YAGNI Transistor (https://transistor.fm) https://feeds.transistor.fm/yagni You Ain't Gonna Need It, the podcast where we look at software practices and tools and ask: "do we need it?" © 2025 Matt Swanson 48791e87-a0b0-59ca-ac35-b588d2288b6c no Do we still need this podcast? WTF is YAGNI? en Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:34:21 -0700 Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:31:16 -0800 https://yagni.fm https://img.transistor.fm/TBQxQSXQnBG5uKXFSSupnBOEFq5BrRrWTn5lmRgqP2s/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzMyODAyLzE2NTk0/MDE1MTYtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.jpg YAGNI https://yagni.fm episodic Matt Swanson You Ain't Gonna Need It, the podcast where we look at software practices and tools and ask: "do we need it?" You Ain't Gonna Need It, the podcast where we look at software practices and tools and ask: "do we need it?". Matt Swanson No No Programming Books w/ Aaron Francis 2 2 6 6 Programming Books w/ Aaron Francis full ec8beef1-e48f-49db-a7ad-e58f3466fa97 https://share.transistor.fm/s/171e1903 Matt and Aaron talk about programming books and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Aaron Francis on Twitter // PlanetScale
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Aaron's shed
Aaron reading printed docs on the beach
SQL Window Functions
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Timeless Way of Building
Culture is Stuck
Use the Index, Luke!
MySQL for Developers course
Why do programmers use books as monitor stands?

]]> Matt and Aaron talk about programming books and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Aaron Francis on Twitter // PlanetScale
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Aaron's shed
Aaron reading printed docs on the beach
SQL Window Functions
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Timeless Way of Building
Culture is Stuck
Use the Index, Luke!
MySQL for Developers course
Why do programmers use books as monitor stands?

]]> Tue, 05 Dec 2023 07:00:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 2967 Matt and Aaron talk about programming books and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Aaron Francis on Twitter // PlanetScale
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Aaron's shed
Aaron reading printed docs on the beach
SQL Window Functions
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Timeless Way of Building
Culture is Stuck
Use the Index, Luke!
MySQL for Developers course
Why do programmers use books as monitor stands?

]]> No Redis w/ Nate Berkopec 2 2 5 5 Redis w/ Nate Berkopec full e455e70c-a022-41bd-a76b-b194d8f376d6 https://share.transistor.fm/s/e7f07a52 Matt and Nate talk about Redis and try to answer the question "do we need it?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Nate Berkopec on Twitter // Speedshop
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

"Redis is not faster than your database"
"Your data fits in RAM"
March of progress
neo4j
sidekiq
ACID
kredis
Wafris
"Running Sidekiq...with a volatile eviction policy"
Solid Queue
Solid Cache
The open source gift exchange
puma/puma
The Silver Rule

]]> Matt and Nate talk about Redis and try to answer the question "do we need it?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Nate Berkopec on Twitter // Speedshop
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

"Redis is not faster than your database"
"Your data fits in RAM"
March of progress
neo4j
sidekiq
ACID
kredis
Wafris
"Running Sidekiq...with a volatile eviction policy"
Solid Queue
Solid Cache
The open source gift exchange
puma/puma
The Silver Rule

]]> Tue, 28 Nov 2023 07:00:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 2560 Matt and Nate talk about Redis and try to answer the question "do we need it?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Nate Berkopec on Twitter // Speedshop
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

"Redis is not faster than your database"
"Your data fits in RAM"
March of progress
neo4j
sidekiq
ACID
kredis
Wafris
"Running Sidekiq...with a volatile eviction policy"
Solid Queue
Solid Cache
The open source gift exchange
puma/puma
The Silver Rule

]]> No Service Objects w/ Jason Swett 2 2 4 4 Service Objects w/ Jason Swett full 1841a05a-5772-4d4e-954f-cc3837cd481a https://share.transistor.fm/s/71fa5004 Matt and Jason talk about Service Objects and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Jason Swett on Twitter // Code with Jason
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Jason's Snail Mail newsletter
Brevity is the soul of wit

]]> Matt and Jason talk about Service Objects and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Jason Swett on Twitter // Code with Jason
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Jason's Snail Mail newsletter
Brevity is the soul of wit

]]> Tue, 21 Nov 2023 06:58:44 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 91 Matt and Jason talk about Service Objects and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Jason Swett on Twitter // Code with Jason
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Jason's Snail Mail newsletter
Brevity is the soul of wit

