Legacy Code Rocks
159 episodes - English - Latest episode: 24 days ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsLegacy Code Rocks explores the world of modernizing existing software applications. Hosts Andrea Goulet and M. Scott Ford of Corgibytes are out to change the way you think about legacy code.
If you’re like a lot of people, when you hear the words “legacy code” it conjures up images of big mainframes and archaic punch card machines. While that’s true — it only tells a small part of the story. The truth is, the code you leave behind is your legacy, so let's make it a good one.
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Episodes
From Vintage Computers to Test Automation with Sophia McKeever
April 02, 2024 20:22 - 56 minutes - 105 MBHow 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 ...
Kubescape with Shauli Rozen
March 21, 2024 13:00 - 39 minutes - 71.9 MBIn 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...
Reviewing Logs with Joe Gross
March 04, 2024 18:52 - 50 minutes - 93.4 MBReviewing logs for security threats and operational functions can be a cumbersome task. Attention is a finite resource, and it is easy to miss something when faced with megabytes of data. Today, we talk with Joe Gross, the Director of Solutions Engineering at Graylog, a leading centralized log management solution for capturing, storing, and enabling real-time analysis of terabytes of machine data. Joe guides us through SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), revealing the secret...
Managing Security Services with Scott McCrady
February 19, 2024 19:17 - 52 minutes - 96.7 MBCyber security is not a core activity of most software development companies. It is an outsourced activity that simply has to be done so that we can deploy our core services. Today, we talk with Scott McCrady, CEO of SolCyber Managed Security Services and an accomplished international executive with broad experience in sales, business development, and the operations side of a cloud-based and information security-based business. He tells us about the trends in the cybersecurity market and ...
Developer Experience with Ramiro Berrelleza
January 24, 2024 20:16 - 38 minutes - 71.2 MBHow to set up developers for success? For the longest time, companies left developers to their own devices to figure out the workflows and tools they will be using. As the teams grew, so did their problems due to the lack of established procedures and good practices. Today, we talk with Ramiro Berrelleza, the CEO and co-founder of Okteto, the leading platform for developer experience automation. Ramiro is a true visionary, continuously searching for new ways to improve the software develo...
Sustainable Opensource with Cory O’Donel
January 08, 2024 18:27 - 55 minutes - 102 MBBack in August 2023, HashiCorp announced that after nine years of Terraform being open source under the MPL license, they were switching it to a non-open source BSL license. This sent shockwaves through the software development community. Today we talk with Cory O'Daniel, a CEO and co-founder of Massdriver, a company helping improve developers' experience of cloud operations, offering self-service capabilities along with governance and guardrails to developers. Cory is also one of the dri...
Software Bills of Behavior with Andrew Hendela
December 11, 2023 20:52 - 49 minutes - 91 MBSimply 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 e...
Socio-Political Implications of Legacy Code with Amy Newell
November 28, 2023 18:21 - 48 minutes - 89.3 MBIn 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...
Automatic Refactoring with Jonathan Schneider
November 13, 2023 19:21 - 52 minutes - 96.3 MBAutomating refactoring and code transformation is a fascinating and efficient way to eliminate technical debt. Today, we talk with Jonathan Schneider, a Co-Founder and CEO of Moderne, Inc., and a former senior Software Engineer at Netflix, where he created Netflix Rewrite - a large-scale automated refactoring tool for Java codebases. Jonathan is also the author of SRE with Java Microservices. Jonathan tells us about the advantages, challenges, and pitfalls of creating automated refactoring ...
Disruptive Thinking with Lance James
October 24, 2023 18:49 - 48 minutes - 89.2 MBImagine 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 thr...
From Monolith to Understanding with Nelida Velazquez
October 02, 2023 18:51 - 48 minutes - 89.3 MBGoing 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...
The Old New Thing with Raymond Chen
September 19, 2023 16:26 - 37 minutes - 69.2 MBMicrosoft 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...
Playwright with Debbie O’Brien and Max Schmitt
July 31, 2023 20:06 - 36 minutes - 67 MBMicrosoft 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 t...
