The Programming Podcast

For the last 18 months, we’ve been hearing that “AI is Magic.” But what happens when you connect that “magic” to your production database, your billing APIs, and your enterprise systems? It becomes a financial ticking time bomb.

In this episode of The Programming Podcast, Leon and I sit down with Monica Bajaj, VP of Engineering at Okta. We are tearing down the "God Mode" tutorials you see on YouTube and talking about the terrifying engineering reality of Agentic AI.

We break down the "Infinite Loop from Hell," why you need to start treating your AI like a Junior Developer with a corporate credit card, and how to actually secure your architecture before your agent bankrupts your company at 2:00 AM. If you are building with AI, deploying MCP servers, or just trying to figure out this new frontier—you cannot afford to miss this one.

In this episode, we cover:

- The "Financial Blast Radius" of uncontrolled AI actions
- The 3 P's Framework: Purpose, Privilege, and Protection
- Why standard Rate Limiting isn't enough (and why you need MCP Gateways)
- Token Vaults, the "5-Minute Pulse Check," and Dynamic Zero Trust
- Overcoming Imposter Syndrome when the tech world resets

Make sure to hit that like button, subscribe, and let us know in the comments: Are you giving your AI agents "God Mode"?

Follow Monica Bajaj: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobajaj/

Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 - The Wake-Up Call: Why AI is Dangerous, Not Just Magic
0:53 - Welcome Monica Bajaj (VP of Engineering, Okta)
3:08 - The "Probabilistic Runtime" & Identity Blind Spots
5:02 - Accidental Agent Sprawl & Draining Cloud Credits
6:50 - The "Infinite Loop From Hell" (Bankrupting Your Company)
9:24 - Financial Blast Radius vs. Text Hallucinations
12:17 - The Danger of Giving AI "God Mode"
14:26 - The 3 P's Framework: Purpose, Privilege, & Protection
16:44 - The Biggest Anti-Pattern in Early Agent Builds
18:23 - Purpose: Why Agents Need a "Job Description"
20:25 - Privilege: The "Junior Dev with a Credit Card" Metaphor
24:48 - Protection: Why Rate Limiting Isn't Enough (MCP Gateways)
27:29 - Token Vaults & The 5-Minute Pulse Check
30:32 - The SHIELD Acronym & Dynamic Zero Trust
33:18 - Buy vs. Build: Identity in the Agentic Era
40:03 - The 2 AM Test (If You Can't Stop It, You Can't Ship It)
44:24 - Q&A: Overcoming AI Imposter Syndrome
47:09 - Danny's Mic Drop: Why We Are All Imposters Right Now

In this episode, Danny and Leon break down a massive 48 hours in AI. With the surprise drop of Anthropic Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s Codex 5.3, the landscape for software engineers has shifted again. We dive deep into what a 1-million-token context window actually means for your workflow, the rise of Agent Teams, and why "vibe coding" recently led to a massive security blunder in the dev community. We also answer a listener question about whether custom code or off-the-shelf builders like Shopify are the right choice for small business clients.

📑 Chapters
0:00 – Intro: The Drake vs. Kendrick of AI Drops

1:20 – Opus 4.6 Metrics & Terminal Bench 2.0

3:02 – The 1-Million-Token Window: Game Changer or Overkill?

4:36 – How Large Context Affects Codebase Scanning

5:45 – Adaptive vs. Extended Thinking: Effort Parameters Explained

7:50 – The Gemini Ratchet: How Google Set the Standard for Context

9:15 – Playwright & MCP: Unlocking Visual Testing with Massive Windows

10:55 – Understanding Context Rot & Reduction in Long Chats

13:30 – Does a Million Tokens Kill RAG? (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

14:35 – Orchestration Layers: Sub-Agents vs. Agent Teams

17:23 – Cost Analysis: Comparing Sonnet 4.5 vs. Opus 4.6 Pricing

20:00 – Anthropic’s Response to Developer Complaints (The "Think Harder" Meme)

