Maintainable
By Robby Russell
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Episodes: 221
Description
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.
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
|
Kent L Beck: You’re Ignoring Optionality… and Paying for It
|
Dec 09, 2025 |
|
Don MacKinnon: Why Simplicity Beats Cleverness in Software Design
|
Dec 02, 2025 |
|
Chris Zetter: Building a Database to Better Understand Maintainability
|
Nov 18, 2025 |
|
Denis Rechkunov: When Consistency Becomes a Culture
|
Oct 28, 2025 |
|
Nathan Ladd: Relentless Improvement and the Cost of Neglect
|
Oct 14, 2025 |
|
Taylor Otwell: What 14 Years of Laravel Taught Me About Maintainability
|
Aug 26, 2025 |
|
Sara Jackson: Why Resilience Is a Team Sport
|
Jul 22, 2025 |
|
Joel Chippindale: Why High-Quality Software Isn’t About Developer Skill Alone
|
Jul 01, 2025 |
|
Melanie Sumner: Why Continuous Accessibility Is a Strategic Advantage
|
Jun 10, 2025 |
|
Joe Masilotti: Simplify Your Stack, Ship Mobile Sooner
|
May 20, 2025 |
|
Freedom Dumlao: What 70 Java Services Taught Me About Focus
|
Apr 22, 2025 |
|
Mercedes Bernard: Friendly Code Welcomes Everyone In
|
Apr 08, 2025 |
|
Evan Phoenix: The Why of the One Line
|
Apr 01, 2025 |
|
Chris Salvato: Building Developer Paradise by Sitting in the Problem Space
|
Mar 25, 2025 |
|
Heimir Thor Sverrisson: Architecture First, Tech Debt Second
|
Mar 18, 2025 |
|
Noémi Ványi: Only Fix Problems That Are Actually Problems
|
Mar 11, 2025 |
|
Julia López: Code Tells a Story—Even the White Spaces
|
Feb 25, 2025 |
|
Marty Haught: Rethinking Technical Debt—Is It Really Just Drift?
|
Feb 18, 2025 |
|
Mike Bowers - From ISAM to JSON—Navigating 40+ Years of Database Evolution
|
Feb 11, 2025 |
|
Lorna Mitchell: Writing Documentation Engineers Will Actually Read
|
Jan 28, 2025 |
|
Carola Lilienthal: Tackling Technical Debt with Patterns and Domain Knowledge
|
Jan 21, 2025 |
|
Joel Hawksley: The Hidden Costs of Frontend Complexity
|
Jan 14, 2025 |
|
Austin Story: Making Software Easier to Change, Remove, and Evolve
|
Dec 10, 2024 |
|
Dan Moore: Building Developer-Friendly Authentication Solutions
|
Dec 03, 2024 |
|
Tom Johnson: From Auto-Documentation to Better Collaboration
|
Nov 26, 2024 |
|
Gulcin Yildirim Jelinek: Maintaining Postgres for Modern Workloads
|
Nov 19, 2024 |
|
Justine Gehring: Refactoring Software at Scale with AI
|
Nov 12, 2024 |
|
Katerina Skroumpelou: Bridging Engineering and Advocacy for Scalable Software
|
Nov 05, 2024 |
|
Moriel Schottlender: The Challenges of Modernizing MediaWiki's Monolith
|
Oct 22, 2024 |
|
Kate Holterhoff: From Front-End Engineering to Developer Advocacy
|
Oct 15, 2024 |
|
Alan Ridlehoover: Building Robust Systems Through Behavior-Centric Testing
|
Oct 08, 2024 |
|
April Wensel: Navigating Legacy Code with Compassion
|
Oct 01, 2024 |
|
Saron Yitbarek: The Balance Between Maintainable Code and Multiple Streams of Income
|
Sep 24, 2024 |
|
Lutz Hühnken: Crafting Resilient Systems with Event-Driven Design
