Podcast · Tech & Science
by Robby Russell · English · Tech & Science
Do you feel like you're hitting a wall with your existing software projects? Are you curious to hear how other people are navigating this? You're not alone. On the Maintainable Software Podcast, Robby speaks with seasoned practitioners who have overcome the technical and cultural problems often…
6 Oct 2026 · 54 minNew
What happens to frameworks when generating code becomes cheap enough that nobody particularly cares about the boilerplate anymore? Matija Šošić joins Robby to talk about boring software, abstraction as a form of restraint, Wasp’s decision to abandon its custom DSL, and why AI may make good abstractions more valuable rather than less.
E228 · 29 Sep 2026 · 54 min
What changes when the software you’re maintaining is a programming language that thousands of other applications depend on? José Valim joins Robby to trace Elixir from a frustrating Rails concurrency bug to a language designed for long-term evolution, then looks at how AI is changing documentation, dependencies, coding tools, and open-source maintenance.
E227 · 8 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
The user interface of a long-lived application carries years of technical decisions, design choices, and organizational history. John Athayde joins Robby to explore how teams can untangle that front-end sprawl, and what changes when AI makes it much easier to analyze and rewrite what came before.
E226 · 1 Sep 2026 · 54 min
Customers don’t ask you to pay down technical debt. They notice when the product is slow, unreliable, or keeps breaking in the same damn way. Kristin Isaac joins Robby to explore how engineers can translate invisible maintenance work into customer and business impact… and why that skill may become even more important as AI makes software faster to create than to understand.
E225 · 18 Aug 2026 · 55 min
David Hayes believes maintainable software starts with a simple idea: fitness for purpose.
E224 · 4 Aug 2026 · 49 min
Software powered by AI can change its behavior without a deployment, leaving teams to maintain code, data, prompts, models, and the uncertainty between them. Diana Pfeil joins Robby to explain how evals, production monitoring, and a preference for simpler models help teams build confidence in systems they cannot completely predict.
E223 · 16 Jun 2026 · 55 min
Chris Coyier, co-founder of CodePen, joins Robby to reflect on what it takes to maintain software over the long haul. Drawing from CodePen’s 15-plus-year journey, Chris shares lessons about balancing stability with innovation, navigating technical debt, and gradually evolving a product without losing sight of the people who depend on it. They discuss CodePen’s origins, the team’s ongoing migration from Rails to Go, the realities of building with a small engineering team, and why maintainability is often more about people than code.
E222 · 5 May 2026 · 56 min
Sally Lait joins Robby to explore why confidence might be the most important signal of software maintainability. They dig into the cultural dynamics behind legacy systems, why technical debt becomes a people problem, and how teams can move forward without dismissing the work that got them here.
E221 · 14 Apr 2026 · 55 min
Most teams treat maintenance like a coding problem. Rein Henrichs argues the real work starts much earlier… in how teams understand the system in the first place.
E220 · 31 Mar 2026 · 55 min
Russ Olsen joins Robby to talk about maintainability, trade-offs, and why so many teams forget to document what they decided not to do. It’s a conversation about legacy systems, rewrites, developer quality of life, and the stories software teams need to tell each other better.
E219 · 17 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Predictability might be the most underrated feature of maintainable software. Joel Oliveira joins Robby to explore how thoughtful patterns, small refactors, and a bit of stubborn persistence can keep systems healthy long after their first release.
E218 · 3 Feb 2026 · 54 min
What if maintainability isn’t about rewriting code, but about designing better feedback loops? Lucas Roesler joins Robby to unpack simplicity, observability, and the hard reality of inheriting opaque systems. A conversation about seeing software clearly… before changing it.
E217 · 21 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
AI isn’t here to save you from your codebase. Brittany Ellich explains how to use it to maintain what already works… without chasing rewrite fantasies or shipping chaos.
E216 · 9 Dec 2025 · 50 min
Kent Beck and Robby unpack why teams burn optionality faster than they realize and why restoring it isn’t a luxury—it’s the work. They explore reversible vs irreversible decisions, the feature saw, and what happens when teams never invest between releases. Kent makes the case for tidying as both an economic and moral responsibility.
E215 · 2 Dec 2025 · 51 min
In this conversation, Robby speaks with Don MacKinnon, Lead Architect and Engineering Manager at Searchcraft, about reducing unnecessary complexity, choosing the right abstractions, and designing software for the long haul.
