CTO Think Podcast

Vue, Vuex, Auth, and State Management

23 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

BLM, White Privilege, Accountability, Guilt, Responsibilities, and Helping

09 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The world feels like a different place from just a couple weeks ago, but it's not. The United States is still in the same place it has been for a long...

From Manager/Dev to Non-coding Manager

19 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Right before the COVID pandemic hit, Randy was asked to take on the management of two new teams, which changed his typical role of manager-developer t...

Big Ideas Getting Planned, Part 2

12 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy continue their discussion about the business plans in the Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition, this time about the best entries and...

Big Ideas Getting Planned, Part 1

05 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don brings in a few examples from an upcoming Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition in which he's playing the role of a judge. We discuss the impor...

Difficult Choices and Hard Conversations

31 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy talk about what's been going on with the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected their firms, jobs, and side projects. What does it me...

Growing Up and Losing the Fun Parts of App Development

03 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don asked Randy about what he's working on, lately, and Randy exclaimed, "nothing fun," which actually turns out not to be true. Randy details the add...

Improving Visual Communication for Remote Management

25 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is making efforts to improve the communication of visual examples via remote video meetings. We discuss his first attempt to achieve online whit...

Security Concerns Keep Coming

11 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Don's role as CTO for AspirEDU, he has a number of security audits posed by potential customers and increasing complexity around third-party hosts....

Proposed Project Approach and the Wonders of Sous Vide Cooking

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Randy pitches to Don an approach for a CMS project and then rifs on the cool new toy he recently purchased for the kitchen: A sous vide cooking device...

Viable or crap? Discussing Blockchain, VR, Autonomous Cars, and Drone Delivery

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week we take a look at the state of a few hyped technologies and see where they really are in terms of usefulness, adoption, and long-term viabil...

Modern Content Management Options

07 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy discuss content management options from the old-school Full Stack apps, WYSIWYG SaaS, and Headless + Static Site Generator options

A Deeper Dive into Building Power Apps

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don takes Randy along for the ride of his latest applications using Microsoft's Power App platform. They discuss building an application that uses Twi...

Automation vs Programming

17 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don describes his work on moving his company to Microsoft and his use of Power Apps. This leads to a discussion of the automation vs programming strat...

Headless CMS + Static Site Generators

10 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy's been approached, both at his job and from an external firm, about the need for a CMS. The old stalwarts of Wordpress and Drupal don't seem to ...

Twilio Segments, Pricing, and Proxy

19 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy has been working on Twilio a bit since the team last worked on the Chasms project and updates Don on some of the interesting features Twilio has...

Switching to Services

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is part of a team focused on building a Service Oriented Architecture with Go. Don figures out he has always been using services, but the SOA ac...

Power Apps for the People

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don has been hearing Randy tell him to quit coding so much and finally does something about it: He decides to build an app without writing a line of c...

Is Accessibility a Worthwhile Focus?

29 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Domino's Pizza recently lost a lawsuit regarding the lack of accessibility features for their online ordering platform. Don and Randy discuss the rami...

A Front-End Dev That Can't Build a Website?

15 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Coyier recently posted a tweet regarding a front-end developer he knew that "could not build a website." Is this strange? Shouldn't every develo...

How Should a CTO Use Their Time?

01 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When a CTO is juggling multiple responsibilities, people, and projects, what is the best use of their time? Randy, once again, tells Don to put down t...

Clean Code is Covered in Caca

24 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we shall rant! The term "Clean Code" is a vague and irresponsible phrase to use regarding programming and Randy will have nothing of it. It...

Organizational Train Wrecks explained by College Football Dumpster Fires

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of the second week of the college football season, Randy and Don discuss three programs, UCLA, Tennessee, and FSU, falling into disaster scen...

Using a Framework Before Mastering the Language

27 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Following a tweet from Ben Hong @bencodezen about whether people need to master JavaScript before using a framework, Don and Randy discuss how they ha...

Should Startups Avoid Hiring a CTO?

20 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A recent blog post by Philip Thomas of Moonlight titled "Startups Should Not Hire a CTO" sparked a conversation about why blanket statements like "Sta...

Developers, Ageing, Naps, and What Are We Talking About, Again?