Windows Terminal with Kayla Cinnamon
June 26, 2023 17:02 - 25 minutes - 47.3 MBMicrosoft 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. ...
Passwordless Cyber Security with Justin Richer
May 31, 2023 14:58 - 55 minutes - 101 MBHow 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 con...
Servicing Technical Debt with Dave Mangot
May 15, 2023 17:09 - 48 minutes - 88.6 MBThere 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 architec...
Code Review with Michaela Greiler
May 01, 2023 16:12 - 46 minutes - 85.3 MBHow 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. Wh...
Carrying Cost with Avdi Grimm
April 17, 2023 14:53 - 39 minutes - 71.7 MBWhat 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 ...
Process Improvement with Stefanni Brasil
April 03, 2023 17:12 - 41 minutes - 76.5 MBEvery 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 processe...
Building Durable Software with Ashu Chatterji
March 20, 2023 15:54 - 40 minutes - 73.8 MBThere is an eternal dilemma among software developers - should we try our best to predict the future and build it into our code, or should we just plan for frequent iterations? Today we talk with Ashu Chatterji, CEO of Caravel Labs and software engineer with 3+ decades of industry experience, working to reimagine IT consulting as an industry incentivized by innovative outcomes in global sustainability and social justice. Ashu built and led a global practice of "player-coach engineers" tha...
Software Design with John Ousterhout
March 06, 2023 21:10 - 53 minutes - 97.7 MBTo build anew or to rebuild? Many developers have a knee-jerk reaction to start building existing software systems from scratch because they think that is the easiest way forward. Today, we talk with John Ousterhout. John is the Bosack Lerner Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His current research focuses on new software stack layers to allow data center applications to take advantage of communication and storage technologies with microsecond-scale latencies. He is the ...
Elm, Roc, and Rust with Richard Feldman
February 06, 2023 18:21 - 45 minutes - 83.1 MBWorking on legacy code is never easy, but some programming languages make it more enjoyable. Today, we talk with Richard Feldman, the creator of the Roc programming language, the author of Elm in Action, and the creator of the Frontend Masters courses Introduction to Elm and Introduction to Rust. Richard tells us about the advantages of the Elm, Rock, and Rust languages and why they are more enjoyable to work with than other languages. When you finish listening to the episode, connect ...
Refactoring in Product Teams with Andreas Creten
January 23, 2023 20:19 - 40 minutes - 74.8 MBProduct teams are scared of technical debt and refactoring. They press on to make something new, not to question what they have already created. However, the urgency to deliver new products carries the risk of technical debt. Today, we talk with Andreas Creten, a software engineer turned CTO. Andreas is a co-founder of Made With Love, a company that helps startups and scaleups to get out of technical trouble. Andreas tells us how to work with product teams to address technical debt in the...
STEM and Cooking with Kimberly Fox
December 18, 2022 20:44 - 43 minutes - 80.4 MBHow can cooking help you have a better team? Today, we talk with Kimberly Fox. Kimberly leads virtual and in-person cooking classes and is a recipe developer and writer for her blog, From Market to Table. Building on more than ten years of experience working in STEM and witnessing gender inequalities and micro-cultures in corporate settings, Kimberly developed her signature corporate cooking experiences helping leaders to build more inclusive and diverse teams. When you finish listening ...
Python with Michael Kennedy
December 05, 2022 16:00 - 53 minutes - 99.3 MBIn this episode, we are talking with Michael Kennedy, Python expert and the founder and host of two podcasts - Talk Python To Me and Python Bytes. He also runs Talk Python Training which provides online courses for Python developers. Michael tells us about the reception of Python version changes and the most challenging aspects of the transition to ARM processors. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Michael on LinkedIn and Twitter, subscribe to his podcasts, and check o...
Software Security with Rob Dickinson
October 31, 2022 16:31 - 40 minutes - 46.2 MBSoftware security has become one of the most important topics affecting the lives of millions of people. Today we talk with Rob Dickinson, a co-founder, and CTO of Resurface Labs, a data-driven API security solution. He tells us how can security be woven into the culture of a software team, how to build more secure software, and how to adapt traditional security tools to the challenges of cloud computing. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Rob on Twitter and check o...
