The Last Line of Defense: Unaliving End-of-Life w/ David Welch

Everyday Heroes

And the award for the longest podcast intro goes to checks notes Hayden. (Holy cow... compensating for something?)

Ever wondered what happens when you let your childhood menace grow up and give him INTENTIONAL access to things that break? Meet Dave Welch, the guy whose mom literally had to lock away the household tools because he kept disassembling everything and failing to put it back together (spoiler: turns out this is EXACTLY the right background for software engineering).

In this episode:

• The shocking confessions of a former household appliance serial killer ("Several remotes and vacuum cleaners later, my mom's like, 'cool, the tools are now locked away'")
• His brief romance with the culinary arts (complete with getting kicked in the feet by an executive sushi chef on day TWO)
• The moment when "hey, I'm seven bucks an hour part-time, but you're paid to be here, so act accordingly" became his entire professional philosophy
• Why he's the one person on Earth who WANTS your old deprecated packages (it's literally his job to keep your technological regrets alive)
• The absolutely wild legal loophole that lets Texans LEGALLY STEAL HOUSES (which honestly explains so much about Texas)

Featured Projects & Links:

• Find Dave:
  • [email protected]
  • @david_welch on Twitter/X
  • The guy actively praying you'll finally deprecate your ancient packages
  • Chief Software Architect at HeroDevs (where abandoned code goes to live, not die)

Key Quote: "It started out with software, which is great, because if I broke it, I could restore it." - Dave Welch, explaining his entire career philosophy

Fun Fact: Our guest correctly identified that riding a motorized barstool while drunk in Ohio ISN'T technically drunk driving because... Ohio, obviously.

Hosted by Hayden Ballio and Wendy Hurst
Brought to you by HeroDevs - Because someone has to keep your end-of-life software from becoming end-of-world software.

(Next time a compliance officer asks why you're still running AngularJS, just send them this episode and say "THESE GUYS WILL FIX IT" - Dave literally told you to.)