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Dead Code

Dead Code

By: Jared Norman
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The software industry has a short memory. It warps good ideas, quickly obfuscating their context and intent. Dead Code seeks to extract the good ideas from the chaos of modern software development.

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Jared Norman
Episodes
  • Harvester of Slow (with Varun Gandhi)

    Harvester of Slow (with Varun Gandhi)
    27 Oct 2026

    On this Dead Code episode, Jared talks with Varun Gandhi, a Databricks engineer who works on Git performance for the company's monorepo. The topic is Varun's reply to Dan Luu's post "There's No Reason for Software to Be Slow Anymore," which argues that LLMs have made performance work cheap. Varun agrees the cost of learning and applying advanced techniques has dropped. His objection is that LLMs have also made it cheaper to ship buggy code, and a lower price doesn't change what teams prioritize. He adds that people now accept slower tools because agents run that work in the background. He also points out that writing the code is often the smaller cost compared with deployment, review, and preventing regressions. One example is Bun's fork of the Zig compiler, which was about four times faster but was rejected upstream partly because its type checking could give non-deterministic results. On DHH's prediction that by year's end every developer will treat the code as a black box, Varun doubts Rust rewrites are the answer for everyone, since the Go and Elixir versions came close once their obvious problems were fixed. His takeaway is that slow software has fewer excuses now, but because shipping suboptimal code is easier than ever, he expects to see more of it for a while.


    Links:


    There continue to be reasons for software to be slow (Varun Gandhi)

    There's no reason for software to be slow anymore (Dan Luu)

    Reviewing code is a skill (Varun Gandhi)

    DHH's Rails World 2026 opening keynote

    Bun's Zig fork got 4x faster compilation times (Ziggit discussion)

    Varun's blog, typesanitizer.com

    Varun on X (@typesanitizer)


    Dead Code Podcast Links:


    Mastodon

    X


    Jared’s Links:


    Mastodon

    X

    twitch.tv/jardonamron

    Jared’s Newsletter & Website


    Episode Transcript

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    35 min
  • Rust in Pieces (with Alistair Norman and Sofia Besenski)

    Rust in Pieces (with Alistair Norman and Sofia Besenski)
    13 Oct 2026
    On this episode of Dead Code, host Jared talks with Sofia Besenski and Alistair Norman of Super Good about DHH's 2026 Rails World keynote. In it, DHH announced that HEY is leaving Rails for six native apps and a Rust backend. He has called Rust hideous before, but he now argues that the language's looks don't matter because agents write the code and he doesn't read it. The panel doubts that six apps beat one good web app. Sofia warns that teams leaning on agents build up "cognitive debt" and lose track of how their systems work. Alistair says most people don't want more apps on their phones. All three dismiss DHH's lines-of-code numbers as meaningless. Jared reads José Valim's reply, which asks why DHH didn't use these tools to improve Rails itself, and the hosts point to other Rails World talks on Active Search, Herb, and Ractor safety that did move the framework forward.Links:Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote - DHHRails World 2026 agenda and talksWhat About Rails?Hardly PrometheanHEYOmarchyJosé Valim's reply on XActive Search talk by Donal McBreenActive Search on GitHubHerbAaron Patterson's closing keynoteOn Rails: Aaron Patterson on Ractors, JIT compilers, and rewriting how gems installSteven Shaw and Gideon Nave on cognitive surrender (Wharton)Martin Fowler's Design Stamina HypothesisMosscapHanamiDead Code Podcast Links:MastodonXJared’s Links:MastodonXtwitch.tv/jardonamronJared’s Newsletter & WebsiteEpisode Transcript Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    39 min
  • Where the Bodies Are Buried (with Kerri Miller)

    Where the Bodies Are Buried (with Kerri Miller)
    28 Sep 2026

    Jared talks with Kerri Miller, a Staff Engineer at GitLab, about Keela. It's her new open-source tool that finds unused code in Rails apps, and it's named after a UK police dog known for finding buried bodies. It began about three years ago as an attempt to cut GitLab's CI costs. Kerri didn't want a tool that deletes dead code all at once, so Keela uses regex to snapshot the methods it thinks are unused and fails the build when someone adds new dead code. An exclusion file handles false positives. So far the work has removed about 290 methods and saves GitLab around $150,000 a year in CI costs. Kerri has shipped five releases in six weeks, and partials are next on her list.


    Links:


    Keela

    Kerri Miller on GitHub

    Sponsored Logs

    Rubydex

    TOON

    Lefthook

    Seattle.rb

    GitLab


    Dead Code Podcast Links:


    Mastodon

    X


    Jared’s Links:


    Mastodon

    X

    twitch.tv/jardonamron

    Jared’s Newsletter & Website


    Episode Transcript

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show more Show less
    26 min
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