Jerod and Adam use Chris Kiehl's post on development topics he's changed his mind on (over the last 10 years) as a proxy for discussion on dev things they HAVE and HAVE NOT changed their minds on.
Chapter 1: Who are the guests and what is Retool?
welcome to changelog and friends your weekly talk show about changing your mind a massive thank you to our friends and our partners over at fly.io learn more and deploy your app in five minutes at fly.io okay let's talk Well, friends before the show, I'm here with my good friend, David Shu over at Retool. Now, David, I've known about Retool for a very long time.
You've been working with us for many, many years. And speaking of many, many years, Brex is one of your oldest customers. You've been in business almost seven years. I think they've been a customer of yours for almost all those seven years to my knowledge, but share the story. What do you do for Brex? How does Brex leverage Retool? And why have they stayed with you all these years?
Chapter 2: How does Brex use Retool?
So what's really interesting about Brex is that they are an extremely operational heavy company. And so for them, the quality of the internal tools is so important because you can imagine they have to deal with fraud, they have to deal with underwriting, they have to deal with so many problems basically. They have a giant team internally basically just using internal tools day in and day out.
And so they have a very high bar for internal tools. And when they first started, we were in the same YC batch, actually. We were both at Winter 17. And they were, yeah, I think maybe customer number five or something like that for us. I think DoorDash was a little bit before them, but they were pretty early.
And the problem they had was they had so many internal tools they needed to go and build, but not enough time or engineers to go build all of them. And even if they did have the timer engineers, they wanted their engineers focused on building external facing software, because that is what would drive the business forward. Brex mobile app, for example, is awesome.
The Brex website, for example, is awesome. The Brex expense flow, all really, you know, really great external facing software. So they wanted their engineers focused on that as opposed to building internal CRUD UIs. And so that's why they came to us and it was awesome. Honestly, a wonderful partnership, and it has been for seven, eight years now.
Today, I think Brex has probably around a thousand Retool apps they use in production, I want to say every week, which is awesome. And their whole business effectively runs now on Retool, and we are so, so privileged to be a part of their journey. And to me, I think what's really cool about all this is that we've managed to allow them to move so fast
So whether it's launching new product lines, whether it's responding to customers faster, whatever it is, if they need an app for that, they can get an app for it in a day, which is a lot better than six months or a year, for example, having to schlep through spreadsheets, et cetera. So I'm really, really proud of our partnership with Brex.
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Chapter 3: Why discuss Chris Kiehl's development insights?
All right, should we talk about change of mind, changing our mind? Should we talk about Chris Keel? Yeah. Maybe that's how you say his name. Shout out to Chris, a software developer and overall pretty cool guy. His words, not mine. I can't vouch for whether or not any of that's true. I just read it on a webpage on the internet.
But Chris writes that, and he also writes, software development topics I've changed my mind on.
after 10 years in the industry now this did not make changelog news for a funny reason maybe not funny maybe an unfortunate reason title's too long dude i just couldn't figure out a way of getting that title down to where it made any sense and so i was like tough nuts i guess you're not going to be on changelog news but that was a great post yeah that is tough you have to paraphrase the title to get it in there yeah i couldn't even think how would you shorten that adam
Let me try. Let me test my wits here.
Yeah, show us your compression algorithm. Software development topics I've changed my mind on after 10 years in the industry. That's his post title.
Dev topics I've changed my mind on after 10 years. That's pretty long still. I mean, that's about as much as you can short development to dev. Right. Topics has got to be topics. I've changed my mind on, it's, I mean, you can't lose that phrase. And then after 10, which is the key, you know, numeral there. Right. Of how many years.
This has become a pattern, hasn't it? Like something I've learned after, and then it's like whatever many years it is. I feel like we've had a couple of people who've written successful posts like that. And then other people are like, Oh, I've also spent N years doing a thing.
And it's a good limiter. Yeah. You can sort and limit pretty easily, you know? Cause if I've spent 10 years in the industry, I might be like, okay, I'm inclined to read this because I may have similar or the same takes. But if I've been in the industry two years, I'm like, well, I don't have the depth, so that one's not for me. But maybe I'll watch it anyways. Maybe I'll check it out anyways.
