Noel Minchow

How developer platforms fail (and how yours won’t) with Russ Miles

February 12th, 2026  |  46 mins 2 secs

dev platforms

Russ Miles joins the show to unpack why developer platforms fail and how to rethink platform engineering through the lens of flow of value rather than factory-style developer productivity metaphors.

Russ explains why every organization already has an internal developer platform, and why treating it as platform as a product changes everything. The conversation explores cognitive load and cognitive burden, how to design around strong feedback loops, and why the OODA loop mindset helps teams make better decisions closer to development time.

They discuss the risks of overloading pipelines and CI/CD systems, the tension between shipping fast and handling security vulnerabilities in a regulated environment, and how to “shift left” without simply dumping responsibility onto developers. Drawing on lessons from Rod Johnson, the Spring Framework, TDD, and modern software engineering as described by Dave Farley, Russ reframes platforms as systems that support experimentation through the scientific method.

The episode also touches on AI assisted coding, developer focus, and how thoughtful developer experience and DX surveys can prevent burnout while improving value delivery.

Rich Harris on fine grained reactivity and async first frameworks

February 5th, 2026  |  41 mins 13 secs

reactivity

Rich Harris joins the podcast to discuss his talk, fine-grained everything, exploring fine-grained reactivity, frontend performance, and the real costs of React Server Components and RSC payloads. Rich explains how Svelte and SvelteKit approach co-located data fetching, remote functions, and RPC to reduce server-side rendering costs, improve developer experience, and avoid unnecessary performance overhead on mobile networks. The conversation dives into async rendering, parallel async data fetching, type safety with schema validation, and why async-first frameworks may define the future of JavaScript frameworks and web performance.

Tailwind Layoffs, Cloudflare Buys Astro | Panel

January 29th, 2026  |  39 mins 27 secs

ai, astro, cloudflare, panel

In this mini-panel, Jack, Paige, Paul, and Noel discuss how AI reshaping developer tooling is impacting open source monetization, including the recent Tailwind layoffs and the collapse of Tailwind documentation traffic caused by AI. The conversation expands into broader developer tooling business models and reacts to claims like Ryan Dahl stating that the era of humans writing code is over.

They also cover the Astro Cloudflare acquisition, what it means for the Cloudflare developer platform, and how this shapes the frontend frameworks future. Hot takes include light mode vs dark mode SaaS, shifting developer aesthetics, and why AI productivity for developers may now come down to workflow design rather than raw coding skill.

Modern CSS tricks for massive performance gains with Michael Hladky

January 22nd, 2026  |  25 mins 57 secs

css

Michael Hladky joins the pod to explain how CSS performance improvements like content-visibility, CSS containment, contain layout, and contain paint can dramatically outperform JavaScript virtual scrolling. The conversation explores virtual scrolling, large DOM performance, and how layout and paint work inside the browser rendering pipeline, including recalculate styles and their impact on INP Interaction to Next Paint. Michael shares real-world examples of frontend performance optimization, discusses cross-browser CSS support including Safari content-visibility, and explains why web performance issues tied to rendering are often misunderstood and overlooked.

React got hacked with David Mytton

December 16th, 2025  |  37 mins 54 secs

react, security

In this episode, Noel sits down with David Mytton, founder and CEO of Arcjet, to unpack the React2Shell vulnerability and why it became such a serious remote code execution risk for apps using React server components and Next.js. They explain how server-side features introduced in React 19 changed the attack surface, why cloud providers leaned on WAF mitigation instead of instant patching, and what this incident reveals about modern JavaScript supply chain risk. The conversation also covers dependency sprawl, rushed patches, and why security as a feature needs to start long before production.

Speeding up the web with the speculation rules API | Barry Pollard

November 6th, 2025  |  44 mins 33 secs

chrome, speculation rules, web perf optimization

Barry Pollard from the Chrome devrel team joins PodRocket to discuss the speculation rules API, a new browser feature designed to improve web performance through prefetch and pre-render techniques. Barry breaks down the history of speculative loading, contrasts SPA vs MPA behavior, and explains the nuances of hover prefetching, conservative prefetch, and the powerful new pre-render until script mode. Learn how Shopify and WordPress are adopting the API, what telemetry from Chrome Status reveals, and what developers need to know about potential pitfalls, caching behavior, and how the API is becoming a standard for static sites and e-commerce performance.

Remix v3, React 19.2, H-1B fees and Firefox fanboys

October 30th, 2025  |  49 mins 49 secs

panel

This months panel dives into Remix v3 without React, exploring its DIY VDOM framework and manual reactivity approach. We discuss the latest React Foundation governance changes and what React 19.2 brings, from the Activity component to useEffectEvent and server streaming support. The conversation also covers how the proposed H-1B $100,000 fee could affect tech hiring, thoughts on Firefox, the Perplexity and Washington Post paywall, and a spicy Tailwind vs CSS debate.

WASM 3.0 with Andreas Rossberg

October 16th, 2025  |  40 mins 11 secs

wasm

Andreas Rossberg unpacks WASM 3.0, covering new capabilities like garbage collection, exception handling, tail calls, and support for 64-bit addressing with multiple memories. The discussion explores deterministic profiles following relaxed sim, WebAssembly’s capability-based security model, and advances in sandboxing and module design. Andreas connects these features to practical use cases in JavaScript engines and applications like Google Sheets, then looks ahead to experimental work on threading, stack switching, and async programming models shaping the next phase of the WebAssembly ecosystem.

Google’s antitrust win, AI mandates, npm attacks and robots.txt

September 25th, 2025  |  41 mins 10 secs

ai, browsers, panel, security

Is the web breaking under the weight of AI crawlers, platform consolidation, and nonstop security breaches? We dive into the state of browsers, developer burnout, and whether tech regulation can actually keep up.