Evolving Software with João Rosa
October 17, 2022 16:04 - 41 minutes - 75.8 MBWe design software within a particular context. When that context changes, so should the software. But change is often difficult. Today we talk with João Rosa, an independent consultant focused on helping organizations to make strategic decisions when building software. João is one of the authors of Software Architecture Metrics, the curator of the book Visual Collaboration Tools, and the host of the Software Crafts Podcast. João tells us how to ensure that our software is evolving wi...
Legacy JavaScript with David Neal
October 03, 2022 16:50 - 34 minutes - 63.3 MBIf you try to fix broken things in JavaScript, you will probably break the Internet because the entire Internet expects those "mistakes" to be there. Today we talk with David Neal, a family man, geek, musician, illustrator, international speaker, software developer, and Microsoft MVP. David shares the quirkiest things he loves to hate in JavaScript and tells us about the most challenging aspects of working with legacy JS applications. When you finish listening to the episode, connect wit...
Observability with Hunter Madison
September 19, 2022 16:51 - 39 minutes - 72 MBLegacy becomes legacy only when the memory of how the system works is gone. This is where observability kicks in. Today we talk with Hunter Madison. Hunter is the cloud architect for Instana, an observability platform for IBM. He has a decade of software development experience covering everything from e-commerce to database development. He tells us about the significance of observability for maintenance work, when using observability is most helpful, and how to adapt observability tools ...
Open-Source Software with Naomi Ceder
September 05, 2022 14:59 - 50 minutes - 92.2 MBThe world as we know it wouldn't exist without open-source software. We have learned to rely and depend on these free products that magically get maintained and updated by communities of volunteers. In our over commercialized world, the very plausibility of projects like Linux, Android, and Apache might seem incomprehensible to some. And yet, they make the world go round. Today we talk with Naomi Ceder. She helps us understand the longevity and impact of successful open-source projects. N...
Agile Practices in Legacy Code Mending with Michael Toppa
August 22, 2022 15:07 - 45 minutes - 83.7 MBAgile has become the mainstream in software engineering, and agile principles should feel natural to legacy code menders. Today we talk with Michael Toppa, the Senior Engineering manager at FastRuby.io. Michael has been a developer, product owner, and engineering director for over 25 years. He had worked for many organizations, including E-TRADE, Ask.com, the University of Pennsylvania, ActBlue, and many others. He is a passionate advocate of agile and lean practices, and today he tells u...
Rector with Matthias Noback
June 13, 2022 14:55 - 40 minutes - 73.9 MBImagine if you could refactor legacy code with a single CLI command? Well, you can, at least if you are working with PHP. Today we talk with Matthias Noback, a long-time web developer and the author of several programming books, including Rector - The Power of Automated Refactoring, which he co-wrote with Tomáš Votruba. Matthias tells us how to use Rector in your daily workflow, how it automates repetitive maintenance and refactoring tasks, and what is the potential of this approach for ...
From Java to Kotlin with Duncan McGregor and Nat Pryce
May 30, 2022 14:24 - 49 minutes - 90.3 MBThere is a lot of buzz around Kotlin, a new Java-based programming language that many think might eventually replace Java. But is all this talk justified, and are the predictions of replacement realistic? Today we talk with Duncan McGregor and Nat Pryce, the authors of Java to Kotlin. They reveal to us all the advantages of Kotlin, why and when you would want to transition to it from Java, and how to facilitate the refactoring in a painless and efficient way. When you finish listening ...
Code Testing With Melanie Frank
May 16, 2022 14:47 - 46 minutes - 85.2 MBWe all want our code to be stable and resilient to future challenges. But we need to strike the right balance between testing our systems and the cost of failure. This is much harder to achieve than it sounds. Today we talk with Melanie Frank, Managing Vice-President of Cyber Engineering at Capital One. Her teams innovate boldly to secure the enterprise while obsessing over excellence. Before Capital One, Melanie worked at Honeywell at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she tested so...