13 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy discuss the changes that ageing has on their development skills and focus, how to combat it (or adapt to it), and stay somewhat off the ...

Authentication: Buy it or Build it?

06 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With hacking stories dropping on a seemingly daily basis, the question keeps coming up about application security: Should you build your own user auth...

Breaking down bootcamps

30 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy reacts to a Tweetstorm about Lambda School using his former experiences as a bootcamp teacher to add some perspective

Getting going with Go!

23 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy starts his new position and Go (or Golang) is one of the main languages used there. He reviews what he's learned so far and what's ahead.

2x CTOs talk about 10x developers

16 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In reaction to a Twitterstorm about the concept of a 10x engineer being important for any startup, we discuss the downfalls of such a thing and what p...

Post-mortem on Randy's Job Search

09 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is about to start a new job and has a number of opinions about the job search, hiring, negotiation process he recently went through. Don tries t...

Using Cypress for Integration Testing

25 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy and Megan recently worked on a Single Page App and Megan learned how to use Cypress for integration/acceptance testing. Don and Randy discuss ho...

Ditching Wordpress vs Free-time Driven Development

18 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The show begins discussing setting up a product roadmap for AspirEdu, but things devolve when Don mentions he is considering swapping Wordpress for th...

Microsoft Bounces Back: Monopolies, Ballmer Years, and Open Source

11 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy discuss the "New Microsoft" and how a change in leadership has led to a completely different experience with one of the largest technolo...

From Hands-on Dev to CTO: Jess Szmajda, CTO of Axios

04 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We have an exceptional guest for our 50th episode in Jess Szmajda, CTO of Axios, and we cover a whole lotta ground: From building "horrible PHP sit...

Trying to find a product-market fit

28 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy discuss the latest installment of the Chasms app saga. Don heads out to Denver for a sales conference loaded with potential customers of...

Stages of the CTO Lifecycle

21 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week we review an old, but good, blog post by Andy Skipper named "Looking at the life of the CTO through the stages." We discuss our own experien...

Testing with Node and JavaScript (Finally!)

14 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

After years of testing with Ruby on Rails and rspec, Randy never had quite the flow with testing on the JavaScript and Node side of things... until no...

Benefits of Continuous Integration

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past two decades of working in tech, the use of Continuous Integration (or CI) has become a mainstream approach to product development. Randy...

Managed Hosting Rocks! WPEngine, Pantheon, and Heroku

30 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is working with a client that uses Pantheon for Drupal hosting and he loves the tools. After spending a good decade using cPanel on cheap hosts,...

Business Metrics and the Lack of Context

23 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss business metrics, reporting, statistics, and how many of the numbers, without context, lack much value. Can your business deliver the Five ...

Typescript Pain. Is there any Gain?

16 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is diving back into the Chasms backend using Firebase Functions, which is written (by him) in Typescript. We discuss the ins and outs as to why ...

Writing a Job Description for a Non-specific Job

09 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don's firm is looking to hire a non-senior Python developer to help spread the workload of the engineering team. We discuss how he's writing up the jo...

Document Datastores and Many-to-Many Relationships

02 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

While continuing work on the Chasms app, Randy asks Don for his two cents on an approach to solving a document datastore (firestore) schema involving ...

Customer Perspectives and Managing Expectations

26 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A customer claims the service provided didn't meet expectations despite them choosing the more “economical” solution. Another client’s manager f...

Building an App (and Learning) with Vue.js

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy has started working on the Chasms project again, and after the previous episode with David Rogers, he chose to use (and learn) Vue.js to get it ...

Hiring Good Consultants

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week we talk about how we’ve hired consultants in the past, where we’ve failed, and the perspective of consultants that might help tech leade...

Just Doing It Yourself Because of Liam Neeson

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As a continuation to a previous episode, Don discusses why he's going to roll up his sleeves and handle a data-gathering project himself. He attempts ...

CTO, CIO, CDO, WTH?

26 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week we discuss the various C-Level titles in the tech world: CTO vs CIO vs CDO vs others. What do folks with those titles tend to do and do the ...

Switching Frameworks to Vue.js with David Rogers

19 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We interview David Rogers (a.k.a Al-the-X) about his career path among the front-end frameworks and his latest roles for firms switching from Angular ...