E214 · 18 Nov 2025 · 50 min
Software engineer and author Chris Zetter joins Robby to explore how pairing, documentation, and boring technology help teams build software that lasts. They unpack the real meaning of technical debt, how to guide junior engineers with confidence, and what building a database from scratch can teach us about architecture.
E213 · 28 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
At Elastic, Denis Rechkunov believes code consistency is more than a style guide — it’s a cultural practice. Robby and Denis explore how automation, empathy, and small rituals help teams write code that stays cohesive long after its authors move on.
E212 · 14 Oct 2025 · 55 min
In this conversation, Robby and Nathan Ladd, Principal at Brightworks Digital, explore what makes software sustainable in practice. Nathan argues that perfectly maintained software may be a myth, but that doesn’t stop teams from pursuing habits that reduce the burden of maintenance. He shares why keeping dependencies fresh, aligning around living standards, and fixing defects as they appear are all crucial to staying ahead.
E211 · 26 Aug 2025 · 56 min
Taylor Otwell looks back on 14 years of building and maintaining Laravel. From four stars on GitHub to a full-fledged ecosystem, he shares what it takes to design software that lasts—and why simple often wins.
E210 · 22 Jul 2025 · 53 min
What happens when you treat resilience as a shared responsibility across your team, not just an infrastructure concern? Sara Jackson unpacks the value of documentation, application-layer chaos experiments, and test suites you can actually trust.
E209 · 1 Jul 2025 · 57 min
Is high-quality code really just about developer skill? According to CTO coach Joel Chippindale, the key to maintainable software often lies in the conversations you have before writing a single line of code. In this episode, we explore how to reframe technical debt, build cross-team trust, and make legacy systems easier to change.
E208 · 10 Jun 2025 · 50 min
What if accessibility wasn’t a checklist—but an integrated part of your development workflow? Melanie Sumner shares how her team at HashiCorp is building with purpose and why continuous accessibility gives them a lasting edge.
E207 · 20 May 2025 · 56 min
Consultant Joe Masilotti shares why most mobile apps don’t need to be fully native, how he helps Rails developers simplify their stack, and what it means to be a respectful guest in someone else’s codebase.
E206 · 22 Apr 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
Freedom Dumlao made the rare decision to rebuild a microservices platform as a monolith. In this episode, he shares why—and how it made his team more effective. Plus, we talk Java, Rails, AI, and how not to drown in decision-making.
E205 · 8 Apr 2025 · 49 min
Mercedes Bernard believes that friendly code is the truest measure of maintainability. She shares how teams can reduce friction, make small architectural wins, and advocate for technical debt investment without sounding the alarm.
E204 · 1 Apr 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
What if trying to “future-proof” your code is actually making it harder to maintain? Evan Phoenix shares how a well-intentioned monolith split went sideways—and why clarity and confidence matter more than cleverness.
E203 · 25 Mar 2025 · 47 min
Senior Staff Engineer Chris Salvato believes that understanding real bottlenecks starts with focusing on the problem space. Instead of rushing in to fix legacy code, he listens—deeply—to the people behind it. By trimming bloat and clarifying the domain, Chris reveals how a few carefully chosen changes can transform a codebase.
E202 · 18 Mar 2025 · 41 min
Sustainable software starts with sustainable architecture. Heimir Thor Sverrisson joins Robby to discuss why poor architectural decisions make maintenance a losing battle, how technical debt should be managed, and why adding more CPUs won’t always fix your performance problems.
E201 · 11 Mar 2025 · 42 min
Not every messy piece of code needs a refactor. Noémi Ványi joins Robby to discuss how to decide when technical debt is worth paying down, why developer autonomy matters, and how intuition plays a key role in software sustainability.
E200 · 25 Feb 2025 · 51 min
What can legacy code tell us—beyond just functionality? Julia Lopez shares how even white spaces and variable names reveal a system’s history. She and Robby dive into mentoring, refactoring, and the realities of rewriting Harvest’s billing system.
Do you feel like you're hitting a wall with your existing software projects? Are you curious to hear how other people are navigating this? You're not alone. On the Maintainable Software Podcast, Robby speaks with seasoned practitioners who have overcome the technical and cultural problems often associated with software development. Our guests will share stories in each episode and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability.
Maintainable is a English tech & science podcast from Robby Russell. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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.
