/dev/hell

Episode 33: Pol Pot-level Sucks

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:04:00 PDT

Back in the saddle for the double-tres, Chris and Ed rap about the loss of trust in Google and how that affects their perception of the Go language. Then Ed babbles for way too long about vintage gaming and computing. Chris wonders how you could be truly private on the Internet in the light of widespread government surveillance. Finally, we talk about the importance of automation and repeatable processes.

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Links and Notes

Episode 32: tek13

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:05:00 PDT

At this year’s tek13 we did another live show. The difference this time is that we didn’t have free booze, so turnout was a little low, but it was still super fun. We talked about hobbies we have outside of coding and how they impact our dev skills (hint: minimally), and what folks favorite talks at tek13 were. Probably other stuff too, but it’s been a while and I forgot.

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Links and Notes

Episode 32: tek13

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:05:00 PDT

WHOOPS! GO HERE.

Episode 31: Feline Tooth Extraction

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:05:00 PDT

Short notes time: In this episode, Chris and Ed talk about conferences we always wanted to go to, and languages & tools we’d thought we’d hate and turned out to like. Then Ed waxes on the Open Recipes project.

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Episode 30: It's Episode 30, you guys

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:07:00 PDT

In our action-packed 30th episode Ed and Chris discussed their experiences with JavaScript testing tools, specifically how certain tools push you towards specific refactoring patterns.

Chris talked about the successful launch of his latest book on using PHPUnit and got into some honest talk about revenue and how the product development course helped him make this book do 4 times the launch day revenue of his previous one.

Ed discussed his plans to talk about mental illness on the conference circuit this year. Please help out by donating to the campaign!

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Links and Notes

Mocha
Sinon.JS
Jasmine and Jasmine-node
QUnit
The Grumpy Programmer’s PHPUnit Cookbook
30x500
LoneStar PHP
Open Sourcing Mental Illness
Require.JS
PhantomJS
Zombie.js
Karma
“It’s pronounced ‘jif’”
Chris’ new favourite thought leader
Async JavaScript made the jump from Leanpub to bigger publisher
DadBoner

Episode 29: Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:33:00 PST

Being totally out of ideas, we turned things over to our legions of fans who joined us on IRC. Lots of interesting questions, and people learned what Ed thought was horseshit.

Special thanks to Joel Clermont for killing the show with this joke:

Q: “What’s the difference between a junior and senior developer?”
A: “$40k”

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Links and Notes

Sublime Text 2
Vim
Emacs
Eclipse
BBEdit
HomeSite
HTMLKit
SubEthaEdit
TextMate
Has PHP reached it’s limit?
Yahoo! calls all remote workers home. Is there a hidden motive behind it
Liberal vs. conservative programmers
Thoughts on the male gaze
Chris feels this essay shows a lack of understanding about collaboration
Estimating projects using the metric system
Should the PHP core team care what users of the language want

Episode 28: Canadian Twinkie Smuggler

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:52:00 PST

You can blame Chris’s tomfoolery for how crappy he sounds, because his computer pooped all over himself and he had to call in on his iPhone. Nevertheless, we were able to discuss in detail the smuggling of mass-produced pastries of the Twinkie and Tastykake varieties. We also get framework security in the context of recent Rails vulnerabilities, and how PHP developers seem to have a heightened awareness of potential vulnerabilities. Ed’s details his experiences starting a local user group, and then discusses his efforts to speak at developer/tech conferences about his struggles with mental illness.

As always, thank you to our awesome sponsor Wonder Network for providing bandwidth for our live stream. If you’re interested in sponsoring Development Hell, let us know!

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Links and Notes

Episode 27: Artisan Database Administration

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:18:00 PST

This episode marks a return, both for special guest Selena Deckelmann, and our special hand-made artisan podcasting. Know that this episode was made with locally-sourced bytes, harvested with care and respect for the Earth. We talk with Selena about working at Mozilla, her switch to Linux on the desktop, and how marketing is weightier than merit in determining a product’s success.

