Episode notes
This week we're talking about Gastown! Dylan and Steve join Kris to break down the viral project that spins up hundreds of Claude Code instances to build a software factory. Steve makes the case for why this is an inevitable evolution and the conversation digs into what it actually means to treat software development as a factory floor. The panel traces the cycle from mainframes to PCs to cloud to AI, debates whether data centers are really the environmental villain, and gets into the real economics of AI pricing. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes the crypto rug…
Chapters
Tap a chapter to play from there.
Podcast
Fallthrough
Fallthrough Media · Tech & Science · English
A deep and nuanced conversational podcast focused on technology, software, and computing.
More from Fallthrough All episodes →
-
E61 · 7 Mar 2026 · 57 min
Deprecate the Error Interface
Another week, another Kris & Matt duo episode! This week, they're picking up where Bryan Cantrill's "Complexity of Simplicity" framework left off and asking what it means for Go's future. Kris argues Go is squarely rebellious (simple and emergent) and that the community needs to stop appealing to the Go team and start owning the ecosystem. The episode builds to a (potentially unpopular) proposal: deprecate the error interface. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes Oxide's counter-cultural approach to hiring, a riff on tech industry irony and title inflation, and a…
-
E60 · 28 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Package Hell
Another week, another Kris & Matt duo episode! This week, we're digging into Go codebase structure, package design, and why the community keeps struggling with the same problems. The conversation starts with a Gopher Slack discussion about how to arrange Go code, moves through package hell and dependency cycles, and ends with a look at community health. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes Go's missing project boundary and why internal is a blunt instrument, real world package design patterns, and how modules broke the elegant simplicity of Go's database/sql driver…
-
E59 · 21 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
Is Go Simple Anymore?
Another week, another Kris & Matt duo episode! This week, they're talking about Go. They cover the recent generic methods proposal by Robert Griesemer, results from the 2025 Go Developer Survey, some highlights of the 1.26 release, and more! As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes the survey's tooling data, a deep dive into GOPATH nostalgia and why Go Workspaces can't save the AWS SDK's 70,000+ tags, Kris's research into the entire Go module proxy, and a structural argument for why the module system's base premises don't hold. Not a supporter yet? Fix that today by…
-
E58 · 14 Feb 2026 · 56 min
Lava Layers
This week it's Kris and Matt diving into the state of hardware, security, and what local AI actually needs to work. The conversation starts with AI agent social networks and why prompt injection is the unsolved SQL injection of our era, then shifts into why memory bandwidth is the real bottleneck for running models locally. Matt compiles Rust on a Mac Studio at the Apple Store, and the two debate whether the traditional PC build is even worth it anymore. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes the security primitives nobody uses, Kris's local AI research pipeline, the…
-
E57 · 7 Feb 2026 · 50 min
The Vibes-Based Legal System
This week Steve's back to tackle the big question: is AI-generated output copyrightable? The conversation includes discussions of the Copyright Act of 1976, the philosophy of why copyright exists at all, whether LLM training is learning, and why owning a style would destroy culture. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes the Coca-Cola DEA deal and why trade secrets beat patents, what happens when copyright expires on open source code, turning software into giant prime numbers, the JSON "for good and not evil" licensing saga, and a deep dive into why open source…
-
E55 · 24 Jan 2026 · 53 min
Systems Thinking for Humans
Annie and Michael Hedgpeth, founders of People Work, join Kris and Matt to unpack the junior hiring crisis and what's really broken about how we grow engineers. Annie's viral blog post sparked debate about whether senior engineers have abandoned their responsibility to mentor and whether our obsession with career ladders created the problem. The conversation moves from systemic dysfunction to solutions: People Work, their local-first app that helps engineers manage professional relationships with a systems thinking approach. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes…
-
E54 · 16 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
When Reality Drifts
Nick Gerace, Engineering Manager at System Initiative, joins Kris and Matt to explore what infrastructure management looks like beyond Terraform. Nick walks us through how System Initiative differs from traditional IaC, why git isn't really your source of truth, and how the company pivoted to AI-first tooling. The conversation turns to Claude Code and MCP tools before landing on a nuanced discussion about distributed systems, and how the messy, eventual consistency of real life mirrors the systems we build. As always, we've got supporter content! This week that includes deep dives into…
-
E53 · 10 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
New Year, New Nuance
New Year, New Nuance! In this episode, Kris and Matt discuss what they're looking forward to in 2026—Matt shares the exciting news that he's becoming a dad, and the duo explore the value of growth, changing your opinions, and adding more nuance to how you see the world. They talk about what they're excited to build this year, from physical projects like woodworking and doors to the podcast platform they keep talking about. Kris shares how a conversation with Claude finally made electricity click, leading to a broader discussion about LLMs as "digital librarians" and what education should…
-
E52 · 31 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Stack Trace 2025
We decided to do our own wrap up for the year. We've called it Stack Trace, and we pulled a bunch of stats from the first year of Fallthrough. In this episode, Kris, Matt, and Dylan talk through these stats and how they feel about Fallthrough's first year. If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube. This week's episode of break continues the conversation. Watch it on YouTube or listen with your favorite podcasting app! Learn more by going to https://break.show/22 . In this week's bonus content, we've got some extra stats! Not a supporter yet? Fix that today by heading…
-
E51 · 25 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
Worse Is Better
There's a famous joke essay called Worse Is Better, which compares the New Jersey and the MIT ideologies. In this episode, Kris and Matt discuss these two different ideologies and how they show up in technology, from Go, to dependency management, to electric vehicles. If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube. This week's episode of break continues the conversation. Watch it on YouTube or listen with your favorite podcasting app! Learn more by going to https://break.show/21 . In this week's bonus content, the duo discusses how idealistic thinking has slowed down the…
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
