YAGNI

81:54

Retiring from programming w/ Justin Searls

YAGNI ·

2026/10/02

Matt just got back from Rails World, where DHH's keynote left a lot of people thinking Rails was over. Justin Searls of Breaking Change, who gave his own retirement talk at Rails World two years ago, joins him to sort it out. They cover why the keynote hit people's fears so hard, whether "the one-person framework" still means anything when agents skip the coding step, and why Justin thinks Rails is heading into another stable era. Justin also explains why taste is the skill that lasts, how

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57:44

Irrefutable proof w/ Thorsten Ball

YAGNI ·

2026/10/02

Thorsten Ball, who works on Amp, doesn't like the term "software factory." He'd rather be in a workshop, a garden or a "primordial soup" of throwaway tools. He and Matt talk about custom tools you build in minutes and throw away, why the huge jumps in AI tooling make it hard to bring people along gradually, and which old coding rules still matter now that agents write the code. Along the way: a thumbnail picker, a Go interpreter made 16x faster, Dwarf Fortress's 2,000-line functions and

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63:14

Camping chair development w/ John Nunemaker

YAGNI ·

2026/10/01

John Nunemaker runs Fireside, Flipper and Box Out. He used to think of himself as a craftsman, until last December, when he found out that what he really loves is shipping. Now he reads the data models and queries but not the JavaScript. He's also dropping plugins and rewrote 80% of Fireside's infrastructure in three days while driving a camper. He and Matt talk about when you're the brain and when you're the hands, why agent tools hand you too many open loops at once, temporary scoped API

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58:34

LLM junk food w/ Justin Duke

YAGNI ·

2026/10/01

Justin Duke, who runs Buttondown, calls himself a "radical LLM centrist." About two-thirds of Buttondown's merged code comes from LLMs, but he still pushes back on the most extreme software factory takes. He and Matt talk about why most "factories" are only tuned for throughput and why so much agent work is snacking: low effort and low value. They also get into the rise of fake third-party services, and whether Kanban is a warning about borrowing manufacturing ideas without the principles

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52:34

Infinite plausible PRs w/ Nate Berkopec

YAGNI ·

2026/09/30

Back in February, Nate said that coding workflows built around adding more human-in-the-loop steps were a dead end, and that the end state is the "dark factory," where humans aren't allowed on the floor. Six months later, Matt asks him where he stands now. They cover why agents that produce endless plausible PRs haven't made anyone much faster, and why the real bottleneck is deciding what can actually be merged. They also talk about why software never learned to measure "quality" the way

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0:52

What would you say...you do here?

YAGNI ·

2026/09/30

Software used to be something you sat down and wrote.Line by line. Decision by decision.The work lived in the hands of the person at the keyboard.That world doesn’t really exist anymore. Everything is changing: who does the work, how fast it moves, what counts as “writing,” what still needs a human in the loopInstincts and best practices are built on ideas that are getting invalidated faster than ever. So we have to go back and figure out what we're actually doing here. Welcome to YAGNI,

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49:27

Programming Books w/ Aaron Francis

YAGNI ·

2023/12/05

Matt and Aaron talk about programming books and try to answer the question "do we need them?"This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free atflippercloud.ioAaron Francis on Twitter // PlanetScaleMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.toAaron's shedAaron reading printed docs on the

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42:40

Redis w/ Nate Berkopec

YAGNI ·

2023/11/28

Matt and Nate talk about Redis and try to answer the question "do we need it?"This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free atflippercloud.ioNate Berkopec on Twitter // SpeedshopMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to"Redis is not faster than your database""Your data fits in

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1:31

Service Objects w/ Jason Swett

YAGNI ·

2023/11/21

Matt and Jason talk about Service Objects and try to answer the question "do we need them?"This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free atflippercloud.ioJason Swett on Twitter // Code with JasonMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.toJason's Snail Mail newsletterBrevity is the

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43:56

Testing w/ Josh Pigford

YAGNI ·

2023/11/14

Matt and Josh talk about automated testing and try to answer the question "do we need them?"This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free atflippercloud.ioJosh Pigford on Twitter // DetangleMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.toWittgenstein's RulerWhy doesn't Stripe have a /mrr

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54:16

GraphQL w/ Trevor Turk (Bonus: VCR)

YAGNI ·

2023/11/07

Matt and Trevor talk about GraphQL and try to answer the question "do we need it?" (Bonus hot takes on VCR snapshot testing)This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free atflippercloud.ioTrevor Turk on Twitter // Hello WeatherMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.toGraphQL: The

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51:10

Friday Deploys w/ Charity Majors

YAGNI ·

2023/11/01

Matt and Charity talk about Friday Deploys and try to answer the question "do we need them?"This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags! Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at flippercloud.ioCharity Majors on Twitter // honeycomb.ioMatt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.toFriday deploy freezes are exactly like

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1:31

Do we still need this podcast?

YAGNI ·

2023/10/23

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51:19

RSpec w/ Justin Searls

YAGNI ·

2022/11/21

Justin Searls on TwitterMatt Swanson on TwitterArrowsTest DoubleJustin's "What do you like about RSpec" thread (2016)Dan North BDDNate Berkopec "Reading rspec documentation like..." tweetCorey Haines: Fast Rails TestsKent Beck: "I get paid for code that works, not for tests..."Nick Quaranto's minitest CLI wrapperMocktail gemtest_data gem

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51:31

Small user stories w/ Dave Copeland

YAGNI ·

2022/11/14

Dave Copeland on TwitterMatt Swanson on TwitterArrowsMood HealthTaylorism / Scientific managementGoogle DORA Report"Agile" on TikTokThe Joel Test“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin

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46:21

Staging servers w/ Justin Duke

YAGNI ·

2022/11/07

Justin Duke on TwitterMatt Swanson on TwitterArrowsButtondownAccidental AirBnB "test" notificationThe Pragmatic Programmer"SICP" book"We dont use a staging server" HN threadChecklist ManifestoIQ Bell Curve / Midwit - Know Your Meme

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53:03

Detailed commit messages w/ Chris Toomey

YAGNI ·

2022/11/01

Chris Toomey on TwitterMatt Swanson on TwitterArrowsSagewell FinancialWrite Good Commit Messages by Blaming OthersThe seven rules of a good git commit messageDavid Hemphill - WIPHot OnesRussian Roulette and expected value

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2:46

WTF is YAGNI?

YAGNI ·

2022/08/02

Everything has to start somewhere. Why not here?

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