Death planning, agent battles, and helicopters at MMS Midway

Andrew Pla sets up shop on the San Diego waterfront at MMS Midway Edition for a pair of bar sessions, with the occasional helicopter flyover from the USS Midway providing the soundtrack.

First up is Matt Zaske, longtime MMS regular and self-described conference mascot (stickers and all). Matt talks about his two sessions this year: a GitHub, CI/CD, and Actions deep dive aimed at sysadmins who aren’t developers, and a happy hour session on death planning and preserving your digital life. He makes the case that planning for the people you leave behind is as much about emotion as it is about tech, and that knowing what doesn’t matter (goodbye, home lab) is just as important as knowing what does (the Home Assistant setup your family depends on). Matt also shares how he’s using AI as a “trust but verify” sidekick, from writing ESP32 code he’d rather not fight with Python over, to having GitHub Copilot run code reviews on his own pull requests as a solo operator.

Then returning guest Danny Stutz, fresh off his first time speaking at MMS, breaks down his coding agent battle royale. Danny built an arena that runs the same prompt against multiple AI coding agents using the same model, then compares completion time, token usage, and cost. The audience-submitted experiments ranged from a protein powder price finder to a Tinder for lost socks (complete with a “match” button that runs away from your mouse). Danny shares why open source harnesses like Pi and Aider stood out, why a simple “hello” can burn thousands of tokens, and why AI spend tracking is about to become a big deal for companies. The conversation wraps with Danny reflecting on his first big career risk and a reminder that taking chances, making mistakes, and finding your people is how growth happens.