When a Third-Party Service Fails

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don's company ran into problems when their email provider, Mandrill, suffered a significant outage. Randy and Don discuss how they handle outages, pre...

Learning JavaScript and Accessibility with Megan Schemmel

05 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don follows-up with previous guest Megan Schemmel, who is learning how to be a full-stack web developer. They talk about how she went from being a non...

Pushing Your Team and Self to the Limits

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Following up on another Elon Musk communication, we discuss the side effects of working too many hours, burning out, and how you might be guilty of ca...

Products are Fun, Promotion is Not, and Preventing Perfectionism

22 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We begin talking about the career aspirations of sports officiants (tennis gigs) and upcoming technology projects Don wants to tackle, but it slowly m...

Setting Goals for your Team

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Don is setting up goals for AspirEdu for 2019, which takes us into a discussion about how to set up big projects and campaigns for small firms that ha...

Discussing Firebase Authentication

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Randy has a possible conference presentation coming up in the next few weeks, so he gets Don to listen to the outline and poke some holes in the outli...

Brainstorming the Tech, Managed meetup

31 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As we move into 2019, Randy and Don discuss a new meetup concept they aim to create called Tech, Managed. With goals to build upon the growth of the C...

Follow-up with Mark on Flutter, TotallyStrong.me, and Family

27 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

About a year has passed since we last spoke to Mark Thompson about his journey through a solo developer application build for TotallyStrong.me using t...

Kubernetes Exploits, Bernie Madoff, and Minimal Skepticism

18 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy discuss a recent exploit that came to light in the Kubernetes container framework that seemed to fade off as a widespread concern. This ...

Viability of a Watch App Concept

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don has an idea for a building a watch app to service American football referees and discusses with Randy whether the concept is viable for a build. R...

Review of the State of JS Survey

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How is Angular doing vs React and Vue? What are the most used and growing back-end JavaScript frameworks. Which strongly-typed flavor of JavaScript is...

Crossover Episode - The World vs React (Nuff Said)

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The previous two episodes of our sister podcast, This Old App, discussed the rapid development of React and its possible side effects on the developme...

React-ions and Corrections to Last Week

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Last week's episode about the speed of React development either struck a nerve, had enough keywords for a Google SEO explosion, or involved a prominen...

Is React the Popular Kid in School?

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

During Randy's interviewing stint, he spoke to a good number of firms that had needs for different stacks, but one particular framework stood out: Rea...

Should We Open Source This Code?

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don and his company, AspirEDU, decided to open source a small bit of code for the first time for the Django community. We discuss the various consider...

Chipping Away at Project Blockers

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don continues to work on his Azure-backed PDF processing application and describes his process to fix a number of blockers. After making progress, Ran...

Adventures in Interviewing

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Randy is moving to Kansas City and exploring new job opportunities both local and remote, which has him in the thick of a variety of interviewing proc...

Debugging Azure with Ego Driven Development

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In another effort to prevent Don and Randy from working on the same stack, Don wanders off into Microsoft land to build a web app on Azure, and prompt...

Thinking About Smart Homes

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After a two-week break, we return to discuss how Randy's buying a house and is thinking about all the new tech and gadgets he can add to it. We discus...

Build vs Buy and Disrupting Processes

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We're back after a couple-week break! Don and Randy discuss the ever-debated strategy of building versus buying your software solutions. But they up t...

To Test or Not to Test?

18 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Do you practice test-driven development or feel left out of the "cool-kids" club of folks that swear testing is a necessity to develop quality code? W...

Handling Critical Feature Updates

11 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don's firm recently underwent its first major platform upgrade and we discuss the various ways they prepared, tested, and worked through the changes, ...

What to Use for Mobile Development?

28 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the state of development around iPhone and Android development, mainly with using non-native code bases. Randy makes valid complaints about...

Elon Musk and Leading Your Team to Burnout

21 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Pulled from the media, Don and Randy discuss Elon Musk's interview regarding the personal toll that his attempt to run three companies, perhaps poorly...

Debating (Angrily) the Responsibility of Cross-platform Support

14 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don runs into a problem with a podcast app as he launches a new podcast of his own, Friday Night Stripes, and wants to deploy his show on Overcast. Th...