|
Sep 10, 2024 |
|
Noel Rappin: Reviving the Pickaxe— A Journey through Ruby's Legacy
|
Sep 03, 2024 |
|
Cassidy Williams: Navigating the Career Jungle Gym in Tech
|
Aug 27, 2024 |
|
Obie Fernandez: Pioneering AI in Ruby on Rails Development
|
Aug 20, 2024 |
|
Tekin Süleyman: Balancing Complexity and Team Size
|
Aug 13, 2024 |
|
Ryosuke Iwanaga: The Benefits of Cell-Based Architecture
|
Aug 08, 2024 |
|
Julia Ferraioli - Capturing Untold Open Source Stories
|
Jul 30, 2024 |
|
Tanmai Gopal: Unlocking the Potential of Unified APIs
|
Jul 23, 2024 |
|
James Socol: Building Social Capital in Engineering Teams
|
Jul 16, 2024 |
|
Paola Ducolin: Building Trust and Communication in Engineering Teams
|
Jul 10, 2024 |
|
Robin Heinze - React Native and the Art of Flexibility
|
Jun 18, 2024 |
|
Scott Hanselman - The Fear Factor in Maintainable Software
|
Jun 11, 2024 |
|
Stig Brautaset: Understanding Alien Artifacts in Legacy Code
|
Jun 04, 2024 |
|
Brit Myers - Decoding Product vs. Technical Risk
|
May 28, 2024 |
|
Andrea Guarino - Leveraging Static Analysis for Better Code
|
May 21, 2024 |
|
Staffan Nöteberg - On the Power of Monotasking in Software Development
|
May 07, 2024 |
|
Martin Emde - Ruby Central and the Art of Being Tolerant to Change
|
Apr 23, 2024 |
|
Esther Olatunde - AI's Role in Evolving Software Engineering Practices
|
Apr 16, 2024 |
|
Robbie Wagner - Whiskey, Front-End, and Whatnot
|
Mar 26, 2024 |
|
Irina Nazarova - Investing in Innovation: The Consultancy's Guide to Growth
|
Mar 12, 2024 |
|
Kyle Daigle - Scaling Up with AI: A New Era of Code Maintenance
|
Mar 05, 2024 |
|
Jon Moniaci - Can We Draw A Boundary?
|
Feb 27, 2024 |
|
Chad Fowler - How Small Can We Make This Problem
|
Feb 20, 2024 |
|
John Nunemaker - How Scary Is This Change?
|
Feb 13, 2024 |
|
Jemma Issroff - Running the Parser in the Rain
|
Feb 06, 2024 |
|
Jeanine Soterwood - Helping Clients Understand Maintenance Work
|
Jan 30, 2024 |
|
Andrew Atkinson - Maintainable... Databases?
|
Jan 23, 2024 |
|
Jimmy Koppel - Aspects of Good Code
|
Jan 16, 2024 |
|
Hila Fish - Maintainable Infrastructure Code, Culture, and Documentation
|
Jan 09, 2024 |
|
Jacob Aronoff - At Least One Person Who Cares To See It Through
|
Nov 21, 2023 |
|
Oliver Drotbohm - Modulithic Applications
|
Nov 14, 2023 |
|
Colin Campbell - The Daily Habits of Effective Engineers
|
Nov 07, 2023 |
|
Dave Bryant Copeland - Quantifying the Carrying Cost
|
Oct 03, 2023 |
|
Cameron Jacoby - Am I Learning From This?
|
Sep 26, 2023 |
|
Adriana Villela - On Being a Serial Refactorer
|
Aug 22, 2023 |
|
Ahmed Wasfy - Thriving as an Engineering Manager
|
Aug 08, 2023 |
|
Naomi Ceder - People-Centric Community Building
|
Jul 04, 2023 |
|
Nadia Odunayo - Don't Try to Solve a Pain Point For a Problem You Aren't Experiencing
|
Jun 19, 2023 |
|
Daniela Baron - About Those Docs
|
Jun 12, 2023 |
|
Cory House - Finding Opportunities for Improvement
|
Jun 05, 2023 |
|
Avery Quinn - Can You Quantify the Impact?