22:20 – Skill Frameworks & Code Standards Files

24:45 – The "Feel" of the Model: Speed vs. Risk-Taking in Logic

27:00 – Current Dev Workflows: When to switch to Codex 5.3

30:50 – Prompt Engineering in the Thinking Model Era

32:45 – Sam Altman’s "Bar" & The Reality of Benchmarks

36:15 – Is Coding Dead? Addressing the Hype Cycle and Management Fears

37:55 – The "Maltbot" Security Blunder: Why Humans Must Stay in the Loop

42:15 – AI in WebDev vs. Embedded Systems & Cloud

45:55 – Q&A: Website Builders (Shopify/Wix) vs. Custom Code for Clients

50:50 – Final Thoughts: Selling Your Time and Knowledge, Not Just Syntax

This isn't about a new JavaScript framework; it's about a significant shift in software engineering. If you're in tech or aspire to be a software developer, this discussion is crucial for understanding the future of web development.

✅ If you made it to the end, comment: “Claude Code!” so we know who is a real one!

In this episode, Leon and I live-react to the viral tweet from Andrej Karpathy (founding member of OpenAI, former Tesla AI Director) that has the entire dev world talking. Karpathy reveals that his workflow has shifted from 80% manual to 80% agentic in just one month. We’re diving deep into what it actually means to "program in English" and whether our skills are atrophying as AI takes the wheel.

SITE https://www.programmingpodcast.com/

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Stay in Touch:
📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

Danny Thompson
https://x.com/DThompsonDev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/DThompsonDev
www.DThompsonDev.com

Leon Noel
https://x.com/leonnoel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonnoel/
https://100devs.org/

📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

We also discuss:

- The "Vibe Coding" Shift: Why the "Idea Guy" is dead and why the "Builder" is winning.
- Atrophy vs. Expansion: Are we losing our edge, or just building faster?
- The "Slop-ocalypse": Preparing for 2026 as GitHub gets flooded with AI-generated spaghetti code.
- Real-world Impact: How I’m using these exact agentic workflows to build EventConvo.

Special Guest Mention: Shout out to Logan Kilpatrick from the Google Gemini team for the insights that sparked this conversation.

Chapters
0:00 – The Biggest Change to Coding in 20 Years
1:05 – Shoutout to Logan Kilpatrick & Gemini
1:52 – Reacting to Andrej Karpathy’s Viral Tweet
2:40 – "I am Programming in English Now"
4:05 – How Our Prompting Has Evolved (Whisper Flow & Opus)
5:30 – Does Agentic Coding Feel "Wrong"?
6:55 – The Theo T3 "Toothbrush" Workflow
7:45 – Building EventConvo: AI as a Force Multiplier
9:15 – Is AI Taking Developer Jobs? (The Stack Overflow Comparison)
12:35 – The Death of the "Idea Guy"
14:15 – Why You Still Need an IDE (Watching Agents Like a Hawk)
18:30 – The Senior Dev Gap: Pattern Recognition vs. Logic
20:20 – The Fear of Skill Atrophy
23:10 – Speed Ups vs. Expansion: Are We Doing Too Much?
27:40 – Leverage: Stop Telling AI What to Do
32:10 – Is Coding Still Fun?
35:50 – 2026: The Year of the "Slop-ocalypse"
43:05 – What Happens to the 10x Engineer?
48:20 – Future Tech: Anthropic Co-work & Gemini CLI
52:45 – Ask Danny & Leon: How to Crush a 3-Hour Virtual Onsite
59:20 – Final Thoughts: Now is the Time to Play

Apple’s latest decision to team with Google and use Gemini signals something bigger than a headline. It highlights how far Gemini has come, and why utility is becoming the real battleground for AI in 2026.

In this episode, we sit down with Logan Kilpatrick from the Gemini team at Google DeepMind to talk about what this moment means for developers, builders, and teams choosing tools today. We get into the evolution of Gemini, why multimodality and long context mattered early, and how Gemini is increasingly showing up where people already work through products like Workspace, Gmail, and Docs.

