Ramblin' & Amblin' (2026-10-15): Going to be wearing a hood because mosquitoes
Ramblin' & Amblin' Field Notes with Mike Hall (Staff Software Engineer) Recorded on the move: engineering observations, systems architecture, and software craftsmanship reflections.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Alright, so I'm going to be wearing a hood because
mosquitoes are out like crazy, but what I wanted to talk
about is ephemerality and software and mandalas and all
kinds of fun things like that and one of the concepts of
software craftsmanship of loosening your relationship with
the code, decoupling the coding from the thinking. Making the coding so fluent that the ideas just emerge
almost like playing music. I just wanted to tell a story about some kind of early days
of coding things. I got TRS-80 Color Computer 3 for my
communion.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I was raised Catholic and I've been through all the sacram
ents. I have Parvuli Day, I have Adultery Day, I've been
through the full range of CCD, and I even attended multiple
summer sessions at St. Vincent's Preparatory School in Lam
ont that doesn't exist anymore. So, um, and it was when I was going to be a freshman, I had
to decide going to St.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Vincent's Seminary Prep or to public
school and money was a thing and went to public school. And then turns out St. Vincent's closed the doors that year
, so I don't know if I caused St. Vincent's to go out of
business, but now focusing back, back, focus, focus, Mike.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
On the Color Computer, TRS-80, Color Computer 3 with BASIC,
and I was, whatever age you are when you get First Commun
ion and your parents or father's still in the Union and he's
still making Union money in the Midwest. So, uh, so, uh, so you can get a Color Computer 3, but not
the Commodore that you really wanted, um, because all your
friends that you knew of had, uh, Commodores. I don't remember if Amigo was a thing yet, but I remember
Commodore and then whatever, the, uh, Corsair or something
like that, I don't remember. But there was a couple of things.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, but I did not want to in this hurry. That was not, I didn't want to play games. I wanted to have a computer. Why?
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Because there's a nerd. I don't know. And, uh, I would, I had no storage. It, okay, so my parents got me the base station.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Uh, I hooked it up, Channel, whatever, 3, um, on the back
of a little TV. Um, I have a picture of it somewhere. I'll find it and maybe scan it. And, um, me being so excited, my little suit get in this
box and then me sitting there in a chair with a book open
next to me that has got something that I can, I don't know
what I, what I saw, what I was reading through this book,
but I would look for programs.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Yeah. All right. So, sorry. Base station, we had gotten it with a, uh, cassette player
because there was some educational games, uh, that came
with a book that had kind of like a pressure sensitive, uh,
device, but there was a black hole game.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And remember, this is Disney's black hole. It just, you know, was still enough in my memory that I, I,
I thought it was really cool looking. Um, and, uh, I had, I, I, I had, uh, so that was it. I didn't have any permanent storage and I tried to figure
out, um, uh, how to just save to the, to the drive, but it
was, it was beyond my capabilities at the time.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I wasn't on the Savant. Um, the, uh, I was kind of a more brute force kind of guy. Um, and, uh, I just keep doing it until eventually
something appears. Oh, all right.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
So that's painting the picture. Super slow. The, uh, the pressure buttons on the, uh, on the, uh, on
the interactive game, uh, book don't really work. I want to make a computer do something.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Uh, so it came with a book and I read these books and I
would carry them around with me like little totems. They went with me everywhere and I would sit and I would
just read it and I didn't understand a word I was reading. I was just absorbing information and, uh, let's see if I
can do this. I gotta get one of those sticks.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
It makes it a lot easier. Um, I would type in the, I love to make fractals. Like, I, I don't know where it hurt or if I knew what they
were, but I liked the geometric shapes that would bounce
around or fold in and out and make patterns that would
repeat in a, in a recursive, you know, an infinite loop. And I would sit there with a book and I would key in, you
know, literally transcribe, uh, the program that was in the
book into the terminal, execute it, and then sit there and
watch it run.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And then I would stop it and then I would, I don't know,
somehow I would modify things to change the color. I, you know, I, you know, I, I, I, I had my struggles with,
with, with, with maths and things like that at this age. But, um, the, you know, like I was, I knew enough to, to