|
May 22, 2023 |
|
Carlos Blé - Código Sostenible
|
Apr 24, 2023 |
|
Lena Reinhard - How Will People Get Stuff Done?
|
Apr 17, 2023 |
|
Eric Normand - Grokking Simplicity
|
Mar 13, 2023 |
|
Henrik Warne - There is No Software Maintenance
|
Mar 06, 2023 |
|
Andy Croll - Keep the Weird Stuff Weird
|
Feb 06, 2023 |
|
Marianne Bellotti - Building Empathy by Asking, "How Would You Write This in 2007?"
|
Jan 16, 2023 |
|
Arpit Mohan - Aspiring To Be Boring As Possible
|
Dec 26, 2022 |
|
Noah Clark - Maintainable Software is a Team Sport
|
Dec 19, 2022 |
|
Ben Parisot - Documentation Just Needs To Be Used Once
|
Nov 07, 2022 |
|
Stefanni Brasil - When Is Tackling Tech Debt Possible?
|
Oct 17, 2022 |
|
Andrea Goulet - Empathy-Driven Software Development
|
Oct 10, 2022 |
|
John Ousterhout - It's Not You, It's the Codebase
|
Sep 19, 2022 |
|
Courtney Wilburn - Maintainable Software Has Good Community Around It
|
Sep 12, 2022 |
|
Nelida Velazquez - We Have to Express Our Opinions
|
Sep 05, 2022 |
|
Casey Watts! - Culturesmithing
|
Aug 08, 2022 |
|
Marc Cornellà - Maintaining Open Source Projects
|
Aug 01, 2022 |
|
Shanea Leven - How To Bring Visibility To Your Codebase
|
Jul 04, 2022 |
|
Greg Foster - A Pattern for Smaller, Faster, and Frequent Code Reviews
|
Jun 27, 2022 |
|
Urban Hafner - Management Isn't For Everyone
|
Jun 13, 2022 |
|
Amy Isikoff Newell - Code Shouldn't Drive Us To Drink
|
May 30, 2022 |
|
Podcast Panel at RailsConf 2022
|
May 27, 2022 |
|
Chelsea Troy - All Code Has Maintenance Load
|
May 16, 2022 |
|
Paula Paul - Getting People To Understand Is a Challenge
|
Apr 25, 2022 |
|
Ben Halpern - Adventures In Open Sourcing Your Existing Application
|
Apr 18, 2022 |
|
Avdi Grimm - Don't Be Too Clingy To Your Tests
|
Apr 11, 2022 |
|
Aran Khanna - De-risk Your Cloud Resources
|
Apr 04, 2022 |
|
Jerod Santo - Having to Maintain Your Own Cleverness
|
Mar 28, 2022 |
|
Idit Levine - Production is the Real Test
|
Mar 21, 2022 |
|
Emily Giurleo - Maintaining Open Source vs Proprietary Software
|
Feb 07, 2022 |
|
Jean Yang - Not All Software is Meant to be Maintained
|
Dec 13, 2021 |
|
Shaundai Person: Work on Having a Short-term Memory
|
Nov 29, 2021 |
|
Chris Birchall: Re-Engineering Legacy Software
|
Nov 22, 2021 |
|
Swizec Teller: What is a Senior (Engineer) Mindset?
|
Nov 08, 2021 |
|
Heidi Waterhouse: Documentation: The Best Diff is a Red Diff
|
Nov 01, 2021 |
|
DHH: Celebrating Legacy Software as a Victory and the Story of How Humans Can't Estimate
|
Oct 04, 2021 |
|
Matt Wynne: Cucumber and Why Is TDD Such a Challenge?
