Fragmented - AI Developer Podcast
by Kaushik Gopal, Iury Souza
Fragmented is an AI developer podcast for engineers who want to go beyond vibe coding and ship real software.We cover AI-assisted development the way working engineers actually use it: prompting strategies, code review, testing, debugging, workflows, and building production-grade software with AI tools. No hype. No "I shipped a SaaS in a weekend" stories. Just tactics that work.Hosted by Kaushik Gopal and Iury Souza — software engineers using AI daily to build and ship real products.From vibe coding to software engineering — one episode at a time. Our goal: help you use AI to become a better engineer, not be replaced by one.
Episodes
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312 - Understanding Pi Durable with Mario & Armin of Earendil
What does it take to keep an agent working after its process dies? Pi creator Mario Zechner and Earendil co-founder Armin Ronacher join KG to explain Pi Durable: explicit tasks, crash recovery, and the primitives for multiplayer agents. We also dig into why Pi added MCP and codemode, and why a...
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311 - Self learning harnesses are here
Claude Code and Codex have been the mainstay agent harnesses, with OpenCode and Pi as the popular open-source alternatives. But two new entries are pushing what a harness even is: DeepSeek's Cordis kernel, where everything — down to the agent loop itself — is a plugin you can hot-swap at runtime,...
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310 - Mitchell Hashimoto on Ghostty & His Agentic Coding Workflow
Mitchell Hashimoto co-founded HashiCorp, built some of the most impressive DevOps tools like Vagrant and Terraform, sold the company to IBM — and then built a terminal. Ghostty is now where a huge chunk of agentic coding actually happens. Mitchell was an AI skeptic. We walk through his six-step...
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309 - Background Agents
Andrej Karpathy says the goal is to maximize how long an agent runs without your intervention. But there's a false summit most teams hit first: individual speed goes up while system speed stalls, your laptop roars under four parallel Gradle builds, and review queues back up. Kaushik and Iury…
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308 - How Image Diffusion Models Work - the 20 minute explainer
You already know how LLMs work from our popular 20-minute explainer. Now we take it to images. What does Michelangelo have to do with stable diffusion? More than you'd think. Walk away knowing how image generation actually works — and what it has in common with the text models you already...
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307 - Harness Engineering - the hard part of AI coding
The hard part of AI coding isn't generating code — it's controlling quality, safety, and drift. Kaushik and Iury break down harness engineering: the five pillars for shaping an agent's environment and what it looks like when teams build custom harnesses from scratch. Full shownotes at...
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306 - Keeping your agent instructions in sync and effective
AGENTS.md is becoming the common language for AI coding tools, but keeping repo rules, personal rules, and tool-specific files in sync is still messy. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury break down the sync problem, compare their own setups, and unpack what the latest AGENTS.md research actually...
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305 - Subagents explained - What they are, when (not) to spawn them
Subagents are becoming a core primitive for serious AI-assisted development. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury disambiguate "agent" terminology, unpack plan mode vs subagents, and explain how parallel, scoped workers improve research quality without polluting the main thread. Full shownotes at...
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304 - Agent Skills - when to use them and why they matter
Agent Skills look simple, but they are one of the most powerful building blocks in modern AI coding workflows. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury break down when to use skills, how progressive disclosure works, and how skills compare with commands, instructions, and MCPs. Full shownotes at...
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303 - How LLMs Work - the 20 minute explainer
Ever get asked "how do LLMs work?" at a party and freeze? We walk through the full pipeline: tokenization, embeddings, inference — so you understand it well enough to explain it. Walk away with a mental model that you can use for your next dinner party. _Full shownotes at fragmentedpodcast.com....
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302 - MCPs Explained - what they are and when to use them
MCPs are everywhere, but are they worth the token cost? We break down what Model Context Protocol actually is, how it differs from just using CLIs, the tradeoffs you should know about, and when MCPs actually make sense for your workflow. Full shownotes at fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/302. Show...