This episode’s super-special sponsor is EasyBib! They are looking for junior and senior PHP devs to work on their awesome academic web app. Check out the job description and email stuff to till+php@imagineeasy.com.

As always, thank you to our awesome sponsors at Engine Yard and Wonder Network for providing cashmoney and bandwidth for our live stream, respectively.

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Links and Notes

Episode 26: Sassy!

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:51:00 PST

The first episode of 2013 find Chris and Ed talking about the tragedy of Aaron Swartzs’ suicide, both in the context of governmental power and mental illness. We also talk about Ed’s favorite (and only tolerable) Apple-related podcast ending. Finally, Ed rambles about SASS, a superset of CSS3 that makes writing CSS less painful.

We have a new sponsor! EasyBib is looking for junior and senior PHP devs to work on their awesome academic web app. Check out the job description and email stuff to till+php@imagineeasy.com.

As always, thank you to our awesome sponsors at Engine Yard and Wonder Network for providing cashmoney and bandwidth for our live stream, respectively.

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Links and Notes

Lincoln Park Chicago Appl store
Linkin Park’s Mysterious Cyberstalker
Aaron Swartz
- How to Get a Job Like Mine. “I followed these rules. And here I am today, with a dozen projects on my plate and my stress level through the roof once again.”
- Jacob Applebaum (IOError)
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
- National Alliance on Mental Illness
Hypercritical podcast
Mike Wilner
SASS
SMACSS - Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS

The Development Hell Guide to Podcasting on the Cheap, Part 1: Hardware, Software and Recording

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:55:00 PST

We started recording /dev/hell because we thought it would be fun. We wanted it to sound decent, but we didn’t want to work hard at making that happen, because we are lazy. And cheap.

I’ve had some experience with indie audio production, so I know a few things about making stuff sound better than it should. That, and a lot of stuff I’ve picked up on the way, has helped make /dev/hell sound semi-decent on a very, very small budget.

In this series of articles, I’ll detail the hardware, software, and processes we use when we record /dev/hell. If you’re thinking about making your own podcasts, this will get you started with a minimum amount of cash and a maximum amount of awesome.

All of the /dev/hell podcasts are recordings of voice chats between Chris and me, plus any guests who happen to be with us. This is actually a lot easier than recording in person, and lets us optimize a lot in terms of hardware and software expense. We record with pretty cheap hardware and software, and do a bit more post-production work to make stuff sound decent.

Note that we do all our podcasting work on OS X, so hardware and software have only been tested there. Most of what we discuss should work with Windows, but I’m not sure about Linux support.

Hardware

I use a Logitech H555 headset to record on my side. It’s also my go-to headset for any voice chat. My speech sounds clear and intelligible through it, and it does a pretty good job of cancelling out ambient noise. It’s USB and wired, so I don’t have issues with connectivity there, and it has a physical mute switch, which is really handy when you have to cough or throw up. It’s not the cheapest headset you can find, but for the price, the voice fidelity is very good. The only significant issue I’ve found is that the mic will pick up the sound from the headphones if I have it really turned up, but I can mitigate that with a noise gate in post-production. I’ve carried this thing all around the country, and it has consistently Just Worked as soon as I plug it in.

Alternately, you might check out the Logitech USB Headset H530, which is similar, but looks like it would be a bit more comfortable (but less portable).

I have messed some with bluetooth headsets and ear pieces, and they all have sucked. Constant pairing issues, audio quality problems, and battery drain. You don’t want to mess with this stuff just before you’re scheduled to record, let alone have it die in the middle of a sesson.

I also avoid any cheap stuff that plugs into the 1/8” analog inputs on my computer, particularly microphones. That stuff is almost always garbage – poor quality, prone to clipping and picking up hums and noise. Don’t do it.