|
Aug 02, 2021 |
|
Tom Granot: Finding Your Style When Explaining Things to Technical Audiences
|
Jul 19, 2021 |
|
Andrew Watkins: How To Test What You're Trying to Build
|
Jun 28, 2021 |
|
Rodney Cobb: Repeatable. Testable. Scalable.
|
Jun 21, 2021 |
|
Dr. Michaela Greiler: Getting Awesome at Code Reviews
|
Jun 14, 2021 |
|
Mark Kilby: Overcoming Challenges that Remote Technical Teams Experience
|
May 24, 2021 |
|
Kevin Stewart: Short-term Decisions That Need To Be Revisited
|
May 19, 2021 |
|
Ken Fogel: What Are You Leaving Behind?
|
May 10, 2021 |
|
Murray Steele: Maintainable Code Is Easy to Turn Off and Delete
|
Apr 26, 2021 |
|
Dr. Felienne Hermans: Looking Inside The Programmer's Brain
|
Apr 19, 2021 |
|
Bertold Kolics: Are You Carrying the Weight of Dead Code?
|
Apr 12, 2021 |
|
Kent C. Dodds: AHA Programming and Testing JavaScript
|
Apr 07, 2021 |
|
Mark Adams: HOWTO Prepare (Your Nails) for Burning Man
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Amy Sorensen: Nail Baths vs Nail Soaks
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Logan Luke Tyler Tanner: Overcoming Nail Biting During a Pandemic
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Erica Tafavoti: Adding Density to Extend Their Life
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Duncan Thorpe: Disrupting the Mammalian Industrial Nail Complex
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Shannon Jackson: Oh, Wait, Nope...Those Aren't My Gutter Nails
|
Apr 01, 2021 |
|
Brian Scanlan: Improving Oncall Support with Meaningful Alarms
|
Mar 29, 2021 |
|
Alexandre Omeyer: Removing the Barriers to Track Technical Debt
|
Mar 22, 2021 |
|
Roopak Venkatakrishnan: The Importance of Optimizing For Local Development and Build Systems
|
Mar 15, 2021 |
|
Benjamin Wood: Rescuing Ruby on Rails Projects
|
Mar 08, 2021 |
|
Johanna Rothman: No, Great Developers Aren't Destined to Be Great Managers
|
Mar 02, 2021 |
|
Helen Scott: Strategies For Measuring Developer Experience (DX)
|
Feb 24, 2021 |
|
Robert Kaufman: Running a Consultancy and a Coding School
|
Feb 16, 2021 |
|
Heidi Helfand: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams
|
Feb 08, 2021 |
|
Jutta Eckstein: How Software Impacts Our Planet
|
Feb 02, 2021 |
|
John Cech: How To Mentor Interns On Software Projects
|
Jan 25, 2021 |
|
Theresa Neate: Testing != Quality
|
Jan 19, 2021 |
|
Michael Springer: Vetting External Dependencies
|
Jan 11, 2021 |
|
Jason Swett: Refactoring Is Necessary to Keep Your Blade Sharp
|
Jan 04, 2021 |
|
Sudhir Reddy: Don't Be Afraid to Slash and Burn
|
Dec 28, 2020 |
|
Monica Lent: Progress Is More Important Than Perfection
|
Dec 21, 2020 |
|
Trae Robrock: Understanding Your Risk Tolerance As An Engineer
|
Dec 14, 2020 |
|
Mark Erikson: Accidentally Becoming an Open Source Maintainer
|
Dec 07, 2020 |
|
Bonnie Brennan: Building Community
|
Nov 30, 2020 |
|
Khaled Souf: Track Down Dead Code and Delete it
|
Nov 23, 2020 |
|
Adrianna Chang: Using the Strangler Fig Pattern at Shopify
|
Nov 16, 2020 |
|
Mark Downie: Balancing The Promises That Open Source Projects Make
|
Nov 09, 2020 |
|
Glenn Vanderburg: Don't Ask For Small Things
|
Nov 02, 2020 |
|
Suzan Bond: Embracing Discomfort and Navigating Transitions
|
Oct 26, 2020 |
|
Nicolas Carlo: Changing Messy Software Without Breaking It
|
Oct 19, 2020 |
|
Brittany Martin: How to Quit Your Job and Leave Your Code in Good Hands
|
Oct 12, 2020 |
|
Luke Redpath: User Stories Should Prompt Conversations
|
Oct 05, 2020 |
|
Hampton Lintorn Catlin: Only Add Complexity When Necessary
|
Sep 28, 2020 |
|
Pat Kua: The Challenges that Come with Becoming a Tech Lead
|
Sep 21, 2020 |
|
Aaron Blohowiak: The Myth of the Sufficiently Smart Engineer
|
Sep 14, 2020 |
|
Magda Miu: Building a Technical Leadership Career Around Teaching
|
Sep 07, 2020 |
|
Gant Laborde: Technical Debt — Trading Risk for an Advantage
|
Aug 31, 2020 |
|
Karen Lee Rigg: Where Are the Bad Habits Coming From?