]]> No Testing w/ Josh Pigford 2 2 3 3 Testing w/ Josh Pigford full 43182548-5123-43cc-8da5-d9e8f8149e68 https://share.transistor.fm/s/76f6605b Matt and Josh talk about automated testing and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Josh Pigford on Twitter // Detangle
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Wittgenstein's Ruler
Why doesn't Stripe have a /mrr endpoint?
GitHub Project Paper Cuts
Baremetrics
Maybe
Laser Tweets
Cedar & Sail
The best restaurant in the world
Kim Kardashian - Kimoji app
Cursor AI Editor
Stated vs Revealed preferences

]]> Matt and Josh talk about automated testing and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Josh Pigford on Twitter // Detangle
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Wittgenstein's Ruler
Why doesn't Stripe have a /mrr endpoint?
GitHub Project Paper Cuts
Baremetrics
Maybe
Laser Tweets
Cedar & Sail
The best restaurant in the world
Kim Kardashian - Kimoji app
Cursor AI Editor
Stated vs Revealed preferences

]]> Tue, 14 Nov 2023 08:00:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 2636 Matt and Josh talk about automated testing and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Josh Pigford on Twitter // Detangle
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Wittgenstein's Ruler
Why doesn't Stripe have a /mrr endpoint?
GitHub Project Paper Cuts
Baremetrics
Maybe
Laser Tweets
Cedar & Sail
The best restaurant in the world
Kim Kardashian - Kimoji app
Cursor AI Editor
Stated vs Revealed preferences

]]> No GraphQL w/ Trevor Turk (Bonus: VCR) 2 2 2 2 GraphQL w/ Trevor Turk (Bonus: VCR) full 53685b9d-bdb6-438b-99b3-a784f5a02ed4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/7ddb7f12 Matt and Trevor talk about GraphQL and try to answer the question "do we need it?" (Bonus hot takes on VCR snapshot testing)

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Trevor Turk on Twitter // Hello Weather
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to


GraphQL: The Documentary
GraphiQL
n+1 problems in GraphQL
BFF: Backend for Frontend
Graph Theory
Schema stitching

Bonus: VCR

]]> Matt and Trevor talk about GraphQL and try to answer the question "do we need it?" (Bonus hot takes on VCR snapshot testing)

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Trevor Turk on Twitter // Hello Weather
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to


GraphQL: The Documentary
GraphiQL
n+1 problems in GraphQL
BFF: Backend for Frontend
Graph Theory
Schema stitching

Bonus: VCR

]]> Tue, 07 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 3256 Matt and Trevor talk about GraphQL and try to answer the question "do we need it?" (Bonus hot takes on VCR snapshot testing)

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Trevor Turk on Twitter // Hello Weather
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to


GraphQL: The Documentary
GraphiQL
n+1 problems in GraphQL
BFF: Backend for Frontend
Graph Theory
Schema stitching

Bonus: VCR

]]> No Friday Deploys w/ Charity Majors 2 2 1 1 Friday Deploys w/ Charity Majors full ec251139-f091-4511-84ab-cf0d67e83890 https://share.transistor.fm/s/6eaaf593 Matt and Charity talk about Friday Deploys and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Charity Majors on Twitter // honeycomb.io
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Friday deploy freezes are exactly like murdering puppies
Coaching tree
Frequency Reduces Difficulty (Martin Fowler)
Payoff space vs consistency space
Blame-aware postmortem
DORA metrics

]]> Matt and Charity talk about Friday Deploys and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Charity Majors on Twitter // honeycomb.io
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Friday deploy freezes are exactly like murdering puppies
Coaching tree
Frequency Reduces Difficulty (Martin Fowler)
Payoff space vs consistency space
Blame-aware postmortem
DORA metrics

]]> Wed, 01 Nov 2023 06:48:05 -0700 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 3070 Matt and Charity talk about Friday Deploys and try to answer the question "do we need them?"