You can get better quality mics than my headset has, but it also introduces a lot more hassle and expense. Decent-quality USB mics are going to run you at least $60, and they tie you to a desk or mic stand. If you want to have more flexibility, you can get XLR mics (I have a Shure SM-58), but then you’ll also need an outboard audio interface and mixer – more equipment to tie you down, and now we’re getting into at least a few hundred dollars in hardware.

If you do get a separate mic, I’d recommend a dynamic mic, especially if you’re only recording yourself talking on Skype. Chris is currently using a Blue Yeti condenser mic, and it picks up tons of ambient noise in the room. Condensers are great for doing in-person interviews where you just drop the mic on a table between everybody, but they’re not well-suited for for voice chat. You’ll end up muting yourself any time you’re not talking, and spending time in post-production editing out squeaky chairs and keyboard typing.

Software

We use Skype to talk to each other. It has the best audio quality of all the voice chat options I’ve tried, and it’s free and available on all major desktop platforms. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best option available.

To record our Skype conversations, I recommend Call Recorder, a $20 add-on to Skype for Windows and OS X. The biggest win with Call Recorder is its ability to split the two sides of your conversation intp separate tracks, so you can process and edit them separately in post-production. It also has a simple, easy to use interface. There’s a 15-day fully functional trial, so it should work okay for one-off guests who don’t want to drop $20 just to be on your show.

We’ve also used Audio Hijack Pro, a $32 application for OS X. AHP is much more flexible than Call Recorder: it can record any audio being generated by any application in OS X, do timed recordings, and lots of other cool stuff. It also can separate Skype conversations into the left and right sides of a stereo track, so you can treat them separately in post-production. But, being a significantly more complex application than Call Recorder, it’s also easier to screw stuff up, which I’ve done a few times.

Recording

Before you do any recording, use the Skype test call feature to record yourself speaking as you would in the session. Have a paragraph of text handy and recite it into the call. Alternately, call up your co-host and just shoot the breeze for a few minutes, recording it with Call Recorder. Listen to the recording, make note of issues, and address accordingly.

All the session participants should be in a quiet area where they won’t get visitors and don’t get a lot of echo (carpeted areas are better in this regard). I always record in a big recliner in the corner of the living room with my laptop on my lap, and always wait until 9pm so the Kinder are in bed. Let folks in your home know that you’ll be recording, so they don’t bug you about stuff in the middle of the session.

If you’re the person who will be doing post-production, have a notepad handy – physical or virtual – to write down possible edit spots. If you hear a big glitch/slip-up/disconnection/meltdown, it is much easier to find it if you have written down the time it happened. Listening through your entire podcast to find it will be extremely tedious, especially if you tend to ramble like we do.

About 10 minutes before you’re scheduled to record, get everyone on the Skype call. This should allow you to hear potential issues and try to address them before you start recording, like excessive background noise or bandwidth problems.

One thing I recommend is that you get people to record on a computer that’s connected via wired ethernet. WiFi gets really flakey, and can cause glitches in Skype that you wouldn’t anticipate. This is particularly problematic in more densely populated areas. You may not have much issue – I’m lucky in that my WiFi is very fast and consistent – but it’s definitely safer to be wired. If you’re not able to connect directly, at least sit where you have good, consistent WiFi reception, and don’t move.

When you’re ready to start the podcast, the easiest thing to do is just have one person record using one of the above applications. This works okay if everyone involved has a very solid Internet connection and local network. The more people you have on the call, though, the more problems you’re likely to have.

I recommend having every participant in the session record on their end. This can be a bit of a pain if you have frequent guests, but the 15-day trial version of Call Recorder should allow them to handle this without spending any cash. With everyone recording locally, you can get a high-quality local recording of each participant, mitigating the glitchiness that you’ll get with Skype. It also means you have backup recordings in case you forgot to hit Record (not that I’d ever do that). The relevant settings I use in Call Recorder’s preferences are:

Audio Encoding: AAC Compression
Audio Quality: High
Show Recording Controls At Launch
Keep Recording Controls In Front During calls

Note: normally you never want to record with “lossy” compression like AAC or MP3. But because we’re recording speech, and our final format is relatively low-fidelity (64kbps mono MP3), I don’t think there’s any perceptible advantage. It’s fine to record compressed files, though, and would be a good idea if you’re striving for the best possible fidelity.