|
Aug 24, 2020 |
|
Gianluca Arbezzano: Technical Debt Beyond Code & Your First Contributions to Open Source
|
Jul 13, 2020 |
|
Ali Spittel: Junior Developers and Helping Unlock Their Potential
|
Jul 06, 2020 |
|
Robby Russell: Turning the Mic Around with Kayla Reopelle
|
Jun 29, 2020 |
|
Ryan Cromwell: Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?
|
Jun 22, 2020 |
|
Camille Fournier: How Does a Developer Become a Manager?
|
Jun 15, 2020 |
|
Gonçalo Silva: How A Fully-Remote Team Builds and Maintains Software
|
Jun 01, 2020 |
|
Tudor Girba: Moldable Development and Software Environmentalism
|
May 25, 2020 |
|
Jeff Haynie: How Can We Make Software Development Better for Dev Teams?
|
May 18, 2020 |
|
Vladimir Khorikov: 100% Test Coverage is an Artificial Metric
|
May 11, 2020 |
|
Bryan Helmkamp: Don't Let Perfect Be The Enemy of Good
|
May 04, 2020 |
|
Dr. Aino Vonge Corry: Why Do We Have Retrospectives, Again?
|
Apr 27, 2020 |
|
Trisha Gee: Developers Should Invest More Time Into Learning Their Tools
|
Apr 20, 2020 |
|
Sandi Metz: Making is Easy, Mending is a Challenge
|
Apr 13, 2020 |
|
Clare Sudbery: Refactoring Should Be Part of Your Daily Work
|
Apr 06, 2020 |
|
Kelly Sutton: Custodians of the Monolith
|
Mar 30, 2020 |
|
Jonathan Abourbih: Creating a Culture Where It's Okay To Take Risks
|
Mar 23, 2020 |
|
Jessica Kerr: Software Is Not A Craft (or an Art)
|
Mar 09, 2020 |
|
Jon Thornton: Technical Debt is a Good Thing (Sometimes)
|
Mar 02, 2020 |
|
Ben Orenstein: "Someday We'll Go Clean That Up" Doesn't Work
|
Feb 24, 2020 |
|
Ernesto Tagwerker: Tracking Technical Debt With Metrics (aka Stink Score)
|
Feb 17, 2020 |
|
Marit van Dijk: How Are We Going to Test This?