What's the lower limit you can put on a post like this and still get some traction? Software development topics, I've changed my mind on after six weeks in the industry. How low can you go and still get people's attention? That's a good question.
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Chapter 4: What are the pros and cons of REPLs in design?
Well, there was that one time vortex that happened. Somewhere between 2020 and now, there was like a vortex.
Is it really 2025 now?
Nobody really knows what time it is as the song goes. So I'm with you maybe a couple years behind. I graduated from college, I think, in 06, 05 or 06. It's always very fuzzy. And went straight into industry pretty much from there. But I was already doing stuff on the web in college. Prior to college, my computer use was like basically Napster and video games.
Yeah.
And Winamp and stuff, it wasn't really like productive creating things. I wouldn't say I was in the industry, but yeah, probably 20 years for me since it is 2025. And have you changed your mind at all?
There's actually a lot that I don't think I have changed my mind on. There's a lot that I have and a lot that I haven't, I would say.
So yes and no.
My list is not exhaustive because I'm thinking like, gosh, what did I know or think I knew that I think now I don't know or know? And maybe it's changed. It's a lot of years to go through, to comb through, really.
Yeah. Well, we went through a little exercise, the two of us. We thought of a few things we have changed our mind on, things we haven't changed our mind on, which I think is also powerful. And Chris did the same thing. So he starts off with a list of things he's changed his mind on, things he now believes, which in the past he would have squabbled with himself.
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Chapter 5: Why is slowing down beneficial in software development?
Mm-hmm.
It's not a lot of change here.
Do you want to start with things that you haven't changed your mind about, though? Like things that you believe in the industry?
I think that would be easier for me.
Okay.
I've always thought front end slash CSS is hard. Okay. And I still believe front end slash CSS is still hard.
You may be more right now. Okay.
let me caveat that CSS is easier than it's ever been just as a standalone technology except for that it's overwhelming now because there's so much you can do yes but it's never been easier to accomplish stuff with CSS however front end which is much bigger than just that I think and I've been here a long time has never been more complicated than it is today and so I think you might be more right about that than you were in the past
Yeah, bro. I mean, oh, I did conflate them. I will agree with that. Okay, so let's maybe just front end over there, CSS over here. Okay. I will agree that CSS has gotten easier. And I will say that it's become easier potentially because of LLMs. I think because, you know, I'm not a daily driver on front end building. I'm not building front end sites every day. So I don't...
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Chapter 6: Can software truly solve collaboration issues?
Yeah, that was one example of slowing down.
Right.
And in fact, many people, this leads me to another one about dry, which we can get to in a minute. But many people think that not doing the abstraction makes it less simple. But I just, I mean, obviously I disagree with that, which I used to not disagree with that. I don't know. Simplicity is a really tough one. Obviously it's something to strive for.
But there are complicated things in the world. This is kind of where I was getting with... I can't remember who's on the show. We were talking about simplicity recently. Maybe it was Bert. I think it was. Because he was all about simplicity, right? Less dependencies, less abstractions, more simplicity, straightforward. And I was talking about how I think a lot of people desire that in their code.
And he said, well, a lot of people like clever, complex things. And going back to Chris's point about don't have an ego about being able to manage complexity in your head. That's kind of a young person's concept, I think, where it's like, look how brilliant I am because I can manage all this complexity in my head. And so Bert was saying, well, most of us don't really want simplicity.
We actually want complexity because that makes us smarter. I understand that. I think many of us do desire simple solutions, though. And yet we still find ourselves with complex ones over time. And so there's definitely some slow down to go faster in that, like slow down to keep it simple, which is incredibly difficult.
And I still fail at, you know, after all these years, I think I'm being simple. And then I'm actually realizing, oh, it's too simple because I wanted to keep it simple. And it doesn't handle all the things it needs to handle. Because like I said, the BERT, the real world is complicated, right? And some systems cannot be simple. I mean, look at our tax code, just as for one instance.