✅ If you made it to the end, comment: “Documentation Traffic.” so we know who is a real one!

SITE https://www.programmingpodcast.com/

Stay in Touch:
📧 Have questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

Danny Thompson
https://x.com/DThompsonDev
/ dthompsondev
www.DThompsonDev.com

Leon Noel
https://x.com/leonnoel
/ leonnoel
https://100devs.org/

📧 Have questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

Subscribe if you want honest, no-hype conversations about where software development is heading in 2026.

We also dig into what’s next for image generation and editing, including the leap in text accuracy, practical features creators want (like layers and transparent backgrounds), and the role of technologies like SynthID in building trust as AI content becomes more common.

Plus: vibe coding, reasoning models, prompt expansion, how developers can ask for more ambitious outcomes, and why proactivity and proof-of-work experiences are shaping the next wave of AI products.

If you’re building with AI or trying to stay ahead as a developer, this episode will give you a clear view into where things are going.

0:00 Apple’s decision changes the AI narrative
1:11 Meet today’s guest: Logan Kilpatrick (Gemini team)
1:52 Apple quote and why this is big for Gemini
2:19 Are the model wars over, and are utility wars next?
4:20 Gemini in real workflows: Workspace, Gmail, and daily utility
5:26 AI hype vs reality: why products must meet users where they are
6:42 Balancing frontier progress with “do not break the product” responsibility
8:25 Nano Banana and the leap in text accurate images
9:28 Infographics, presentations, and where image generation is going
10:00 Why text rendering became a key metric for model quality
12:19 What users want next: transparent backgrounds, layers, better editing
13:52 Trust and safety: SynthID, watermarking, and standardization challenges
16:06 What developers ask for most: quota and scale
17:38 Logs and the idea of an agent that finds missing product features
19:31 How people should use AI differently: native form factors, proactivity
21:19 Proof of work and why Deep Research builds trust fast
24:53 Prompt expansion, reasoning models, and why “prompt wizardry” is fading
26:40 Ask for more: why ambition is now the best prompting strategy
29:36 Frameworks vs over optimizing prompts: when it matters, when it does not
32:52 What “vibe coding” means now and how it is evolving
34:08 Teaching vibe coding on day one of school
36:01 Ask Danny, Leon, and Logan: feeling behind in tech
39:02 The moving finish line, authenticity, and turning the gap into a roadmap
41:25 Closing

Is Tailwind actually “dying” or are we watching something bigger happen in real time?

In this episode of The Programming Podcast, we dig into a brutal 2026 reality check for developers: the tools and communities we’ve relied on for years are getting shaken up by AI in ways most people didn’t see coming.

We break down the Tailwind situation, including the GitHub discussion that surfaced a behind-the-curtain truth about modern open source: documentation traffic is the funnel, and AI is bypassing it. When LLMs stop sending humans to your docs, what happens to paid products, sponsorships, and ultimately the ability to maintain the framework at all?

Then we shift to the other major signal: Stack Overflow’s decline. The charts are ugly, and the reasons are deeper than just “people use AI now.” We talk about the human cost of hostile community dynamics, why developer Q&A moved to Discord long before LLMs took off, and what it means when the internet’s most “verified” coding resource starts fading.

Finally, we go big-picture: if open source loses funding and loses maintainers, what happens to the future of software? And where do new developers go when both the old learning paths and the new AI-heavy paths are unreliable?

✅ If you made it to the end, comment: “Documentation Traffic.” so we know who is a real one!

SITE https://www.programmingpodcast.com/

Stay in Touch:
📧 Have questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

Danny Thompson
https://x.com/DThompsonDev
/ dthompsondev
www.DThompsonDev.com

Leon Noel
https://x.com/leonnoel
/ leonnoel
https://100devs.org/

📧 Have questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at [email protected]!

Subscribe if you want honest, no-hype conversations about where software development is heading in 2026.