|
Feb 10, 2020 |
|
Mike Perham: How Developers Underestimate Long-Term Costs of External Dependencies
|
Feb 03, 2020 |
|
Ev Haus: Good Code Can Be Easily Deleted
|
Jan 27, 2020 |
|
Adam Tornhill: Prioritizing Technical Debt With Behavioral Code Analysis
|
Jan 20, 2020 |
|
M. Scott Ford: Menders In Hiding and the Joy of Legacy Code
|
Jan 13, 2020 |
|
Gitte Klitgaard: Making Space For Psychological Safety in Software Teams
|
Jan 06, 2020 |
|
Nathaniel Bibler: Communication Strategies Between Developers and Clients
|
Dec 23, 2019 |
|
Abby Bangser: Building Trust In Your Deployment Pipeline
|
Dec 16, 2019 |
|
Viktor Klang: Condensing The Codebase Over Time
|
Dec 09, 2019 |
|
Beth Long: Maintainable Code Prioritizes How Humans Interact With It
|
Dec 02, 2019 |
|
Emily Bache: It's Always More Fun to Code with Others
|
Nov 25, 2019 |
|
Zee Spencer: How Can We Reduce Carrying Costs?
|
Nov 18, 2019 |
|
Ana Nelson: Writing Maintainable Code Documentation with Automated Tools and Transclusion
|
Nov 04, 2019 |
|
Dave Aronson: Putting the M in ACRUMEN
|
Oct 28, 2019 |
|
Michael Feathers: Be Curious & Chase The Rabbit Holes
|
Oct 21, 2019 |
|
Justin Searls: Learn To Understand The Runtime
|
Oct 14, 2019 |
|
Patricia Aas: Intersection of Programming & Security
|
Oct 07, 2019 |
|
Nate Berkopec: Why You Should Treat Performance Problems as Bugs
|
Sep 30, 2019 |
|
Victor Rentea: Never Separate The Refactoring From The Deliverable
|
Sep 23, 2019 |
|
Sandro Mancuso: Technical Debt is Anything Preventing You From Developing Fast
|
Sep 16, 2019 |
|
Bryan Liles: Create an Issue for Everything
|
Sep 09, 2019 |
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Liz Keogh: The Power of Asking, "Can You Give Me An Example?"
|
Sep 02, 2019 |
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Colin Jones: Software Consulting: Being a Good Guest
|
Aug 26, 2019 |
|
Jonathan Cutrell: Healthy Teams Know How to Eradicate Fear
|
Aug 19, 2019 |
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Karolina Szczur: The Importance of Documentation for Remote Developers
|
Aug 12, 2019 |
|
Liran Haimovitch: The Benefits of Observability
|
Aug 05, 2019 |
|
Robert Meaney: Building Software That is Easy to Test
|
Jul 29, 2019 |
|
Melissa Eaden: It's Never a One Person Job
|
Jul 22, 2019 |
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Steve Poling: The Real Enemy is Murphy
|
Jul 15, 2019 |
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Matt Weagle: What Will It Enable Us to Do in the Future?
|
Jul 08, 2019 |
|
Mariah Howard: How To Discuss Technical Debt With Product Managers
|
Jul 01, 2019 |
|
Anne Marie Kirby: Selling the Upside of Improving your Codebase to Management
|
Jun 24, 2019 |
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Marco "Ocramius" Pivetta: What Senior Devs Should Spend More Time On (It's Not Writing Code)
|
Jun 17, 2019 |
|
Lisa Crispin: Agile Testing & Technical Debt
|
Jun 10, 2019 |
|
Pim Elshoff: Refactoring How Engineers Communicate With Management
|
Jun 03, 2019 |
|
Morgan Senkal: Using Epics to Improve Code Quality Within Sprints
|
May 27, 2019 |
|
Eileen M. Uchitelle: Upgrading Ruby on Rails At Github And How To Stay Updated
|
May 20, 2019 |
|
Charity Majors: Deploys Are Just The Beginning
|
May 13, 2019 |
|
Sahil Lavingia: Pushing Forward Through Technical Debt After a Massive Layoff
|
May 06, 2019 |
|
Coraline Ada Ehmke: The Role Of Empathy In Engineering Teams
|
Apr 29, 2019 |
|
James Smith: What if We Measured Software with a Stability Score?
|
Apr 22, 2019 |
|
Anna Filina: How Every Decision Introduces Technical Debt
|
Apr 15, 2019 |