The Transactional Trap: How 97% of Developers Are Using AI Wrong w/ Leon Noel & Danny Thompson

This week, Robbie and Adam welcome Leon Noel and Danny Thompson to talk AI workflows, agentic development, and whether the job of coding has fundamentally changed. They dig into prompt engineering, mental models, OpenClaw setups, the rise of harnesses and orchestration layers, and why testing in production might actually be fine. Along the way, they debate git rebase versus git merge, the death of LeetCode interviews, why Cursor feels different than Copilot, and whether Pokemon Go is still thriving in 2026.

Presented by Warp: https://www.warp.dev/oz

In this episode:

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Welcome & Introductions
• 00:02:55 Whiskey Tasting: Matsui Single Cask Sakura
• 00:14:11 Hot Takes: Git Rebase vs Git Merge
• 00:20:30 The AI Revolution: From Skepticism to Adoption
• 00:23:21 OpenClaw Deep Dive: AI Agents While You Sleep
• 00:49:05 Cursor Web & Long-Running Agents
• 00:35:58 The Mental Model Problem: How Most Devs Use AI Wrong
• 00:55:44 AI Prompting Masterclass: Tips from the Experts
• 01:11:47 Code Review with AI: SLMs, Bug Bot & Snyk
• 00:32:47 Breaking Into Tech & The Future of Junior Developers
• 01:16:36 Pokemon Go Nostalgia & Wrap Up

Links

• Matsui Single Malt Sakura Cask: https://dewinespot.co/products/matsui-single-malt-sakura-cask

• 100 Devs: https://leonnoel.com/100devs/

• Resilient Coders: https://www.resilientcoders.org/

• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

• Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

• Opencode: https://opencode.ai/

• Warp: https://www.warp.dev/

• Pi: https://pi.ai/

• Codex 5.3: https://openai.com/

• Snyk: https://snyk.io/

• Bug Bot: https://bugbot.ai/

• Reptile: https://reptile.ai/

• CodeRabbit: https://coderabbit.ai/

• Antigravity: https://antigravity.dev/

• GitHub: https://github.com/

• Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/

• Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/

• TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/

• Svelte: https://svelte.dev/

• Solid: https://www.solidjs.com/

• Shepherd: https://shepherdjs.dev/

• Atlassian Forge: https://developer.atlassian.com/platform/forge/

• Rovo Dev: https://www.atlassian.com/software/rovo

• HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/

• Playwright: https://playwright.dev/

• Pokemon Go: https://pokemongolive.com/

• Commit Your Code Conference: https://commityourcode.com/

Connect with Leon

• Website: https://leonnoel.com/

• X / Twitter: https://x.com/leonnoel

Connect with Danny

• Website: https://www.dthompsondev.com/

• X / Twitter: https://x.com/DThompsonDev

Connect with the hosts

• Robbie Wagner: https://x.com/RobbieWagner

• Chuck Carpenter: https://x.com/chuckcarpenter

• Adam Argyle: https://x.com/argyleink

Subscribe and stay in touch

• Website: https://whiskey.fm

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-web-and-whatnot/id1552776603

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/19jiuHAqzeKnkleQUpZxDf

• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1552776603

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhiskeyWebAndWhatnot

Whiskey Web and Whatnot Merch
Enjoying the podcast and want us to make more? Help support us by picking up some of our fresh merch at https://whiskey.fund.