When you’re done, have everyone upload their recordings in a shared space so you can grab them. A shared Dropbox folder has worked well for us.

Note that you won’t be able to magically sync up all your recordings. You can and should try to start recording all at the same time (a little bit before you actually start the podcast), but you’ll have to manually line stuff up in post-production.

That’s it for recording. Next time we’ll cover post-production, where you turn your separate audio tracks into something worth hearing.

Episode 25: Quarter Century

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:00:00 PST

It has now been 25 times that Ed and Chris have fired up Skype and talked to each other and some friends, old and new, about whatever the hell they felt like talking about.

They would keep doing this even if nobody else listened, because developer misery loves company. Thank you to everyone who has been listening to us work out our own issues with the technologies that help shovel money into our bank accounts.

In this episode Ed talked about his experiences at CodeConnex, Chris tried to goad Ed into further ranting and arguments about the latest round of push-backs against the microframework manifesto and people crying about other people crying about dependencies in their code.

The show then ended with Ed speaking about the very real challenge of creating awesome infinite scrolling experiences, which made Chris realize he is better off learning Javascript just to use Node and avoid the mess that is the DOM.

As always, thank you to our awesome sponsors at Engine Yard and Wonder Network for providing cashmoney and bandwidth for our live stream, respectively.

Listen

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Links and Notes

Where Is It Up API
CodeConnex
PHP Mentoring
Aura Framework
Pretty much anything Paul Motherfucking Jones has written about programming
Air BnB’s infinite scrolling library
Palm’s Mojo widget library
HP’s Enyo list widgets
SlickGrid
Ember Table

Episode 24: Members Only

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:59:00 PST

Special guest Matt Turland joins us for episode 24, and tells us how much of an asshole Chris is in real life. We also talk a lot about team development processes, including ramping up new hires, documenting processes, and workflow tools. Lots of super smart stuff that we’re usually too lazy to do.

If you’re the corncob on our picnic plate, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

Episode 23 redux

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 06:50:00 PST

Well crap. Episode 23 had a bad edit screwup in it, and the last 30m was basically unlistenable. This has been corrected below and at the original URL. For notes and comments, see the original post.

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Episode 23: The Bozo Brush

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:52:00 PST

UPDATE Nov 28 2012: We fixed a bad error in the original audio file. Please re-download to get the corrected file

Episode 23 is packed chock-full of awesome guests. We talk about the controversy around the cancellation of BritRuby, and the larger issues of diversity and inclusiveness at tech conferences, with Ashe Dryden and Reg Braithwaite. We also get into the goofiness of Star Trek and the wonder of railroad games.

If you’re the soul in the software, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

Episode 22: Object-Oriented Home Renovation

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:05:00 PDT

We hit the Double Deuce this week with special guest Jim Gay. Jim is the author of Clean Ruby, the upcoming book that applies “Data, Context and Interaction” (DCI) concepts to Ruby and Rails development. Jim is clearly much smarter than us, so we took this opportunity to attack him mercilessly as a representative of the sexist Ruby community. Jim also shares his experiences as a self-published author. In addition, we talk about how True North PHP planning is going for Chris, and Ed’s experiences at Brooklyn Beta.

If you’re a true believer, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

Episode 21: The Grace Hopper Rape Whistle

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:24:00 PDT

Twenty-one. Like blackjack. Like the gun salute. For those about to rock.

