Maintainable
by Robby Russell
Latest episode
Mark Stringer: Software Costs More Than We Want to Admit
Mark Stringer: Software Costs More Than We Want to Admit
About this podcast
Do you feel like you're hitting a wall with your existing software projects? Are you curious to hear how other people are navigating this? You're not alone.
On the Maintainable Software Podcast, Robby speaks with seasoned practitioners who have overcome the technical and cultural problems often associated with software development.
Our guests will share stories in each episode and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 236 episodes
- Mark Stringer: Software Costs More Than We Want to Admit · 1 h 8 min · Episode 231Software is expensive, dependencies decay, projects fail, and sometimes everyone can see the pirate ship coming while continuing to scrub the deck. Mark Stringer joins Robby to…
- Gabriela Moreira: When 800 Tests Aren’t Enough · 53 min · Episode 230What happens when your codebase has 800 tests and you still don’t trust them? Gabriela Moreira joins Robby to explore AI-generated tests, executable specifications, formal…
- Matija Šošić: Abstractions Aren’t Going Anywhere · 54 min · Episode 229What happens to frameworks when generating code becomes cheap enough that nobody particularly cares about the boilerplate anymore? Matija Šošić joins Robby to talk about boring…
- José Valim: Designing a Language You Can Maintain for Decades · 54 min · Episode 228What changes when the software you’re maintaining is a programming language that thousands of other applications depend on? José Valim joins Robby to trace Elixir from a…
- John Athayde: Maintaining the User Side of Software · 1 h 22 min · Episode 227The user interface of a long-lived application carries years of technical decisions, design choices, and organizational history. John Athayde joins Robby to explore how teams can…
- Kristin Isaac: The Customer Doesn’t Care About Your Technical Debt · 54 min · Episode 226Customers don’t ask you to pay down technical debt. They notice when the product is slow, unreliable, or keeps breaking in the same damn way. Kristin Isaac joins Robby to…
- David Hayes: Boring Software, Clear Incentives, and Better Checklists · 55 min · Episode 225David Hayes believes maintainable software starts with a simple idea: fitness for purpose.
- Diana Pfeil: Building Confidence in Probabilistic Systems · 49 min · Episode 224Software powered by AI can change its behavior without a deployment, leaving teams to maintain code, data, prompts, models, and the uncertainty between them. Diana Pfeil joins…
- Chris Coyier: The Long Game of Maintaining CodePen · 55 min · Episode 223Chris Coyier, co-founder of CodePen, joins Robby to reflect on what it takes to maintain software over the long haul. Drawing from CodePen’s 15-plus-year journey, Chris shares…
- Sally Lait: Confidence Is the Real Metric · 56 min · Episode 222Sally Lait joins Robby to explore why confidence might be the most important signal of software maintainability. They dig into the cultural dynamics behind legacy systems, why…
- Rein Henrichs: The Real Work of Maintenance Happens Before You Touch the Code · 55 min · Episode 221Most teams treat maintenance like a coding problem. Rein Henrichs argues the real work starts much earlier… in how teams understand the system in the first place.
- Russ Olsen: The Hidden Cost of Forgetting Why the Code Looks Like That · 55 min · Episode 220Russ Olsen joins Robby to talk about maintainability, trade-offs, and why so many teams forget to document what they decided not to do. It’s a conversation about legacy systems…
- Joel Oliveira: Predictability Is a Maintainability Feature · 1 h 1 min · Episode 219Predictability might be the most underrated feature of maintainable software. Joel Oliveira joins Robby to explore how thoughtful patterns, small refactors, and a bit of stubborn…
- Lucas Roesler: The Fast Feedback Loop Advantage · 54 min · Episode 218What if maintainability isn’t about rewriting code, but about designing better feedback loops? Lucas Roesler joins Robby to unpack simplicity, observability, and the hard reality…
- Brittany Ellich: Using AI to Maintain Software, Not Rewrite It · 1 h 0 min · Episode 217AI isn’t here to save you from your codebase. Brittany Ellich explains how to use it to maintain what already works… without chasing rewrite fantasies or shipping chaos.
- Kent L Beck: You’re Ignoring Optionality… and Paying for It · 50 min · Episode 216Kent Beck and Robby unpack why teams burn optionality faster than they realize and why restoring it isn’t a luxury—it’s the work. They explore reversible vs irreversible…
- Don MacKinnon: Why Simplicity Beats Cleverness in Software Design · 51 min · Episode 215In this conversation, Robby speaks with Don MacKinnon, Lead Architect and Engineering Manager at Searchcraft, about reducing unnecessary complexity, choosing the right…
- Chris Zetter: Building a Database to Better Understand Maintainability · 50 min · Episode 214Software engineer and author Chris Zetter joins Robby to explore how pairing, documentation, and boring technology help teams build software that lasts. They unpack the real…
- Denis Rechkunov: When Consistency Becomes a Culture · 1 h 6 min · Episode 213At Elastic, Denis Rechkunov believes code consistency is more than a style guide — it’s a cultural practice. Robby and Denis explore how automation, empathy, and small rituals…
- Nathan Ladd: Relentless Improvement and the Cost of Neglect · 55 min · Episode 212In this conversation, Robby and Nathan Ladd, Principal at Brightworks Digital, explore what makes software sustainable in practice. Nathan argues that perfectly maintained…
