on the messy middle of software work: refactoring, technical debt, naming, inheritance, and the old code that keeps sticking around.
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.
The engineering decisions behind code, agents, and control.
Python tools, practical trade-offs, and the occasional programming joke.
Matt Stratton interviews DevOps practitioners on security, platform engineering, and trusting AI-written code.
Jason introduces his snail mail programming newsletter, Nonsense Monthly, which covers technical topics like object-oriented programming and AI, as well as non-programming subjects such as philosophy and farming, offering a screen-free reading experience with testimonials from readers.
Jason introduces his snail mail programming newsletter, Nonsense Monthly, as an alternative to digital newsletters, highlighting its mix of technical and non-technical topics and sharing positive feedback from a reader.
Jason introduces his snail mail programming newsletter, Nonsense Monthly, explaining its physical format and diverse content ranging from technical topics like DevOps to broader subjects like philosophy and robotics.
Adam Dawkins says good code is "easy to change," and Dave Farley says the same thing.
Errol Schmidt, CEO of Melbourne-based Reinteractive, describes community sponsorship and a RubyConf dinner as long-term relationship investments rather than immediate lead generators.
Colleen Schnettler describes Hello Query as a natural-language-to-SQL report generator with paying customers and a possible CRM-focused pivot.
Dave Farley, author of Modern Software Engineering and co-author with Jez Humble of Continuous Delivery, tells Jason that software counts as engineering only when practiced with a scientific skepticism drawn from David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity.
Jason argues that AI layoffs can reshape hiring even if AI never improves programmer productivity.