Jessica Kerr
Co-Host of Greater Than Code
Almost twenty years ago, Jessica chose to program because it was easy and it was 9-5. Now programming is hard, she spends all her spare time on it, and she loves it immensely more.
Software is fascinating because we create complex systems incredibly quickly. This means we get to learn about complex systems, which teaches us about everything else in life. For more, see her blogs at blog.jessitron.com and [tistil.tumblr.com](tistil.tumblr.com)
Jessica (better known as JessiTRON) works as a lead engineer at Atomist. Infrastructure is the best because it’s software about software. She also raises two daughters, speaks at conferences, studies piano, and stares at the waves in the milk film on her coffee.
Jessica Kerr has hosted 96 Episodes.
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156: Authenticity in Interviewing with James Edward Gray II
November 13th, 2019 | 1 hr 2 mins
James Edward Gray II talks about why “Just Be Yourself” is terrible advice, being authentic in an interview, turning your interviewer into your advocate, intrinsic motivation, technical interviews, storytelling in the interview, and management techniques.
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152: Embracing Mathematics with Philip Wadler
October 16th, 2019 | 49 mins 32 secs
Philip Wadler talks about Programming Language Foundations in Agda, using a proof assistant, specifications, and how to translate abstract concepts so practitioners can use them.
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151: Off Meta with Amir Rajan
October 9th, 2019 | 1 hr 10 mins
Amir Rajan talks about having sensitivity to development pain, developer productivity, optimizing local maxima, and game development.
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148: Floober and Cognitive Outsourcing with Jacob Stoebel
September 18th, 2019 | 58 mins 43 secs
Jacob Stoebel joins GTC as an official panelist and talks about neurodiversity in workplaces, driving desire to learn things, personal automation, and storycrafting and succession planning.
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142: Modeling Constraints in Human Systems with Will Larson
August 7th, 2019 | 1 hr 10 mins
Will Larson talks about systems thinking and theory. How do you know when to stop modeling? How do you figure out what your team’s rate of change is? How can we share ideas and contribute together as a community? The panel discusses.
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141: Navigating Blame
July 31st, 2019 | 48 mins 16 secs
The panelists talk about blame: perspectives on blame, blamelessness, postmortems/incident reviews, the fact that systems are benign, survival rules, and gaining EQ and inward exploration.
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140: Bounded Perfection with Amitai Schleier
July 24th, 2019 | 58 mins 12 secs
Amitai Schleier talks about talks about running mail servers, orientation in problem spaces, refactoring, and the concept of “bounded perfection”.
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133: Dark Horses with Chanté Thurmond
June 5th, 2019 | 1 hr 6 mins
Chanté Thurmond talks about spotting talent (dark horses), perceiving talent/potential, confronting biases and societal categorization, identity as a feedback loop, and using metrics to improve organizational D&I.
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131: Poo-Covered Rocks with Cat Swetel
May 22nd, 2019 | 52 mins 59 secs
Cat Swetel joins the show to talk about managing a platform with ancient value, exploring systems, Wardley mapping, and looking for poo-covered rocks: the importance of observation and reflection.
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127: Hope and Suffering with Amy Newell
April 24th, 2019 | 1 hr 6 mins
Amy Newell talks about suffering and sustaining hope and faith in the face of what feels like no hope and no faith, living a valuable life vs a happy life, bringing your “whole self” into the workplace, changing culture in organizations, and bipolar disorder.
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125: Everything is Communication with Sam Aaron
April 10th, 2019 | 1 hr 8 mins
Sam Aaron chats with the panel about creating Sonic Pi, the importance of patience and delayed gratification, logging, and fixed tempo, clocks, and time.
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124: Navigating Neurodiversity with Helen Needham
April 3rd, 2019 | 52 mins 28 secs
Helen Needham, an autistic person and an advocate of promoting the value of neurodivergent thinking, talks about decoding people, the intersection of empathy and neurodiversity, being deliberate as a survival skill, and paying attention to EQ: emotional intelligence.
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122: Surfing with Michael "GeePaw" Hill
March 20th, 2019 | 1 hr 5 mins
Michael “GeePaw” Hill talks about autopoiesis (say what??), the cost of certainty, doubt vs narrowing, thin and thick culture, and occupational game playing.
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121: Emergency Communication with Thai Wood
March 13th, 2019 | 54 mins 30 secs
Thai Wood is a developer turned EMT turned developer again. He talks about resilience engineering and closed-loop communication, his experience as an EMT and the lessons he’s brought from there to his work as a developer, incident response, the normalization of deviation, and asking questions to get helpful answers.
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120: Expect The Unexpected with Andy Hunt
March 6th, 2019 | 1 hr 7 mins
Andy Hunt talks about iterative development and continuous learning and how we should become comfortable with uncertainty. He also talks about his personal mantra of feedback, context, and learning, as well as adaptability and making groups more effective. Andy also talks about his personal software development journey and his dalliances in writing science fiction.
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118: A Piece of Luck with Jessica Kerr
February 20th, 2019 | 1 hr 5 mins
Panelist, Jessica Kerr, talks about her superpower being a property of a situation. She also ponders the interpretation of luck, physics, conference speaking, TDD, and continuous learning.