Grab Bag - GraphQL vs REST, Websockets, Uber Fusion, Redux Sux, and Firestore Search

07 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don and Randy get back from a couple weeks of trips and projects and discuss a grab-bag of subjects of things they've worked on or learned.

Betting on Vue JS with Gregg Pollack

01 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Covering everything from Rails for Zombies to Code School to Vue Mastery, we talk with one of the original online tutorial creators, Gregg Pollack, an...

Returning to Game Development with Renee Lahoff

24 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We speak with Renee Lahoff, content editor for Moms Can: Code, who began a career years ago as a game developer, left the industry to start a family, ...

When People Don't Listen to You

17 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the inevitable issue of bosses, owners, managers, and clients not listening to every bit of advice we offer up. From ignoring the frustrati...

Benefits of Coding While Streaming with Jesse Weigel

10 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jesse Weigel talks about being a self-taught developer, how he got started live-streaming his code on FreeCodeCamp and YouTube, and how creating a cod...

When Everything's Going Wrong

03 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How do you get things back on track when everything from the engine to the caboose is falling off? We discuss steps to take when everything and anythi...

Moms Can: Code with Bekah Hawrot Weigel

26 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After giving birth to her fourth child, and suffering a serious medical issue in the process, Bekah Hawrot Weigel coped by finding a new path in life ...

Stakeholder Types and Working With Them

26 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the various types of stakeholders that a technology leader may need to deal as being part of a company or a particular product. We discuss ...

Callbacks! and Promises! and Awaits! Oh My!

19 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the asynchronous nature of JavaScript, the old-person method of callbacks, the evolution to Promises, and then the shiny new car of Async/A...

Episode 25 - Thinking About Dependencies

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What are the considerations do you need to make regarding third-party services and software? We talk about relying on Github after the Microsoft purch...

This Old App 12: Relational vs Document DBs

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We yell at document datastores to get off our lawns! We talk about the joys of SQL and 50-year-old relational databases we grew up with, trying to mak...

Relational vs Document DBs

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We yell at document datastores to get off our lawns! We talk about the joys of SQL and 50-year-old relational databases we grew up with, trying to mak...

Thinking About Dependencies

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What are the considerations do you need to make regarding third-party services and software? We talk about relying on Github after the Microsoft purch...

This Old App 10: Appraising Alexa (and other voice interfaces)

08 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We talk about Alexa development, the strong developer ecosystem Amazon is investing for it, some of the privacy problems it's facing, and a few quips ...

Project Chasms - Part 3, Prototype Feedback and The Bug

05 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss our prototype of Chasms as it's used in the wild, successfully supporting a real business.

Learning as a Cultural Component with Griffin Caprio

05 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We speak with Griffin Caprio of Dante32 about his experiences building trust and psychological safety, accepting failure in a positive way, and creati...

Appraising Alexa (and other voice interfaces)

29 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We talk about Alexa development, the strong developer ecosystem Amazon is investing for it, some of the privacy problems it's facing, and a few quips ...

GDPR Pain and Projects Outside Your Expertise

29 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We lament about the recent GDPR hullabaloo, our initial reactions to the new regulations, and how we approach projects that we don't have any business...

Finding Firebase

22 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We talk about Firebase as a new backend tool for a few projects we're working on and cover many of its features, what is weird about it, and why this ...

Compassionate Coding with April Wensel

22 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

April Wensel started a company named Compassionate Coding, which aims to "humanize the tech industry." We discuss why she started the firm and how she...

Project Chasms - Part 2, Debugging and Brainstorming

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In another installment related to the Chasms app, we discuss errors with the prototype, finding the right balance of customer/product fit, and the nee...

Meetings, Schmeetings

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We talk about meetings, the negative vibe the tech industry has taken against them, how to best run meetings, or finding ways to communicate without w...

Project Chasms - Part 1, Getting Started

08 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Listen as Don and Randy begin a new side project together from problem/solution explanation, planning, and build approach. We aim to reduce the produc...

Why do we podcast (and other projects)?

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

People (and ourselves) have been asking: Why are you all doing this? What is motivating you to podcast? In this episode, we discuss our motivations fo...

Social Media Side-Effects

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Would you hire Kanye West if he was a great programmer, despite his social media presence? This week, we talk about social media quality control, publ...