There are three groups of people around every legacy system - those who are stuck with it, those who don't want to be with it, and those who love it and see its value. How do we reconcile these three opinions and rewrite legacy code without completely replacing it? Today we talk with Dave Thomas. Dave is an all-around player in the software industry with vast experience as an executive, investor, board member, consultant, architect, and engineer. He is Chairman of Bedarra Corp, which...

One of the reasons why it is difficult to work with legacy code is the lack of preserving the contextual reasons for past coding choices.  Today we talk with Chelsea Troy, a Machine Learning Team Lead at Mozilla and a computer science lecturer at the University of Chicago. She tells us about the value of code review in the software-building process and why code review should not be treated solely as a mechanism for approval.  When you finish listening to the episode, visit Chelsea's website...

Mending code while it is running is risky. One wrong move and a small change can bring the entire system to a halt.  Today we talk with Edward Hieatt, Chief Customer Officer at Mechanical Orchard, a GenAI native company that modernizes critical legacy applications without disrupting what they are doing. He tells us how to use AI to identify system dependencies, why it is important to first understand data flow before diving into code, and how to maintain functionality during the...

AI proves to be great at writing new code, but what are its capabilities when it comes to mending the old one? Today we talk with Ray Myers, a legacy code expert and sceptical enthusiast for AI. With 16 years of software engineering experience, he focuses on collective lessons learned to improve our existing systems and organizations. He tells us where is the place of AI in legacy code mending, whether AI can provide help when editing existing code, how to train AI with up-to-date coding...

Many of the largest companies rely on third-party code to run critical parts of their software. However, there's often little focus on ensuring the quality of these external dependencies. Today we speak with Feross Aboukhadijeh, CEO and founder of Socket, a developer-first security platform. Socket helps developers and security teams release software faster and reduce time spent on security busywork. Feross is also a lecturer at Stanford, where he teaches CS233 Web Security. We discuss why...

How do the love for vintage computers and test automation come together? Can one inspire another and how? Today we talk with Sophia Mckeever, a software development engineer at Pokemon Company International, a test automation framework architect, and a computer historian. She tells us what led her to collect vintage computers, how they evolved into machines we work on today, and what is the connecting thread between computer history and test automation.  When you finish listening to the...

In Kubernetes, security is a joint effort between security engineers and DevOps. A perfect tool to bring these two together is Kubescape, an open-source Kubernetes security project.  Today, we talk with Shauli Rozen, the CEO of ARMO, the company behind Kubescape. Shauli has more than fifteen years of experience in technology, B2B management, and business development. He tells us about the advantages of Kubescape, what it does, and when would you want to use it.  When you finish listening to...

Simply knowing what is in your software is not any guarantee of safety. We need to know what that software does versus what we expect it to do. We need to know its rules of behavior.  Today, we talk with Andrew Hendela, a founder of Karambit.ai, a company dedicated to automatically detecting malware and securing your software supply chain. Andrew worked for over a decade automating hard cybersecurity problems. He has many years of experience in cybersecurity leadership and deep technical...

In the age of rising AI, we cannot neglect the topic of the social and political consequences of the code we leave behind. Today, we talk with Amy Newell, a 24-year veteran of the tech industry and an avid activist in issues spanning from local politics to tech. Amy discusses how to engage with emerging technologies, how to use them, and how to create them while being cognisant of the harm we can inadvertently cause along the way. When you finish listening to the episode, visit Amy's website...

Imagine if you could counter ransomware by exploiting it to create a backup of your attacked data for you. Now, that would be disruptive!  Today, we talk with Lance James. James is an experienced cybersecurity specialist with 25 years of experience in the field. Building on his programming, network security, digital forensics, malware research, and counterintelligence experience, Lance tells us how to use disruptive thinking to improve cyber security and predict and counter major cyber...

Going from monolith to microservices is one of the most popular topics in software engineering. But jumping the boat without understanding why can be a dangerous (and expensive) adventure.  Today we talk with Nelida Velazquez. Nelida is a senior software engineer at Cobalt, a cyber security company that offers pentest as a service. As a backend developer, she had numerous opportunities to witness ill-informed migrations from monolith to microservices, and she is sharing her experience with...

Microsoft invited the Legacy Code Rocks team to attend Microsoft Build Conference and gave us access to the studio on the third floor of the Seattle Convention Center. In this episode, we talk with Raymond Chen, a senior software engineer at Microsoft.   Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the...

Microsoft invited the Legacy Code Rocks team to attend Microsoft Build Conference and gave us access to the studio on the third floor of the Seattle Convention Center. In this episode, we talk with Debbie O’Brien and Max Schmitt, both part of the Microsoft Playwright team..  Playwright is a tool developed by Microsoft that allows developers to automate the testing of web applications.. Playwright's unique feature is its ability to handle multiple browser contexts, making it efficient for...

Microsoft invited the Legacy Code Rocks team to attend Microsoft Build Conference and gave us access to the studio on the third floor of the Seattle Convention Center. In this episode, we talk with Kayla Cinnamon, the first of the three guests we had an opportunity to chat with at the Conference.  Kayla is a Product Manager with Microsoft. She’s currently working on Microsoft Dev Home and helps out the Microsoft PowerToys team. Kayla is also the former product manager of Windows Terminal....

How many of your passwords do you actually know? Now, how many of those passwords are already on the black web? We are living in a fascinating age of transition from personalised passwords dependent on text inputs and our memory to more advanced access solutions.  To help us navigate this evolution, we talk with Justin Richer. Justin is a technologist working on a wide variety of projects and problems throughout the internet. Justin is the founder of Bespoke Engineering, an independent...

There is some disconnect between business people and engineers when talking about technical debt. While engineers understand the metaphor as a credit card debt that has to be paid off entirely and as soon as possible, business people see it more as a mortgage paid in small installments over a long period.  Today we talk with Dave Mangot, CEO of Mangoteque and the consultant, author, and speaker helping private equity portfolio companies get good at delivering software. As a former architect...

How to ensure that your code review practices are not just an expensive bottleneck in your team’s productivity but its ultimate superpower? Today we talk with Michaela Greiler, a Head of Research at DX and the owner of a consultancy and training company, Awesome Code Reviews, focused on helping development teams improve their practices and processes. She tells us when to do code reviews, how to get the most value out of them, how to incentivize meaningful code reviews, and much more.  When...

What does it mean to build a cost-free feature in the software, and are cost-free features even possible? Today we talk with Avdi Grimm. Avdi is a software developer with more than twenty years of experience. During his career, Avdi worked on everything from aerospace embedded systems to enterprise web applications. He is the author of Confident Ruby: 32 Patterns for Joyful Coding and a recipient of the Ruby Hero Award. Currently, he spends his time helping developers deepen their coding...

Every once in a while, it is wise to stop for a second and think about why we do things in a specific way and whether we need to change something. This is where rethinking processes kick in.  Today we talk with Stefanni Brasil, a co-founder of hexdevs, a senior developer at Thoughtbot, and a core maintainer of faker-ruby. Stefanni is also a co-host of the hexdevs podcast, a show helping developers take their Ruby career to the next level.  She tells us about her keen interest in processes,...