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301 - The AI coding ladder
Most folks reference "AI coding" like it's one thing. It's really not. In this foundational episode Kaushik & Iury walk through (at least) four paradigms — from super autocomplete to agent orchestration — each with different workflows, expectations, and mental models. What do most developers…
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300 - From Vibe coding to Software engineering
Fragmented is changing. New direction, new cohost. Kaushik explains the pivot from Android to AI development and introduces Iury Souza. From vibe coding to software engineering — one episode at a time. Full shownotes at fragmentedpodcast.com. Contact us Newsletter Website Contact us Youtube...
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257 - Future of AndroidDev in an AI world with Vinay Gaba
Join us as we talk with Vinay Gaba, Android GDE and leading voice in Android development, about the future of the field. Vinay shares insights from interviews with top Android devs on their three-year predictions, and offers his own perspective. We cover AI's impact, evolving development roles…
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256 - Rapid prototyping with Kotlin
In this episode, we dive into the power of rapid prototyping for Android developers using Kotlin. We explore how this crucial skill can impress stakeholders, accelerate your workflow, and help you stay ahead in today's fast-paced tech landscape. We'll cover use cases across scripting, web...
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255 - Data Oriented Programming
In this episode, we dive into the programming paradigm — Data Oriented Programming (DOP) and why making data the star can simplify your code. Learn how well-modeled data reduces defensive logic, prevents invalid states, and keeps your apps stable. We’ll also contrast DOP with Object Oriented...
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254 - 8× faster 5× memory savings with Dan Rusu’s Immutable Arrays
In this episode, discover how Dan Rusu’s pods4k Immutable Arrays library can deliver 2–8× speed boosts and 5× lower memory usage in Kotlin/Android apps. We first revisit the fundamentals of autoboxing/unboxing and immutability to understand their impact on performance. Then we hear from Dan…
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253 - logcat - a new look at logging with Piwai from Square
Kaushik looks at a new logging library from Square called logcat. He starts by seeing how the popular Timber library does it along with the benefits. He then interviews Pierre-Yves Ricau (Piwai) of Square, the creator of logcat, to explore its origins and advantages. You can find the full…
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252 - Everyone needs a starter template
In this episode of Fragmented, Kaushik dives into the importance of creating your own starter template to streamline app development and minimize decision fatigue. He shares insights from his own starter template - Playground Android. Looking to the future, JetBrains has an exciting tool called...
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251- There's a new king in DI town
In this episode, Kaushik explores the evolution of dependency injection (DI) in Android development. Dagger has been the de-facto solution for DI in Android but there might be a new king in DI-town. He also chats with friend of the show and dependency injection expert Ralf Wondratschek for a…
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250 - Bittersweet beginnings
We're back from the hiatus with our SemiQuicentennial episode! With the momentous 250 comes some big announcements and a shift in the way we do things. Listen to find out the details! Shownotes: https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/250
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249 - Java and the JDK: Powering the Android Landscape with Michael Bailey
In this episode of our podcast, we explore the diverse landscape of Java versions within the Android ecosystem. Our guest is Michael Bailey, a seasoned Java expert who has been a frequent presence on our show since the early days of our podcast. We kick off with a solid foundation, discussing the...
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248 - Feature Flags & A/B Testing: A Deep Dive with Ishan Khanna
In this edition of Fragmented, we're thrilled to host Ishan Khanna, a software engineer at Tinder who possesses great enthusiasm for feature flags and A/B testing. Donn discusses why he invited Ishan on the show, highlighting Ishan's passion for feature flagging and A/B testing. The conversation...
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247: The Art of App Modularization with Siggi Jonsson
In this episode, we talk to, Siggi Jonsson. Siggi helps guide us through the complex and often confusing world of Android app modularization. Our conversation will begin by shedding light on the importance of modularization, what triggers the need for breaking projects into multiple modules, and...
