An aberrant generation of programmers

Our friend Justin Searls recently published a widely-read essay on enthusiast programmers, inter-generational conflict & what we do with this information. That seemed like a good conversation starter, so we grabbed Justin and Landon Gray to discuss. Let’s talk!

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Featuring:

• Justin Searls – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Landon Gray – LinkedIn
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website

Show Notes:

• Justin’s post
• Justin’s monthly newsletter
• Justin’s Ruby Kaigi coverage
• Justin’s previous Changelog appearances

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Let's talk!
(00:38) - Old friends & new friends
(01:03) - 4+ people podcasts
(01:42) - Conferencing on hard mode
(02:37) - Justin the Rubyist
(04:45) - Justin & Friends
(05:21) - Era of the enthusiast programmers
(11:36) - Landon's introduction
(13:39) - Thoughts on the post
(16:25) - Experiment with the world
(19:32) - Inter-generational conflict
(26:47) - Jerod's passion
(28:10) - Defining generations
(30:30) - Evolved marketing
(32:21) - Landon's coding journey
(36:19) - Justin's intro to programming
(37:52) - Napster
(39:51) - 10x dev
(41:26) - Landon on passion
(44:47) - Atypical traits
(46:48) - #LearnToCode
(48:55) - Friendly dev tools
(50:12) - It's a numbers game
(53:03) - Landon on persistence
(57:37) - Obligatory shift to AI
(1:02:40) - Stopping at 'make it work'
(1:03:16) - AI as training wheels
(1:07:07) - More grit
(1:09:14) - This house of cards
(1:14:47) - Taking the wheels off
(1:15:30) - High stakes
(1:18:14) - How do we land this plane
(1:19:07) - We're going to figure it out!
(1:20:23) - Landon'ing the plane
(1:20:46) - Coming up next (Changelog++!)

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