We recorded this episode just a few days after #20, because we were able to get Elizabeth Naramore as a super-special secret guest! She talks to us about Codeconnexx, an open source tech and life skills conference in Indianapolis Nov 8-9. We also talked a lot about getting women to submit talks to conferences, including the success that Jan Lehnardt has had in this area with JSConfEU. We then get into Chris’s experiments with JS testing, and what we think of App.net from a developer perspective.

If you’re support the inalienable rights of all humans, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

Episode 20: Chris Hartjes's Kitchen Nightmare

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:46:00 PDT

EPISODE DOS EQUIS! Our 20th show goes out to all the haters. IN YOUR FACE HATERS.

This week we talk about how Chris sucks at cooking food, which segues nicely into a discussion of the True North PHP conference that he’s co-organizing in Toronto in November. Thankfully he will not be catering the event himself. We also talk about Ed’s move from doing PHP to Python for day-to-day work, and the plusses and minuses he’s encountered during the transition.

If you’re a Superfriend, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

Episode 19: Almost An Apology

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:49:00 PDT

After some downtime spent taking mental reps, Chris and Ed are back with a vengeance for one of our best shows. Joining us is Chris Shiflett, PHP fellow and security expert. They talk about how we interact with non-techie members of dev teams, what they’re doing with Node, the state of the Canadian soccer program, heavy vs lightweight frameworks, tribalism in programming communities, and the importance of balancing work with life. We also talk to Chris Shiflett about his role as co-founder of Brooklyn Beta, and what they’re trying to accomplish with the conference.

If you’re more animal than man, you’ll do these things:

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Links and Notes

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
–Robert A Heinlein

Episode 18: Pull Requests Welcome

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:48:00 PDT

This week on /dev/hell is “let’s talk about arguments Chris got into on Twitter” week. Most of the discussion revolves around how we interact with users, both developer-types and average joes.

If you value humanity, you’ll do these things:

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Episode 17: This Show Is Terrible

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:30:00 PDT

This week on /dev/hell we talk about mentoring. Chris discusses his experiences taking a young up-and-comer under his wing, and we talk about the PHP Mentoring project. Then we babble about Aspen, an interesting, non-traditional Python web framework. Good and bad stuff in PHP gets knocked around again. Finally, Ed talks about fixing his dryer and yells at the audience.

If you love freedom, you’ll do these things:

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Episode 16: Foam Cowboy Hats

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 07:54:00 PDT

After a couple weeks off, we get back into the profane swing of things. We kick off with alittle followup on the previous episode on mental illness, but decide to quit bumming everybody out by moving on to cool tech stuff. Ed talks a little about Reaper, a new digital audio workstation he’s using to do production on the podcast. Then we chat about remote pair programming with browser-based editors like Cloud9. Finally we cover Chris’ experiences at Lonestar PHP, and what each of us gets out of speaking at conferences.

If you care about us, you’ll do these things:

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Episode 15: Whack Job Central

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:27:00 PDT

On today’s Very Special Episode of /dev/hell, we talk about Ed’s struggles with depression and anxiety, and how it’s impacted him as a member of the open source community. Yeah, we know, total buzzkill, but this is important stuff. We hope that by talking about it, folks with similar issues will be more likely to seek help.

We’d really like to hear from you about this topic. You can leave us a comment, or send us a link & we’ll collect the responses.

Here’s your homework for this week, suckas:

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Follow us on Twitter here.
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Listen

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Episode 14: The PHP Guy Is Sulking

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:52:00 PDT

This week we’re joined by Justin Searls, JavaScript developer and JS testing EXPERT. We talk lots about building and testing “fat” browser apps, particularly about best practices and different testing approaches. After a while Chris felt bad and told us to shut up.

This was the first podcast we broadcast live while recording. Big ups to WonderNetwork for providing the streaming bandwidth, and Engine Yard for sponsoring the podcast. Keep an eye on the @dev_hell Twitter account for info on our next live stream.