You think TurboTax can be simple software? I mean, it just can't be because it's handling a very complicated thing. Now, it can be more or less simple in its approach, but you're not going to be able to file somebody's tax. I mean, not just one person's taxes. Arbitrary people's taxes taxes in any given year without some serious complexity under the hood. They're just not going to happen.
And so the real world, is jagged and backwards often and changing. You know, look at time zones, political. I mean, think how much software is changing right now because of Doge, for instance.
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Chapter 7: Why is customization in development a potential pitfall?
And notice that there's 0k swap. My system's tuned, okay?
I also have 0k swap.
There's no swap going on here. We're going to brag about it? Yeah, we've got to brag about no swap, bro. I mean, that's how it goes. That's right. No swap over here. The game is no swapping. That's right. Right. Then you get the blank space in between. Then you got networking disk.
Now, if it's a ZFS machine and I'm running like ZFS pools, I'm going to have arc there and things like that to tell me about my ZFS pools.
Okay, so I'm missing that section. I don't have network and disk.
Okay, so you just add it, F2, and you go into your settings there, and you can add it to your left. You push enter on the one in the far right, and you arrow left, arrow left, and you put it wherever you want. And then you push enter again and you put network and disk wherever you like.
And so now do you store that into like a dot RC file or something?
So here's the thing. And this goes back to your, your principle of customization. Yeah. To my knowledge, H top and maybe B top is better. Maybe this is where B top is better. I don't know. I like H top because it's simple. H top does not have a configuration file that can translate from machine to machine. For whatever reason, it's a unique snowflake. The layout is the same on all these machines.
And I would go and tweak it for this one little thing. It takes me just enough time, maybe a minute or two to do this, you know, not much, but I would love it if it was a config file that I could just paste, but no, that's not how H top works, but H top is simple. B top is kind of loud and expressive and vibrant and visual. I think B tops, some would say it's better. H top to me is just simple.
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Chapter 8: What is Augment Code and how does it compare to GitHub Copilot?
What else can we talk about here?
I got a couple more. Let me just rattle off. Yeah, let's pick a couple. Dry as we know it is a mistake. Okay, I agree. I agree. SQL is good and everyone should know it, but not really anymore. That's the other one I wrote down. You want to talk to me about that one? Is that it? Is that your list? Two? Those are the changed minds. Haven't changed my mind.
Convention over configuration is Rails' great idea. I think that's something that I thought originally and I still think today. And that's the end of my list. Like I said, I had four and three. Yeah. Anything there you want to bite off and chew? I'm down for any.
Whatever you're most passionate about. You pick. I like them all. You choose since it's your list.
Well, let's talk about SQL because I think that that might lead us into another conversation or maybe we just end on that. So I've always been a pretty big fan of ORMs, honestly, probably, which is object relational mappers for the uninitiated. This is when you have a programming language library that maps on top of your database.
rows and columns and allows you to, you know, crud, create, read, update, and delete database records without writing native database language of SQL, structured query language. I used to really dislike SQL. I thought it was gnarly and hard to learn and ugly. And I've always liked ORMs, mostly because ActiveRecord, which is Ruby on Rails ORM, Has always been a pretty good ORM.
I've also tried Datamapper and other ones back in the day. Nowadays I use Ecto from the Elixir and Phoenix people. And I think SQL is kind of like Vim. Remember Gary Bernhardt telling us, you know, on the old Vim show where he's like... you've tried this and over the years, like you've went from text me to Adam to this. And he's like, I've just been getting better and better of him.
And I'm like, Oh, you're so much better than all of us, Gary. Um, which is probably true, but I'm still using Zed today. Um, so I didn't learn my lesson. I feel like SQL is kind of like that. Like you can invest in the language and a library, and then you can switch libraries and they all kind of map on top of what are ultimately outputting SQL expressions and some are better and worse.
And they allow you to like, you know, break out of the box and write your own fragments. And I think Ecto is a pretty good one, but, after years and years and years of like ending up with SQL and then learning it because I'm looking at it now, even though I didn't write it, I wrote some Ruby code for instance. I just think SQL is really powerful.
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