Checks and Balances in Coding with Samuel Taggart
May 02, 2022 15:29 - 44 minutes - 82 MBWe all strive to write an ideal code - easily readable, functional, and clean. We use many tools to achieve this. However, we often forget why we need our code to be tidy. Today we are talking with Samuel Taggart, President of GDevCon N.A. and the owner of SAS Workshops. Sam is a natural teacher, and he enjoys sharing what he learned with others. We talk with Sam about the tools and methods that make our code clean - refactoring, retrospectives, and style guides. While they are all meant ...
Code Thesaurus with Sarah Withee
April 18, 2022 16:28 - 35 minutes - 67 MBImagine if you could compare concepts side-by-side between a programming language you know and one you don't. Well, now you can! Today we talk with Sarah Withee, a polyglot software engineer, international tech speaker, and robot tinkerer. Sarah is also the author of Code Thesaurus, the polyglot developer reference tool. She tells us about the reasons behind the creation of the thesaurus, its continuous development, and what you can do to make the thesaurus even better. When you finish ...
Reading Code with Felienne Hermans
April 04, 2022 14:37 - 39 minutes - 72.7 MBCoders spend most of their time reading rather than writing code. Yet, when you look at the undergraduate programs, boot camps, and conferences, everything seems to be dedicated to code production. Today we talk with Felienne Hermans. Felienne is an associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science at Leiden University and the author of the book The Programmer's Brain. She also developed Hedy, a new programming language that makes it easier for kids to learn textu...
Cyber Security and Personal Wellness with Nyota Gordon
March 07, 2022 14:42 - 46 minutes - 84.7 MBSome of the biggest risks for cyber security frameworks come from employees meant to maintain them. The reason for that is simple, and it couldn't be more human - people who don't feel well don't perform well. Today we talk with Nyota Gordon, the founder, developer, and all-around do-gooder at Transition365, a cyber resiliency firm that helps cybersecurity professionals increase their leadership and life skills. Nyota digs deep into the intersection between cyber security, resiliency, a...
Moving Beyond Agile with Prabhjot Singh
February 21, 2022 08:05 - 36 minutes - 67.7 MBAgile is all about the speed of iteration and execution. One of the things that often gets neglected is the business impact of the code we are shipping. Today we talk with Prabhjot Singh, serial entrepreneur and the president and CEO of Pyze. He tells us how taking time to better understand the system we are mending can speed up our work and yield much better results. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Prabhjot on Twitter and LinkedIn and visit Pyze's website at https://...
Self-Compassion with Clare Sudbery
February 07, 2022 10:28 - 58 minutes - 108 MBWe frequently discuss compassion, empathy, and kindness on this podcast. What we rarely focus on, however, is being kind and compassionate to ourselves. Today we talk with Clare Sudbery. Clare is a lead engineer at Made Tech, and she is the host of the Making Tech Better podcast. Clare tells why it is so important to be compassionate to ourselves and shares with us some techniques on how to achieve this. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Clare on Twitter and dive de...
System Resiliency with Briana Augenreich
January 24, 2022 12:21 - 40 minutes - 74.9 MBEveryone wants their software system to be resilient - to continue carrying out its mission-critical tasks in the face of disruption or adversity. But resiliency has its cost, and not just in a material sense. With resiliency, your system becomes more complex and harder to maintain. That is why we always have to balance our resiliency requirement with other non-functional requirements around the system. Today we talk with Briana Augenreich, a Senior Software Engineer at HubSpot. Briana w...
Managing Maintenance Teams with Tramaine Darby
January 10, 2022 14:53 - 40 minutes - 75.8 MBWe all get excited about that new, shiny code, but more often than not, our company can live without it. On the other hand, some old and boring lines of code laying around are usually the backbone of our entire business system. And while inventors tend to get all the praise, those who keep the wheels running smoothly are content with, well, the wheels running smoothly. Today we talk with Tramaine Darby, a Senior Manager of Content, Subscriptions, and Insights Engineering at Red Hat. She t...
