On episode 12 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Dexter Horthy of HumanLayer. They explore the promise and limitations of autonomous coding, including why today’s models excel at bounded programming tasks but struggle to account for the long-term consequences of architectural decisions. The conversation covers dark software factories, code review bottlenecks, program design, technical debt, and the continuing importance of experienced engineers.

On episode 11 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio speaks with David Crawshaw about the shift from traditional developer infrastructure to agent-native computing. David traces lessons from founding Tailscale to now building exe.dev around the idea that “agents need a computer.” The conversation explores why VMs may be the right primitive for AI coding agents, why deployment friction becomes unacceptable when software can be generated in minutes, and how agent-driven development changes code review, production workflows, security, and the economics of personal software.

On episode 10 of High Leverage, Joe Ruscio sits down with Steve Krouse to discuss the rapidly evolving relationship between AI and programming. Steve shares lessons from building Val Town at the center of the AI tooling wave, why he believes better abstractions will define the future of software, and how engineers can avoid becoming passive operators in an increasingly agent-driven world.