If you love us, you will do these things:

You should follow us on Twitter here.
You should rate us on iTunes here

Listen

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Notes

Episode 13: #tek12 or something. I don't know

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 10:42:00 PDT

This episode was recorded at the tek12 uncon in front of a live studio audience. We talk about pair programming, what we’d recommend to folks who want to start programming, the PHP-FIG & PSRs, and our favorite events from tek12. Also Chris punched Ed a couple times. It hurt.

Video hosting for this episode is provided by WonderNetwork, who generate some really cool ping data.

This was lots of fun, and we want to thank all the folks who came out and participated.

Extra special big thanks to Michelangelo Van Dam for lending us his audio recording hardware, and Cal Evans for recording the video!

Please do this so we don’t have to burn you alive:

You should follow us on Twitter here.
You should rate us on iTunes here

Listen

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Watch

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Notes

Episode 12: Irish Eyes Are Always Smiling

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:38:00 PDT

Through a haze of jägerbombs and extreme fatigue, we were able to shovel out another pile of podcast for your listening enjoyment. Chris says it’s episode 11 when it’s actually episode 12, but hey! This week we talk about:

Apple’s magical devices, and what’s holding back Android from being comparable
How Rackspace completely and repeatedly dropped the ball
Fun times with Python, and the value of defining guiding principles in an open source project

Here’s your homework for this week:

You should follow us on Twitter here.
You should rate us on iTunes here

Listen

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Episode 11: From Gas Station Attendant to Java Developer

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:47:00 PDT

This time out we are blessed by the presence of Joël Perras, PHP developer extraordinaire and Fictive Kin brosef of Ed. We explore Joël’s rags-to-riches story: a young academic schlepping coffee and 44oz soft drinks at a gas station, where he’s discovered by a grizzled dev team manager in need of Java skills. From there it’s been a whirlwind of web sites, programming languages, and more ops than you can shake a stick at.

Actually I was sleepy and wasn’t really listening for the first half-hour. I bet it’s good though.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 42.9MB, 1:31)

Episode 10: Looks Like A Lot Of White Dudes

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:51:00 PDT

No guest would permit themselves to be shamed in the typical /dev/hell manner this week, so this time around you’re stuck with the gruesome twosome. We hit on a few topical topics in this episode, including a dude scoring Internet Ego Points for saying PHP sucks (really?), the “technology preview” of Meteor (no, not that Meteor), and an Important Startup Guy who says that remote working is baaaaaaad. Plus we say “horseshit” a lot.

Thanks again to our awesome sponsor for this episode Engine Yard. You’re the most specialist.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 43.2MB, 1:23)

Episode 9: I Was Really Into Bigfoot When I Was A Kid

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:44:00 PDT

This episode had us diving into the real-time web with Nathan Fritz, the Chief Architect for &yet, and the man who has foolishly agreed to help Chris learn the finer points of Node.js. You can just hear the excitement in all our voices as we discuss Web 3.14159 aka the Real Time Web. Nathan is one smart motherfucker so be prepared to have lots of knowledge exploded into your brain.

Nathan also discusses his previous life as a PHP guy, what XMPP is all about, and his book-in-progress on Lua scripting in Redis.

Thanks again to our awesome sponsor for this episode Engine Yard. Don’t worry, we’ll spend your sponsorship money wisely.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 43.2MB, 1:23)

Episode 8: Fry Guy, Cleanup in Aisle App

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:56:00 PDT

First off, we now have a sponsor for the podcast: Engine Yard. This is something they will surely regret after listening to this episode.

We started off with the idea of talking about technologies we wish we had time to play with. Ed was talking about his attempts at exploring Clojure, and how it’s likely he’ll be using Python for work in the near future. This leads into a discussion of what attracts us to certain languages and technologies, and when to try to work a personal interest in to your day job. Then Chris talks about how he will likely mess around with evented stuff like Node.js or Twisted for his next book about HTTP APIs or whatever.

We also go off on a discussion about HTPC stuff. I can’t really remember how we got there.

