Working Code

The promise was that AI would take the grunt work off your plate and leave you the good stuff. This week is the part no one advertised: you got into this to make things — but what comes instead is the restless guilt of sitting there with nothing to do while the agent works, and the slow realization that when it finishes, the job left for you is mostly reviewing.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:xkcd: "Compiling"With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Ben had been riding high on vibe coding—throwaway scripts, zero attachment, pure productivity magic. Then he tried the same approach on a project he actually cares about and watched that 10x feeling crater to something closer to 10%. The bottleneck, it turns out, was never the typing. The hosts dig into what it feels like to let go of code you used to care about, whether "write-only code" is actually the future, and the growing gap between building software and keeping it alive. Links Vibe Coding by Gene Kim & Steve Yegge - The audiobook on AI-assisted development 1Password: From Magic to Malware - How OpenClaw's agent skills became a supply chain attack surface TLDR Newsletter - Source of the "write-only code" concept 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. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/248-ai-all-the-way-down/

Ben's been circling vibe coding for months, kept at bay by a simple fear: what if he spends more time fighting the AI over formatting than actually building anything? What if he has to bolt on linters and test runners just to babysit the output? Then his work handed him a Claude plan, and he decided it was finally time to take the plunge. And then something unsettling happened—the code looked like his code. Same line lengths. Same method ordering. Same obsessive formatting. Nobody told it to do that. It just... knew. Meanwhile, Adam has gone full mad scientist. His "Ralph" workflow runs Claude in a loop, feeding it tasks from a JSON file while he walks away to eat dinner. When he comes back, features are done. Tests pass. The machine just keeps building. It's the kind of setup that makes you wonder why you're still manually typing commands into a terminal. Links Adam's Ralph Workflow for Claude Code - Adam's blog post with his implementation Matt Pocock's Ralph Primer Video - The workflow Adam adapted for automated iterative development Algorithm Maze Race - Tim's vibe-coded game on itch.io Pro tip: Use /resume in Claude Code to return to prior sessions 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. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/246-bens-feeling-the-vibe/

It's a new year and you've probably got a mental list of things you want to learn. But how do you decide what's worth the investment? Ben explores the difference between "just-in-case" learning and "just-in-time" learning, while grappling with AI anxiety and the fear of falling behind. Along the way, Tim shares his own struggle—turns out, saying goodbye to something you built hits different. 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. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/244-ben-vs-2026/

It's that time of year—each host reaches into Santa's sack of topics to see who's been naughty and who's been nice. Ben returns from visiting his employer's manufacturing headquarters in Georgia with some philosophical musings. Carol is on a mission to slash CI/CD build times. Adam has cautiously optimistic news about passkeys finally working (sometimes). And Tim reflects on a TLDR article suggesting that the management skills you've built—knowing what to build and what not to build—might be exactly what AI-era coding demands. Plus: December blues, mushroom tea for focus, and jQuery as peak imperative JavaScript. Links mentioned: Owning A Lucid Has Been Super Disappointing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WiQAOmESH0 Driving Xiaomi's Electric Car: Are we Cooked? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6H7trzMfI 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 Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/242-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-faster-builds/

Remember that you will die. That's the meaning behind "Memento Mori," and it's the theme of this week's episode. Guest Shawn Oden, joins Adam, Ben, and Tim to discuss digital death preparedness for geeks. Inspired by clearing out his grandmother's house and buying his late best friend's computers to protect his digital legacy (and potentially lost Bitcoin), Shawn advocates for documenting passwords, creating wills, setting up power of attorney, and having honest conversations with loved ones. The hosts explore practical steps like using 1Password with shared family vaults, the importance of organ donation documentation, and the philosophical tension between honoring a deceased person's wishes versus meeting the needs of those left behind. 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 Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon. With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media. Links & Resources In Case You Get Hit by a Bus (book) eol-dr - End of Life Digital Resources on GitHub EOL-RalphHightower - Another digital estate planning resource NOLO - Get Your Affairs in Order - Legal self-help resources Full show notes and transcript here: https://workingcode.dev/episodes/240-memento-mori-with-shawn-oden/