The Bob Bloom Show

#35 - Climbing the AI Coding Ladder
March 10, 2026
13:30
Anthropic decided that they had had enough of me for the week, and cut me off. Instead of availing myself of their entreaties to buy pay-as-you-go credits, I decided to take a break from my new custom application, for my PHP Serverless News podcast. I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick episode, that I should not be so silent with my podcasts. I am taking an impromptu podcasting sabbatical, to do this new app. And, to soak up all the learning. I am a bit late to the Code With AI party. I have much catching up to do. Doing this app is catching me up.
Attributions
Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, Op.21:

Beethoven's Symphony No.9, Op.125:

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The Bob Bloom Show comes to you thanks to my wonderful, and intrepid, sponsors of my PHP Serverless Project, which includes this podcast.
They took a chance on me, to benefit our worldwide PHP Community!
Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
Luke Galea
Restream.io subscription sponsor
Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
(Luke Galea's website)
Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
Tolga Ercan
Basecamp subscription sponsor
Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
(Tolga Ercan's website)