Back to Fallthrough

A Change Is Gonna Come

Episode Ep 95 October 31, 2026 1 hr 7 min

A Change Is Gonna Come

From Fallthrough Fallthrough Media

We've got Nick Gerace back! Last time he was on he was at System Initiative, but now he's joined our very own Steve Klabnik at East River Source Control! Kris and Matt catch up with Nick on the move from one startup to another, what it's been like building beyond Git, and the consequences of our industry optimizing for speed over everything else.

Nick dives into why ERSC is betting hard on monorepos and why their platform is centered around changes and not pull requests. The trio then discusses the importance of not allowing LLMs to co-author commits, how and why software is getting worse over time, and the nonsense that is the industry paying 300% to hire someone new rather than give someone a 30% raise that's already employed.

If you're a fan of long and deep discussions, then this episode's expanded edition is absolutely for you! Available to our supporters, the trio digs deep into a variety of topics. Kris argues that Git in its creator's eye is a full VCS in the same way the Linux kernel is a full operating system and that Git and Go share a history of people misunderstanding what it means to be decentralized. The trio discuss the prioritization of free features and usage that has led to many of GitHub's stability problems. Along the way they make a pit stop at why you shouldn't believe that aliens helped build the pyramids if you don't believe they helped build your cellphone and whether local dev is dead. What's that? You're not a supporter yet and you want to listen to that extra hour of content? You can fix that by going to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe and becoming a supporter today!

If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/d_KB6n3RkXA.

No episode of the aftershow this week. We'll have more aftershow episodes soon! In the meantime, catch up on previous episodes at https://break.show.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:

Prologue (00:00:00)
Chapter 1: Not From a Shure SM7B (00:01:37)
Chapter 2: If There's Something You Got to Tell Me (00:03:20)
Chapter 3: Where Do You Need Me? (00:06:12)
Chapter 4: It's Time to Move Beyond Git (00:08:58)
Chapter 5: We Have a Big Belief in Monorepos (00:12:50)
Chapter 6: Complaining About GitHub Since the Day I Started (00:17:13)
Chapter 7: So Refreshing to Be Change-Based (00:21:45)
Chapter 16: What's LLM Usage Look Like at ERSC? (00:27:16)
Chapter 17: Where We've Been a Little More Flexible (00:29:49)
Chapter 18: The Context Sharing Nobody Talks About (00:34:10)
Chapter 19: I'm Not Even Fully Decided on That (00:36:42)
Chapter 20: A Penny Off Next Quarter (00:40:31)
Chapter 21: Software Is Getting Remarkably Worse (00:43:24)
Chapter 22: What If Everything Was Just Actually Better? (00:45:49)
Chapter 28: Don't Play With Our Lives (00:48:19)
Chapter 29: Your Goal Is to Be a Dry Lifeguard (00:50:11)
Chapter 30: We Have a Lot More Power Than We Think (00:55:45)
Chapter 34: We Love to Promise Short-Termism (00:58:07)
Chapter 35: We Often Place Blame on the Wrong People (01:00:48)
Epilogue (01:05:17)

Hosts

Matthew Sanabria - Host
Kris Brandow - Host
Nick Gerace - Guest

Socials:

(00:00) - Prologue
(01:37) - Chapter 1: Not From a Shure SM7B
(03:20) - Chapter 2: If There's Something You Got to Tell Me
(06:12) - Chapter 3: Where Do You Need Me?
(08:58) - Chapter 4: It's Time to Move Beyond Git
(12:50) - Chapter 5: We Have a Big Belief in Monorepos
(17:13) - Chapter 6: Complaining About GitHub Since the Day I Started
(21:45) - Chapter 7: So Refreshing to Be Change-Based
(27:16) - Chapter 16: What's LLM Usage Look Like at ERSC?
(29:49) - Chapter 17: Where We've Been a Little More Flexible
(34:10) - Chapter 18: The Context Sharing Nobody Talks About
(36:42) - Chapter 19: I'm Not Even Fully Decided on That
(40:31) - Chapter 20: A Penny Off Next Quarter
(43:24) - Chapter 21: Software Is Getting Remarkably Worse
(45:49) - Chapter 22: What If Everything Was Just Actually Better?
(48:19) - Chapter 28: Don't Play With Our Lives
(50:11) - Chapter 29: Your Goal Is to Be a Dry Lifeguard
(55:45) - Chapter 30: We Have a Lot More Power Than We Think
(58:07) - Chapter 34: We Love to Promise Short-Termism
(01:00:48) - Chapter 35: We Often Place Blame on the Wrong People
(01:05:17) - Epilogue

Community discussion

Join the conversation