Betterer with Craig Spence
December 27, 2021 14:13 - 49 minutes - 90.9 MBMaking widespread changes to a codebase can be hard! Your team starts a long-lived branch that is difficult to maintain and often impossible to merge; you and your team-mates agree to improve the code slowly over time, but you all forget this agreement, and the improvement never happens. But what if there were a tool that keeps you on track to steadily improve your code without making you feel like losing control over these improvements? Today we talk with Craig Spence, a senior engineer a...
Kubernetes with James Sturtevant
December 13, 2021 10:23 - 38 minutes - 70.9 MBKubernetes with James Sturtevant As applications grow to span multiple containers deployed across multiple servers, operating them becomes more complex. While it is possible to maintain these growing applications manually, most will reach out to an orchestrator to help them with the tasks. As applications grow to span multiple containers deployed across multiple servers, operating them becomes more complex. One of such orchestrators is Kubernetes. Today we talk with James Sturtevant, P...
Collaborating with Empathy with Liz Acosta
November 29, 2021 11:10 - 47 minutes - 88.1 MBThe power of software is enormous, but the code can only be as good as the humans who write it. Despite popular belief, "being good" has nothing to do with character predisposition. It is a product of an intentional effort to nurture care and compassion. Today we talk with Liz Acosta, a software engineer and a developer advocate at Stacklet. Liz's past professions as a copywriter, social media manager, and odd job freelancer give her a unique perspective on software development and enable...
User-Focused Design with Dawn Ahukanna
November 15, 2021 11:25 - 43 minutes - 80.9 MBBuilding useful software requires more than just knowing how to write code. It demands curiosity to understand the problem which the software is supposed to resolve. It also requires the willingness to understand the people - not only those who will use it but also those who are building this software with you! Today we talk with Dawn Ahukanna, the design principal and front-end architect at IBM. She leads an integrated and consistent user-focused design across enterprise software focused...
Team Growth Mindset with Matt Dixon
November 01, 2021 13:30 - 36 minutes - 68.2 MBWorking together in a team requires a lot of emotional intelligence, adaptability, and empathy. Bringing two teams working together after acquisition and a merger might seem like requiring superpowers on top of that. Today we talk with Matt Dixon, the founder, and CEO of Front Range Systems. Matt is a tech executive helping newly acquired technology businesses create a unified culture within their workplaces. Matt gives us a sneak-peak into his practices of helping teams develop a growth ...
Static Typing Within TypeScript with Sam Lanning
October 18, 2021 04:47 - 41 minutes - 77.8 MBTypeScript has been around for quite a while, and its popularity speaks for itself. It has never been more important to understand how to gradually and sustainably shift to TypeScript within the existing code-base. Today we talk with Sam Lanning, an independent software contractor in the humanitarian sector with many years of experience at GitHub and Semmle. Sam's vast experience in using TypeScript to speed up coding, eliminate debugging, and reduce technical debt helps us see the benef...
Debugging Your Brain with Casey Watts
October 04, 2021 12:25 - 35 minutes - 66.3 MBWe often use real-life metaphors to make software development concepts more approachable and understandable, especially for the people just entering the field. Sometimes, however, the reverse approach could help a seasoned coder to cope with the real world. Today we talk with Casey Watts, the author of Debugging Your Brain, a clear applied psychology, and a concise self-help book. The human brain is buggy, just as any legacy code is. Casey tells us about techniques that can help us refac...
Computer Science with Sy Brand (and Their Cats)
September 20, 2021 10:20 - 42 minutes - 79.1 MBMany programming concepts seem too complex and intimidating to outsiders. That is perhaps the main reason why writing code remains such an exclusive profession, even in the age where virtually everything depends on a written code! But does everything have to be so complicated? Today, we talk with Sy Brand, Microsoft C++ Developer Advocate, and a specialist for compilers and debuggers for embedded accelerators. Sy is also known for their YouTube Channel - Computer Science with Sy's Cats - ...