Show Notes
Coding Chats episode 65 - Mike Rispoli discusses his experience of building a Loom replacement through vibe coding, the economic implications of AI for small agencies, and the evolving landscape of software engineering. He emphasizes the importance of hand coding, the challenges of interviewing in the age of AI, and the necessity of clear requirements when working with AI tools. The discussion also touches on the future demand for software engineers and the role of UX in AI-generated code.
Chapters 00:00 Building a Loom Replacement in 30 Minutes 03:40 The Challenges of SaaS Pricing Models 06:29 AI's Impact on Small Businesses and Enterprises 09:19 Interviewing in the Age of AI 11:59 The Future of Coding and AI Integration 26:45 The Importance of Clear Requirements 28:31 Navigating AI in Development 31:31 Feature Creep and Planning 32:30 The Evolving Role of Engineers 34:34 Workflow and Planning with AI 38:45 Iterative Development and Feedback 42:28 Leveraging AI for UX and Design 45:59 The Future of Software Engineering
Mike's Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-rispoli-cto https://x.com/michael_rispoli https://www.instagram.com/mike_rispoli_cto https://michaelrispoli.com/
John's Links: John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/ John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johncrickett John's Twitter: https://x.com/johncrickett John's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social
Check out John's software engineering related newsletters: Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/ which shares real-world project ideas that you can use to level up your coding skills.
Developing Skills: https://read.developingskills.fyi/ covering everything from system design to soft skills, helping them progress their career from junior to staff+ or for those that want onto a management track.
Takeaways Mike built a Loom replacement in just 30 minutes using vibe coding. AI tools can significantly enhance productivity for software engineers. The SaaS pricing model can be complicated for small agencies. It's acceptable to pass on good candidates but not to hire the wrong ones.AI is likely to amplify the demand for software engineers rather than replace them. Feature creep is a common challenge in software development. Clear requirements are essential when working with AI tools. The future of software engineering is promising and exciting. AI can help engineers improve their design capabilities. Navigating the evolving landscape of software engineering requires adaptability.
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Coding Chats Episode 83 - In this episode, VB from OpenAI’s developer experience team explains why he thinks plan mode is obsolete and how coding agents have shifted from step-by-step instructions to outcome-driven, long-running work. We cover how to write a good agents.md, why tests still matter when agents write the code, spec-driven development, and why cloud agents may be the future of dev tooling.
Coding Chats Episode 82 - John talks with Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy. Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery manager, and whether either needs to be technical.They also look at how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, John argues there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
Coding Chats Episode 81 - Ben Howdle talks to John Crickett about being a first time CTO in a start-up. Ben, author of The First CTO, shares what changes when you move from building technology to leading a technical team: the pressure, the trade-offs, and the realization that writing code is only part of the job.Drawing on startup experience and lessons learned the hard way, Ben discusses how to balance quality against runway, manage people, and communicate technical decisions in terms that founders and other non-technical stakeholders can understand. He also explores why resourcefulness, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity matter so much—and why CTOs often spend more time selling ideas than they expect.Whether you’re stepping into your first CTO role or leading a technical team at an early-stage company, this conversation offers candid insights into the realities of technical leadership.
Coding Chats Episode 80 - start-up advisor Alexander Berkovich shares his expertise on building successful start-ups, hiring strategies, CTO roles, and the importance of communication between technical and business teams. Discover practical tips for navigating the challenges of early-stage companies and how to align technical excellence with business goals.
Coding Chats Episode 79 - Richmond Alake, Director of AI Developer Experience at Oracle, joins John to discuss agent memory — how AI agents store, retrieve, and adapt to information. He argues that developers building memory on flat files are naively reinventing the database, and that once you factor in concurrency, security, and scalability, a proper database is inevitable. The conversation covers the full memory stack and how Oracle's AI database keeps embeddings and data together without shipping sensitive information to external providers.