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246 - Dependency Injection: Kotlin Inject with Fred Porciúncula
In this podcast episode, we have the pleasure to host Fred Porciúncula, a Google Developer Expert (GDE) known for his work with Kotlin Inject and his invaluable contributions to the Android development community. Fred offers his expertise on Dependency Injection (DI), Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP),...
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245: Treehouse, Redwood and Zipline with Colin White
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to an old friend of the show, Colin White, about Treehouse, a combination of the Redwood and Zipline libraries. Colin is a Staff Engineer at Cash App (Block). Redwood is a multiplatform Compose library that allows you to target multiple UI toolkits on…
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244: Reviving Our Passion for Android Development
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik announce that they are steering the podcast back into Android waters. In other words, the Fragmented Podcast is returning to its roots ... we're back to being a 100% Android Development focused show. We're glad to have you as a listener, here's to the future of...
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243: Mastering the Art of Switching Careers in Tech with Dan Lew
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to long-time friend Dan Lew about his recent career switch from Android developer to TypeScript/Node.js/Progressive Web App Developer (and more). It's an interesting discussion that covers ... Why Dan decided to leave the Android world The challenges he…
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242 - Kotlin Code Formatting with ktfmt and spotless
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about one of the age old bike shedding topics - code formatting, and how you can solve it with automation and tools. Code formatting can turn into an endless debate amongst peers and teams, and what Kaushik and Donn have found is that this can be delegated…
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241: The Pressure to Ship. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about the fear of shipping, some impostor syndrome and how it contributes to uncertainty and doubt in your capabilities as a software developer. Recently Donn embarked on a mission to come up with an idea and ship it within 24 hours (which he did do). The…
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240: Important Kotlin Constructs
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about 5 new-ish Kotlin constructs that you might not be aware of. The constructs that they talk about are: fun interface (SAM - Single Abstract Method), and they juxtapose them vs function types type alias import alias value class data object You'll learn…
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239: Require PR Reviews with CODEOWNERS
In this short episode, Donn talks about the CODEOWNERS file and how it can help you ensure teams review the code that they are responsible for before merging. The CODEOWNERS file is a file that you drop into the root of your project (or into the /docs or .github/ directory) that tells GitHub (or...
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238: How to Land a Job (if you got laid off or if you're just starting out)
In this episode, Donn talks about the tips and tricks he's used over the last 20 years of consulting, freelancing and working full time to find jobs and new opporftunities. We're hoping some of these tips help those affected by the recent tech layoffs. These are tips that Donn still uses to this...
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237: Compose vs XML - Which one should you learn as an Android Dev?
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about their thoughts on Jetpack Compose and XML for Android layouts and which one you should learn first. As with every conversation in tech ... it depends on what you're trying to do, where you are at in your career, what the company is doing and more. Donn...
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236: A Terminal for Android?
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about the thought of having a terminal for Android. Have you ever wished you could whip up a quick script to get the current location of a device, add it to cron and do some automated tasks on your phone? Wouldn't it be nice to have low level access to your...
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235: Pair programming with Ben Orenstein & Tuple
In this episode, Kaushik goes solo and interviews Ben Orenstein. Ben is a prolific Ruby developer, an amazing conference speaker, an ardent vim-ster, and now the CEO of Tuple. Kaushik has been a big fan of Ben's work and was super stoked to talk to Ben and pick his brains on a host of topics:...
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234: More Product. Less Architecture?
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about how many Android applications seem to suffer from the disease of over-architecture while neglecting the product (UI/UX) itself. They discuss why this is deterimental to the user experience in the Android platform and how they've seen it evolve over the...