This season of YAGNI was made possible by our friends at Flipper Cloud - Are big launches stressing you out? Then you need feature flags!
Flipper Cloud helps your team deploy the code now and then roll out features when you’re good and ready. Get started for free at
flippercloud.io


Charity Majors on Twitter // honeycomb.io
Matt Swanson on Twitter // arrows.to

Friday deploy freezes are exactly like murdering puppies
Coaching tree
Frequency Reduces Difficulty (Martin Fowler)
Payoff space vs consistency space
Blame-aware postmortem
DORA metrics

]]> No Do we still need this podcast? 2 2 Do we still need this podcast? trailer 5bbb73d0-0413-4cc4-80cf-51b0b0d1c4b6 https://share.transistor.fm/s/575602f5 Mon, 23 Oct 2023 14:01:07 -0700 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 91 No RSpec w/ Justin Searls 1 1 4 4 RSpec w/ Justin Searls full f5ca7b3b-6d18-46d2-8ab4-362c6fc89f6d https://share.transistor.fm/s/4673c3ee Justin Searls on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Test Double

Justin's "What do you like about RSpec" thread (2016)
Dan North BDD
Nate Berkopec "Reading rspec documentation like..." tweet
Corey Haines: Fast Rails Tests
Kent Beck: "I get paid for code that works, not for tests..."
Nick Quaranto's minitest CLI wrapper
Mocktail gem
test_data gem

]]> Justin Searls on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Test Double

Justin's "What do you like about RSpec" thread (2016)
Dan North BDD
Nate Berkopec "Reading rspec documentation like..." tweet
Corey Haines: Fast Rails Tests
Kent Beck: "I get paid for code that works, not for tests..."
Nick Quaranto's minitest CLI wrapper
Mocktail gem
test_data gem

]]> Mon, 21 Nov 2022 05:18:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 3079 Matt and Justin talk about RSpec and testing DSLs and try to answer the question "do we need them?" Matt and Justin talk about RSpec and testing DSLs and try to answer the question "do we need them?" No Small user stories w/ Dave Copeland 1 1 3 3 Small user stories w/ Dave Copeland full dd87f604-72be-4c8c-b8fd-11644c28ef04 https://share.transistor.fm/s/2cc8362f Dave Copeland on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Mood Health

Taylorism / Scientific management
Google DORA Report
"Agile" on TikTok
The Joel Test
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin

]]> Dave Copeland on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Mood Health

Taylorism / Scientific management
Google DORA Report
"Agile" on TikTok
The Joel Test
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin

]]> Mon, 14 Nov 2022 14:17:32 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 3091 Matt and Dave talk about small user stories and try to answer the question "do we need them?" Matt and Dave talk about small user stories and try to answer the question "do we need them?" No Staging servers w/ Justin Duke 1 1 2 2 Staging servers w/ Justin Duke full 081d303d-4356-4023-a782-0b513d316b69 https://share.transistor.fm/s/3bd2149f Justin Duke on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Buttondown

Accidental AirBnB "test" notification
The Pragmatic Programmer
"SICP" book
"We dont use a staging server" HN thread
Checklist Manifesto
IQ Bell Curve / Midwit - Know Your Meme

]]> Justin Duke on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Buttondown

Accidental AirBnB "test" notification
The Pragmatic Programmer
"SICP" book
"We dont use a staging server" HN thread
Checklist Manifesto
IQ Bell Curve / Midwit - Know Your Meme

]]> Mon, 07 Nov 2022 06:00:00 -0800 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 2781 Matt and Justin talk about staging servers and try to answer the question "do we need them?" Matt and Justin talk about staging servers and try to answer the question "do we need them?" No Detailed commit messages w/ Chris Toomey 1 1 1 1 Detailed commit messages w/ Chris Toomey full 0164cb61-f538-4e91-92a6-53d9ae324ef1 https://share.transistor.fm/s/a7c0f4d7 Chris Toomey on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Sagewell Financial

Write Good Commit Messages by Blaming Others
The seven rules of a good git commit message
David Hemphill - WIP
Hot Ones
Russian Roulette and expected value 

]]> Chris Toomey on Twitter
Matt Swanson on Twitter

Arrows
Sagewell Financial

Write Good Commit Messages by Blaming Others
The seven rules of a good git commit message
David Hemphill - WIP
Hot Ones
Russian Roulette and expected value 

]]> Tue, 01 Nov 2022 05:41:33 -0700 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 3183 Matt and Chris talk about detailed commit messages and try to answer the question "do we need them?" Matt and Chris talk about detailed commit messages and try to answer the question "do we need them?" No WTF is YAGNI? 1 1 1 1 WTF is YAGNI? trailer bd0b68a0-55eb-4dc6-9c7a-079a356b4aba https://share.transistor.fm/s/80ca6d53 Everything has to start somewhere. Why not here?

]]> Everything has to start somewhere. Why not here?

]]> Mon, 01 Aug 2022 17:57:01 -0700 Matt Swanson Matt Swanson 166 What if we don't, you know, actually need it? What if we don't, you know, actually need it? No