In this panel discussion:

• We debate if robots.txt and AI licensing standards like RSL can realistically control how AI scrapes the web.

• The fallout from DIA’s acquisition by Atlassian and what it means for indie browser innovation in a Chromium-dominated world.

• Why Google’s antitrust victory might embolden other tech giants, and what that means for competition.

• How supply chain attacks like the NPM malware and Shai Hulud worm are exploiting GitHub workflows and package vulnerabilities.

• The pushback against AI mandates at work, including Coinbase’s controversial policy requiring developers to use Copilot.

Unpacking the NPM supply chain attacks with Feross Aboukhadijeh

September 23rd, 2025  |  40 mins 9 secs

security

Feross Aboukhadijeh, founder of Socket, joins us to break down the recent wave of NPM supply chain attacks hitting the JavaScript ecosystem, including how attackers used phishing to target developers, snuck malware into popular packages like Prettier and "is", and even abused tools like Claude, Gemini, and TruffleHog.
We dig into how GitHub Actions vulnerabilities were exploited, what makes postinstall scripts risky, and and what you can do to protect yourself from future attacks.

Mark Dalgeish on mastering RSCs with React Router

September 18th, 2025  |  Season 4  |  31 mins 36 secs

react

Mark Dalgleish joins us to talk about the latest in React Router, including its growing support for React Server Components (RSC). He breaks down what RSC data mode, framework mode, and declarative mode mean for developers, and how features like the middleware API and route module API are simplifying work across tools like Vite and Parcel.

We also dive into how React 19, static site generation with RSC, and smarter data batching are reshaping performance and the future of server-side rendering in React apps.

Rolldown and VoidZero's vision for the future of JavaScript tooling with Alexander Lichter

September 9th, 2025  |  39 mins 2 secs

rolldown

Alexander Lichter joins the podcast to talk about Rolldown, a bundler built in Rust by Void Zero that aims to replace Rollup and ESBuild with faster builds and better enterprise scalability. He dives into the power of OXC and Oxlint, the push toward a unified JavaScript toolchain, and previews what to expect at ViteConf 2024.

Navigating the AI bubble, the 10x AI engineer, and the Cloudflare vs. Perplexity data grab

August 28th, 2025  |  44 mins 26 secs

ai, panel

Is the AI industry an unsustainable bubble built on burning billions in cash? We break down the AI hype cycle, the tough job market for developers, and whether a crash is on the horizon.

In this panel discussion with Josh Goldberg, Paige Niedringhaus, Paul Mikulskis, and Noel Minchow, we tackle the biggest questions in tech today.

• We debate if AI is just another Web3-style hype cycle
• Why the "10x AI engineer" is a myth that ignores the reality of software development
• The ethical controversy around AI crawlers and data scraping, highlighted by Cloudflare's recent actions

Plus, we cover the latest industry news, including Vercel's powerful new AI SDK V5 and what GitHub's leadership shakeup means for the future of developers.

Resources

Anthropic Is Bleeding Out: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropic-is-bleeding-out
The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui
No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive: https://colton.dev/blog/curing-your-ai-10x-engineer-imposter-syndrome
Cloudflare Is Blocking AI Crawlers by Default: https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-blocks-ai-crawlers-default
Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives: https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives
GitHub just got less independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation: https://www.theverge.com/news/757461/microsoft-github-thomas-dohmke-resignation-coreai-team-transition

Chapters

0:00 Is the AI Industry Burning Cash Unsustainably?
01:06 Anthropic and the "AI Bubble Euphoria"
04:42 How the AI Hype Cycle is Different from Web3 & VR
08:24 The Problem with "Slapping AI" on Every App
11:54 The "10x AI Engineer" is a Myth and Why
17:55 Real-World AI Success Stories
21:26 Cloudflare vs. AI Crawlers: The Ethics of Data Scraping
30:05 Vercel's New AI SDK V5: What's Changed?
33:45 GitHub's CEO Steps Down: What It Means for Developers
38:54 Hot Takes: The Future of AI Startups, the Job Market, and More

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Modern React Patterns: Concurrent Rendering & Actions with Aurora Scharff

August 21st, 2025  |  29 mins 31 secs

react

Aurora Scharff, Senior Consultant at Crayon, joins to break down how modern React development is evolving with features from React 18 and React 19.

She explores real-world use cases for useTransition and useOptimistic, highlights improvements in async UI rendering and performance, and shares insights on building responsive interfaces with concurrent rendering patterns.

The conversation also touches on server components, Next.js, and tools like Aria Kit and Redwood SDK, all shaping the next era of React development.

Poor Sleep, Big Pay Gaps, Culture Shifts: The State of Devs in 2025 with Sacha Greif

August 14th, 2025  |  Season 4  |  26 mins 3 secs

developer survey

Sacha Greif, creator of the State of Devs 2025 survey, joins PodRocket to share insights on developer life beyond the code. We talk about sleep habits, mental health, job titles, workplace culture, and shifting values across regions. Learn why "engineer" titles often pay more, what developers worldwide think about Elon Musk, and how trends differ by country, gender, and company size.

Typescript Is SO SLOW...Or Is It? with Mike Hartington

July 31st, 2025  |  Season 4  |  33 mins 33 secs

typescript

TypeScript might feel slow, but is it really? In this episode, Mike Hartington DevRel at Nx joins us fresh off his React Miami talk to unpack what actually causes TypeScript slowdowns in large monorepos, and how techniques like project references, workspaces, and precompiled DTS files can supercharge your dev experience. We also dig into the upcoming Go-based TypeScript compiler and how it could deliver 10x+ performance gains.