poke around with it and make it add or subtract or make the
numbers bigger or smaller. Um, you know, try to find information.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, but I loved it. Um, and the, but here's the crux of it. When I was done with all of this, it's just a computer
plugged into a wall. It has RAM that it's, it's operating in.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
It has no storage. I do not have, uh, uh, a, uh, a floppy drive or anything
like that. I have a tape deck, which I don't think I even had a writ
able tape if I even could, um, figure out how to write to it
. Um, so the program would be gone.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Gone. And then, uh, the next day I would get up and I would play
the type, the, uh, program into the computer game. So, like, that was, you know, and, and, you know, it may as
well have been magic to me at that time. I was like, I was, I was casting spells to make this thing,
but then I knew that it was not permanent.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
There was no holding on to it. There was only the time that it was on my screen. And, um, if there was any interruption or turned off the
computer, it was gone. And the only thing that was permanent was what was written
down.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, but what was written down was not executable. I had to faithfully transcribe it back into the, into the
magic blinking box. Um, I think I had a little bit more, um, sophisticated view
of this than I'm, I'm, uh, carrying on here. But it was more about the ephemerality of things is that,
um, you know, we, um, we write code now.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And, uh, we build systems and we're facing now, uh, AI
making the code generation super cheap. And, um, I'm not saying that, um, I better get going. I'm not saying I'm, uh, for just blindly, uh, um, letting
go of the code, but I've, I just for a long time had, had,
had kind of taken for granted that the relationship with
the code was to run it. Um, and when it's done its purpose, it, it, it disappears.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, and, uh, and, uh, and you got to deal, deal with it
again. Um, so, you know, you would solve the same problem over and
over and over again. And that's, you know, kind of like what, um, uh, the
software craftsmanship did with katas and, and cones and
fascinating things like that. And really when I look at what we're facing now, realizing
that I really did have a disconnect in thinking for some
folks is that, um, code was, was, you know, like they like
to say now, code is all alive.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
It always was. It always was. Cause it's just, you got to hope the number changes. And, um, but it, it very major of it is that it's ephemeral
that once the, the, the, the power is turned off, it's, it
's just gone.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, it was that book, that book that told you how to, to
get back to the fractals shown on your screen. Um, and, and what did it take to write the book? It took a lot of, of, of thinking and you, but you only
needed to type that once. And then it was reproducible by an infinite number of
monkey, mic shaped monkeys who could take and type that.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I don't know. I don't know what this, this really says, but, um, I'm just
trying to talk about a difference in mindsets here. Um, is that, um, is that like we, we, with version control
and things like that, where we could tie a line of code to
the value of the work done by a developer. Um, associated with some goal or whatever for the
businesses, where we, how we define our value.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I, I don't think it's like something we do consciously, but
I, I think about, um,
Oh, that's creepy. Oh, hello. Sorry. I thought you, you, we're both doing the same thing here.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Sorry. I, you have a good one. Yeah. We're all scenery and in each other's stories.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, you know, I think that was something that, uh, Pink
Floyd talked about, but, um, we are now looking at this
industry at, at, at a mindset that is still associating our
value with our lines of, of output. Um, and again, I'm, I'm not saying this is a conscious
thing that everybody's setting out to, to do, but I think
it's kind of that, uh, you know, the sound above. And so I had to disconnect, uh, Hey, why can't we just run
the format around the whole code base? Yeah.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
But who's going to be associated with that commit? You know, there's also the accountability because each line
of code becomes a liability that you're associated with. If it goes wrong, you're the one that gets a call. You know, I've, I've done it myself, go find the name
associated with that, that line of code.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And that's, you know, not, not to be punitive, but they're,
they're the last one to touch it. Maybe they could tell us something, you know? Um, so, um, I thought that person was a scarecrow at first. They were wearing kind of natural looking clothes and I, I,
it put some black underneath and I, that's why I was
