Working Code

We're back after a week off and we have some things to get off our chest. Carol's agent doesn't understand auth, Ben explores the nature of performative coding, Adam agreed that meetings are for decisions, then spent two hours writing an email to prove it, and Tim's AI is better than yours. This week we have a grab bag of hot takes and hot takes on hot takes.
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Taffy — Adam's CFML REST framework, the counterexample of a public repo whose product is the API, not the source
Subway Takes — the 100% agree / 100% disagree format the table falls into mid-meeting-takes
Adam's dotfiles blog post — the git bare repo trick for tracking a gitignored personal CLAUDE.md, promised on air
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Full show notes and transcript here.

Worrying about AI is the easy part. Everyone already has a list. The interesting part is what lands on it, what doesn't, and why. From military use, to an AI slop takeover, to the possibility that the tools are making us stupider.
This week, the hosts respond to a question from the State of Devs survey: “Which of these general AI risks and issues are you most concerned about?”
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
State of Devs 2025 survey — the questions that set off the discussion; the survey itself is now closed
OpenAI's Hugging Face security incident — what happened when agents escaped a constrained cyber evaluation
LinkedIn's campaign against AI slop — the official explanation of its new reporting control
Cloudflare Pay Per Crawl — tools for publishers to allow, block, or charge AI crawlers
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Full show notes and transcript here.

Nobody went to conferences for the talks. You went for the hallway, and for a roomful of people who'd made the same odd career bet you had. We didn't know how good we had it. COVID hit, AI is now everyone's best buddy, and now all these meetups and spaces are slowly disappearing. This week the hosts go looking for what's left of the developer hang.
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Anthropic's Project Vend — the AI-run shop behind the tungsten cube story
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Full show notes and transcript here.

Tim is trying to hire remote developers, but the interviews have started to feel like one long CAPTCHA. Before he can decide who's right for the job, he has to figure out whether he's interviewing the candidate or ChatGPT. This week the hosts discuss the state of remote developer interviews in the AI era.
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Mostly Technical #29: “Super Epic Crazy” — the source of the cover-letter story about most applicants missing simple instructions
Roberto Serrano on AI fraud at Brown University — the course whose take-home exams triggered the in-class-final story
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Full show notes and transcript here.

They say history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, and apparently so do show topics. A year on from our episode on the value of friction, the crew are back to discuss value of struggle. The question this time: now that AI will cheerfully do the hard part for you, which struggles are worth keeping, and which you can finally hand off?
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Ronny Chieng's Harvard Class Day speech — the "your generation's job is to kill AI" address.
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Full show notes and transcript here.