PodRocket

What 7,000 developers actually think about AI

June 4th, 2026  |  33 mins 12 secs

ai

Sacha Greif, creator of the State of Web Dev AI survey, joins the podcast to walk through what over 7,000 web developers actually reported about their AI tool usage, code quality concerns, and growing worries about AI financial costs. Only 29% of developers generate a quarter or less of their code with AI, and the survey reveals surprisingly balanced views on LLM hallucinations, developer job security, and even AI's environmental footprint. A grounded, data-driven counterweight to the AI hype cycle.

Bun's rust rewrite, the TanStack hack, and the $60B Cursor deal | Panel

May 21st, 2026  |  46 mins 49 secs

ai, bun, panel, tanstack

This month's panel digs into the SpaceX Cursor acquisition rumor and what a $60 billion valuation means for AI coding tools. They debate Bun's million-line Rust rewrite generated entirely by AI, the tradeoffs of agentic coding at scale, and a sophisticated CI/CD cache poisoning attack targeting TanStack. Plus: practical takes on Claude token optimization, session forensics, local AI models, and why most Claude Code skills work best when tailored, not pulled off the shelf.

AI still sucks at frontend with Adam Argyle

May 7th, 2026  |  54 mins 48 secs

ai

Google Chrome engineer Adam Argyle breaks down why AI is bad at frontend development and CSS in particular. From LLM training data problems to the fact that LLMs can't see, the issues run deep. But it's not all doom! Adam shares a game-changing technique for getting creative AI generated UI by asking for low probability outputs, introduces tools like Impeccable and V0 for AI assisted CSS editing, and dives into agentic loop engineering with auto research, an overnight AI workflow he uses to ship improvements while he sleeps.

Cloudflare's Next.js rewrite, AI security chaos, and developer brain fry

April 23rd, 2026  |  40 mins 48 secs

ai, panel, security

The panel digs into the Cloudflare vs Vercel turf war over Next.js, breaking down what it really means that one engineer vibe coded a full framework rewrite in a week for $1,100 using Claude Code. Then things get spicy: from the Lovable data breach to an early Anthropic model escaping its sandbox, the crew debates whether the wave of AI security incidents is systemic, and what the build vs buy collapse means for developers rolling their own tools in the AI agent era.

Amazon's AI outage, the engineer retention crisis, autonomous agents and the future of senior engineers

March 26th, 2026  |  52 mins 58 secs

ai, panel

The Amazon AI coding outage reignited a debate the industry can't ignore: is this an AI failure or a process failure, and does that distinction even matter anymore? Paige, Jack, Paul, and Noel dig into vibe coding culture, the engineer retention crisis, and the rise of harness engineering as a discipline in this month's panel. They also tackle autonomous agents running while you sleep, zero-touch engineering, what a senior engineer even means now, and whether open source can survive the agentic era.

Yes, and... programming still matters in the age of AI, with Carson Gross

March 12th, 2026  |  38 mins 21 secs

ai

Carson Gross, computer science professor at Montana State and creator of htmx, joins the show to cut through the noise around AI and programming. He explains why the jump from high-level languages to LLMs is fundamentally different from past transitions, why junior developers who skip writing code risk being at the mercy of a stochastic system, and why systems architecture and managing code complexity are the skills that will matter most. A grounded, rational take on the future of software development jobs.

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.

Anthropic buys Bun, GitHub friction, and AI economics

January 1st, 2026  |  40 mins 7 secs

ai, panel

In this panel episode, the crew discusses AI platform consolidation, open-source sustainability, and the future of web development. We break down Anthropic’s acquisition of Bun, what it means for the JavaScript ecosystem, and whether open-source projects can remain independent as AI companies invest heavily in infrastructure.

We also discuss Zig leaving GitHub, growing concerns around AI-first developer tools, npm security vulnerabilities, and supply-chain risk in modern software. The episode wraps with hot takes on AI infrastructure costs, developer productivity, and practical advice for engineers navigating today’s rapidly changing tech landscape.

Building Jarvis: MCP and the future of AI with Kent C Dodds [REPEAT]

December 25th, 2025  |  37 mins 15 secs

ai

In this repeat episode, Kent C. Dodds came back on to the podcast with bold ideas and a game-changing vision for the future of AI and web development. In this episode, we dive into the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the power behind Epic AI Pro, and how developers can start building Jarvis-like assistants today. From replacing websites with MCP servers to reimagining voice interfaces and AI security, Kent lays out the roadmap for what's next, and why it matters right now. Don’t miss this fast-paced conversation about the tools and tech reshaping everything.

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.