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233: UI Screenshot Testing with Paparazzi and John Rodriguez
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to John Rodriguez (jrod) about the Paparazzi library which allows you to perform UI screenshot testing on Android without an emulator or physical device. They talk to John about what screenshot testing is, why it's important, advantages and it's…
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232: Frustration, Flow State and "The Madness"
In this episode Donn and Kaushik talk about frustration, finding "flow state" and how it's known as "the madness" and how to deal with it. We originally were going to talk about an other topic, but during the off air banter Donn brought up how he was frustrated with losing/burning so much time on…
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231: Learning Jetpack Compose with Vinay Gaba
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to Android GDE Vinay Gaba about learning Jetpack Compose. They talk about how to learn how to use Jetpack Compose by example (and Vinay's excellent talk by the same name). How to use Jetpackcompose.app to help you find the right Jetpack Compose component and...
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230: Feeling Like an Idiot
In this episode Donn talks about that pit of the stomach feeling we all get when we feel like we should know something but we don't. It's that voice in our head as developers that makes you feel like an idiot even when you're not. Donn gives examples of how even senior engineers are subject to…
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229: Native Where You Need It with Turbo (Launch Your Side Projects Faster)
In this episode, Kaushik peppers Donn with questions about his foray into Android Turbo, Hotwire, and the concept of "Native Where You Need It". Donn recently launched Android Jumpstart, the Android client for the Jumpstart Rails trifecta. Jumpstart Rails allow you to launch your SaaS business…
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228: Expo Development with Konstantin Liakhovskii
In this episode Donn and Kaushik talk to Konstantin Liakhovskii about Expo development and how it takes cross platform development and its productivity to the next level. Konstantin dives deep into the usages and reasons why Expo (and React Native) are still very good options for companies that…
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227: Exotic Car Salesman to Mobile Developer with Ephraim Schmitt
In this episode Donn sits down and talks to Ephraim Schmitt about how he changed careers from being an exotic car salesman to a mobile software developer. It's a fascinating and inspiring story for anyone looking to get into software development. We talk about the mental and financial struggles,...
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226: The Reunion - Themes, VS Code and More
In this episode Donn and Kaushik are back together on the mic. After an extended break, they both returned renewed and ready to dive into all things software, starting off with IDE themes, plugins and what they've been up to since they were last on the show together. Links from the show Monokai…
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225: Don't Give Up - Persevere
In this episode Donn talks about something not giving up and persevering when the going gets tough in software, your career and more. It's easy to give up, but the real reward is when you persevere. Links from the show Growth Mindset Book AndroidJobs.IO Job postings are FREE on AndroidJobs.IO...
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224: Our Latest Book Recommendations
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about some of the books that they're reading and thoughts and recommendations on each. Links from the show Donn's Books Designing Data Intensive Applications Systemology Who Not How Skin in the Game Zero To Sold Freelance Tactics Kaushik's Books Staff…
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223: Productivity with TODO Apps and Personal Knowledge Management Systems
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik reunite for an episode on how they use productivity tools like various todo apps as well as how the organize information for storage and easy retrieval in their day to day lives. Shownotes In this episode, Donn and Kaushik reunite for an episode on how they use...
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222: Managing Android devices (EMM) with Prabhjot
In this episode, Kaushik talks to his good friend Prabhjot and learns about "Android Enterprise". This is the official way for companies or organizations to enable the use of Android devices and apps in the workplace. Prabhjot talks about how he setup the infrastructure to provision devices and…
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221: How to Introduce Seams into Legacy Code
In this episode, Donn continues to dive into his favorite software book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code. He talks about one of the fundamental tactics of the book: Introducing seams You'll learn what a seam is according to the book, as well as how Donn interprets it so that you can get the...
About this show
Fragmented is an AI developer podcast for engineers who want to go beyond vibe coding and ship real software.We cover AI-assisted development the way working engineers actually use it: prompting strategies, code review, testing, debugging, workflows, and building production-grade software with AI tools. No hype. No "I shipped a SaaS in a weekend" stories. Just tactics that work.Hosted by Kaushik Gopal and Iury Souza — software engineers using AI daily to build and ship real products.From vibe coding to software engineering — one episode at a time. Our goal: help you use AI to become a better engineer, not be replaced by one.
Hosted by
Kaushik Gopal, Iury Souza
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