In reality we mostly bullshitted through the whole thing, and made fun of Engine Yard a bunch. Hopefully they know that they have awesome products and don’t hate us now.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 38.7MB, 1:20)

Episode 7: You Have Entered A Pants-free Workzone

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:50:00 PST

This week the gruesome twosome talk about working remotely:

the tools you need to make it work
the problems of being the Remote Guy when everyone else is local
techniques for staying focused
being a goddamn adult and GTTFD
why a company should invest the time in being remote-friendly

Chris also talks a bit about his new gig at Kaplan, where he’ll surely make grown men cry.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 37.5MB, 1:13)

Episode 6: I Do Not Code With My Vagina

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:00:00 PST

Suffragettes rejoice because we have our first female guest. Selena Deckelmann bullied her way onto the show to talk with us about Postgres, her lack of real Perl skills, Open Source Bridge and women in open source and technology in general. She also proved that cheap laughs are always possible by picking on Canadians. Also, how awesome it is that she shares a birthday with a famous NFL player.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter or harass Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 65MB, 1:45)

Episode 5: The Hammer That is PHP

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:00:00 PST

In our fifth episode we speak to our first ever guest Brian Moon, ancient PHP elder of dealnews and someone who has probably forgotten more about PHP than our two hosts will ever know. Chris admires his stamina for staying with the same employer for 14 years and counting.

In this episode we talk about dealnews, how they use PHP (and how they also use it in some interesting ways), and his thoughts on issues like concurrency and evented systems. We also cover features of PHP that allowed for some major changes and approaches they used in the code base for the site.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter or harras Ed and Chris directly.

Listen now (MP3, 41MB, 1:14:37)

Episode 4: The Cool Kids Club

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:00:00 PST

Update: Our first posting of this episode had a glitch in it around 14:50. It should be fixed now. If you already have the episode, you should re-download it.

Our fourth episode is all ready for your listening pleasure. In this exciting episode we focus on “The Conference Experience” and discuss why programming conferences are so important to developers. Chris talks about why CodeMash was so awesome and the awesome talks full of awesomeness that he attended. Ed talks about his own experiences with speaking and attending conferences, complete with a total derail by Chris on why a certain conference rubbed him the wrong way.

Oh yeah, you also find out our opinions on what constitutes a “well-written PHP application”. I’m sure you will be surprised by our answers.

As always, we welcome your feedback. You can always hit us up on Twitter where we love to read what you say and promptly ignore it or privately mock it.

Listen now (MP3, 51MB, 1:20:18)

Episode 3: Beatings Will Continue Until Test Coverage Improves

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 17:03:00 PST

Fresh off our holiday break, we’re back with our longest show yet. We talk about Chris’ new book The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications, including his experiences self-publishing with Leanpub. Chris also explains how he fears no precipitation on his excursions to the Codemash conference in Ohio. Then Ed talks about the thought process that lead to his latest shit-stirring blog post ”The MicroPHP Manifesto.” Ed may or may not begin crying openly. Finally, we discuss when it might be necessary to trash your existing application and rewrite it.

Listen now (MP3, 60MB, 1:40:33)

Episode 2: Talking Chris Down

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:00:00 PST

Doing something the second time is always the toughest, but we somehow managed to get our act together for a second episode of “Development Hell”.

Our hosts Chris and Ed got together and discussed whatever was on their minds that night. Thanks to Ed for doing a masterful job of editing the results of using my crappy headset for the conversation.

Summary of the show:

Git and git workflows
Node.js vs. Twisted/Tornado
How being opinionated and objective about a topic is impossible
Building your online brand
Listen now (MP3, 40MB, 1:12:50)

Episode 1: What We Hate About PHP

devhell@funkatron.com (Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:49:00 PST

Listen to a couple old dudes complain that they don’t like PHP anymore. Yes, I know, this sounds pretty compelling.

Feel free to hit either of us up on Twitter

Download now (MP3, 43MB, 01:26:19)