Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Today Quincy Larson interviews Carl Brown, who runs the Internet of Bugs YouTube channel and has worked as a dev at Amazon, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and startups for over 37 years.

We talk about:
- The hype versus the utility in LLMs and agent code generation tools
- Why you might want to target developer jobs at smaller companies, and how these differ from "big tech"
- How everyone will face agism eventually. Carl argues that a consulting career is a great escape hatch.

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Links from our discussion:
- My interview with Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky: freecodecamp.org/news/trello-stack-overflow-founder-joel-spolsky-podcast-interview
- Quincy's book "How to learn to code and get a developer job": freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-book

Ted Chiang "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web" article:
newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web

The Karpathy on Moltbook saga:
//Karpathy hyping up MoltBook
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2017370646767145419 //Noon Jan 30

//Doubles Down after "being accused of overhyping" Moltbook
https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017442712388309406 // 9:39 PM Jan 30

// Tweet showing Karpathy's private info from a MoltBook security breach
https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2017732898632437932 // 4:53PM Jan 31

// Fortune quotes Karpathy saying MoltBook is "a dumpster fire, and I also definitely do not recommend that people run this stuff on their computers"
fortune.com/2026/02/02/moltbook-security-agents-singularity-disaster-gary-marcus-andrej-karpathy // Feb 2

Quote from Cory Doctorow about code failing well: pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability
Excerpt from Cory's Mastodon with that quote in it: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115848576290992814
Mastodon from Carl to Cory telling him I'm going to use that quote (which he boosted): https://mastodon.social/@carlbrown/115867074293449215

Article on Claude 4.6 being good at finding bugs with fuzzing: red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days

Reference to it from Computer Security Guru Bruce Schneier: schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/llms-are-getting-a-lot-better-and-faster-at-finding-and-exploiting-zero-days.html

Older paper on LLMs being good at fuzzing prior to this new claim about claude 4.6: arxiv.org/html/2508.01750v1

Falsehoods programmers believe about names from Patio11: img.sauf.ca/pictures/2025-10-23/61fb6db44e7173cd9318753c955f7dda.pdf

Same kind of article, but this one is about time instead of names (Carl said he was wrong in that Partick/Patio11 didn't write this one, but it's worth passing along): infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time

Article with discussion of ageism in tech with the Zuckerberg quote Carl was thinking of: forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-valley-ageist-or-just-smart

Book on (interpersonal) networking that Carl recommends: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227558/never-eat-alone-expanded-and-updated-by-keith-ferrazzi-and-tahl-raz

And another one: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105512/dig-your-well-before-youre-thirsty-by-harvey-mackay

Carl's video on how AdTech is fracturing Society: youtube.com/watch?v=FmYXyWbis9w

Carl's Website: internetofbugs.com

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A 1984 synth-jazz gem from George Benson. Features a driving bassline and a solo by Michael Sembello (of "Maniac" fame).
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0:00 News
3:34 Carl Brown
4:43 LLMs: "Blurry JPEGs"
12:33 AI & Code Quality
20:53 AI Bubble
31:47 Testing Skill
1:07:20 Beat Ageism