staring.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I was thinking, I was looking at a scarecrow, but it was
actually just a nice normal person. Just happened to wear black underneath their outfit. And it was, they were sitting very still, um, but they had
a camera tripod set up. They were doing the same thing I'm doing.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Just out here talking. I hope their channel gets a million views and they have a
silver and gold trophy for, uh, excellence in YouTubing. Uh, I'll, I will be happy for that.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
So anyway, yeah, ephemerality. The Dalas, Taoism, Tao, Buddhism and crazy sounding stuff
for somebody who grew up in. Every church that would host, host their parents when they
were growing up, um, uh, looking at, at just the, the way
we think about things and, and that, how that frames our
disposition. And I think about being a little kid and it didn't even
occur to me that it was, should be annoying that I couldn't
save that file because there was no saving the file.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Well, okay, maybe I exaggerate. I knew that I didn't have storage and I did try to find
ways to acquire something and I just didn't know how to do
it. I just didn't know how to do it. That didn't mean I didn't want to.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I didn't take stops. I just didn't have anybody in my space or at all that I
could work that through because it just wasn't their thing
either. Not that they weren't, not that they weren't working hard
and doing good stuff, but, um, yeah, that's, it didn't
matter to me at the time because I just like to see the
code run. And know that what I just did produced this, right?
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
even though I was copying, um, somebody else, I still had
to type it in, um, um, um, but then it would go away. And then when you do exercises, I think we, we, and here's
ultimately where the point I think I'm trying to get to is,
is that early in self-requestionship movement, there was a
push to do things like Cohen's, which were exercises where
you move through a set of, you know, questions. Um, but as you answer them, it was a little bit more fun
than that. And there's a, there's a theory behind, and there's a
cultural history behind the very concept of a Cohen, um,
for another conversation.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
But, uh, uh, Katas, where you would start and, um, you
would do a predefined set of steps, like read a book and,
and open the book. And then, uh, you start by just mimicking the steps, but as
you repeat the steps over and over and over again, you put
more and more focus on different areas of, of the process
of the steps of the motion between one step to the next and
finding the flow. What's the flow there? And what does it tell you about the
problem you're solving?
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, you know, I wasn't there yet. I
was still at the wrote process, but at least with the wrote
stuff, you can teach people the wrote stuff. Um, you know,
it's better than nothing because at least I could type
something and make it do something. So here we are with AI and now code has become ephemeral
again, you know, and, uh, but we still need people to wire
up circuit boards.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
We just so many people that can, um, uh, make machines do
things that hasn't gone away, but it has changed. Um, but I think as we're, uh, I don't know, none of us have
been through this before and everybody's got an idea about
what it's going to be and what it's going to do. All I know is that once upon a time, little kid got a trash
80 for his first communion obsessively typed code into the
little terminal on this, whatever, 480, right? Whatever, uh, television screen and, uh, uh, uh, uh, phosph
or burn green and, uh, is now looking at what people were
trying to teach us 15 years ago,
talking about Cohen's and Kata's and, and letting go of, of
the code per se and becoming fluent in solving the problem
and moving through the code, um, embracing ephemerality
with your template generation and abstracting, um, um, um,
you know, in, in, in, in as much magic and metaprogramming
as possible to hide the internals of, of, uh,
uh, uh, the implementation of a, uh, of, uh, of, of, of a
problem and, and, and that enables somebody to do something
, whether that be, uh, post a blog post or, um, make fract
als or, um, one multi-billion dollar, uh, uh, marketing.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Marketing, uh, systems and, uh, like, you know, Groupon did
for a long time, uh, and other companies still do. But, um, the anxiety over, um, code not mattering anymore,
I mean, I don't know. I, I, I go to a website and I don't look at the HTML, I
look at the, the, the, the webpage and, and either it works
or it doesn't work, um, I don't really, actually, really
anymore care all that much except for professional
curiosity about the framework. Oh, yeah, they're running on this old version of law.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Okay, cool. Whatever. That's fun. Um, but the anxiety that I think people are facing is once
upon a time, the code was in books.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And, and, uh, I don't know what I'm trying to say here. I'm really just trying to say that I think we're in an age
where we're going to have to be looking back at, at lessons
and, and coming back together. And that I'm going to be with you here out in Lost Land. But, um, there was, there was something important being
said there that resonated with me.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And I think now here as we're, we're facing AI and the, uh,
Gotham Software Engineering that, uh, it is going to be
people coming together and
not worrying so much about whether their name is associated
with the line of code, but finding a way to reason with, I
don't know yet. I don't know yet either reason with the outcomes, reason
with, um, results, reason with efficiency, reason with, um,
um, you know,
can you do something without flooding the, uh, the entire
local area network and, and, and breaking our data center. Um, oh, and then we pop the hood and it just happens to be,
you know, whatever Kafka MQT, whatever is in there. Um, um, it doesn't matter, but we also know how to move
these systems forward in an age where that, that
implementation is ideally doesn't matter anymore.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, but there's got a whole different skill set that's
going to be required for that. And that's really what I'm trying to get to is that, um,
code was always just a thing we typed. Understanding what that code meant is important for the
person that wrote the book. They, they, they still will be needed to understand how the
machine maps to, uh, the human.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Uh, but, uh, for those of us who are working at a little
higher abstraction layer,
it's going to be about really about stopping and figuring
out how to solve the problems and how,
um, sorry to be interested to introducing another concept
so late in the conversation,
but, um, Conway's law, you know, that we're going to have
to embrace that. I think. Um, as, as, as a, as an industry and really understand that
there isn't a duality between us and, and the systems that
is being implemented. And then trying to just say, oh, the line of code is the
only indicator, uh, we have as to who has context on this.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Is it going to be insufficient? Um, when we're going to be able to say, have, uh,
a bunch of people who are able to actually hop on an AI
session, I'm, I'm spitballing here, hop on an AI. I can imagine this. I just saying that, um, and, and the, this, the ecosystem
is, is fully wired up for observability.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And it's got MCPs for inquiry at the right level, uh, that
we can have people who, let's say a marketing person who
doesn't necessarily know anything about SQL,
but notice how, uh, when they engage an agent, they can ask
questions about the behavior of a system and do analysis on
spot checks in, in the stream. And being able to say, okay, yeah, this is strange behavior
. Um, and then they'll be able to guide specialists who will
be able to, uh, go in and, and understand the system at a
deeper level. We're going to have layers of abstraction that are going to
be, uh, exposed is what I think is going to happen.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And again, the code becomes ephemeral. A change, the fix is, um, uh, to switch to, uh, you know
what? We can't do Python here anymore. It's, this is, uh, too performance sensitive, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
We can implement it with, um, um, you know, we can rewrite
it in Rust, but, but seriously, we can rewrite it in
something and more performant. And then we have to change the pair form. We have to change this system. It's got to update the deploy structure.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
And then we have to have a way to make sure that we have
continuity of data. Is this a data chip? Like, do we change the schema? These are the kinds of things that I see as being more
important in the code than they always were.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Um, but the only way we had to get the system to do, the
thing was to, to open up the book and key in. The, uh, uh, uh, the key in the, uh, the commands. And now it's going to be, um, more about the reasoning with
the system and, um, do I say that's a good thing or an
ideal thing or anything like that? I don't know.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I don't know. I just think that's the way it's going to shake out. But, uh, it's going to need a way to decouple our identity
and our proof of value and worth and, and, um, ownership. Finding a way to decouple that from a specific line of code
.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
I don't know what that'll look like, but I just feel like
that's the shape of things to come. And I think that's ultimately what some folks are trying to
, to warn about or, or to evangelize. However you hear them. Um, I don't know.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
Just a story. Just some thoughts. We're all figuring it out at the same time. So, you know, I know as soon as I stopped recording, I
would, oh, I should have stopped this.
Mike Hall
Host, ramblin-amblin
▶ Speaking
But, um, that's okay. All right. Thanks. Bye.