Today’s guest is Jonathan Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Moderne and creator of OpenRewrite, an open-source automated refactoring ecosystem for source code built to help developers eliminate tech debt. He tells Ben and Ryan about the challenges of automatic refactoring, how Java continues to evolve, and what kind of impact tech debt has on software development. Jonathan also describes the transition from open-source project to startup, why clean code is so important, and the role AI plays for developers right now.

Eira May

Chris Fowler, Director of Engine for Call of Duty, tells Ben and Ryan about his path from marine biology to game development, the ins and outs of game engines, and the technical feats involved in creating massively popular games like Call of Duty. Chris also explains why community feedback is so critical in game development and offers his advice for aspiring game developers.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan are joined by Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, an AI workflow orchestration platform. They talk about how the transformer architecture supplanted convolutional neural networks in AI applications, the infrastructure required for AI implementation, the implications of regulating AI, and the value of synthetic data.

Eira May

Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data, joins Ben and Ryan for a deep-dive conversation about the evolving landscape of web data. They talk through the challenges involved in data collection, the role of synthetic data in training large AI models, and how public data access is becoming more restrictive. Or also shares his thoughts on the importance of transparency in data practices, the likely future of data regulation, and the philosophical implications of more people using AI to innovate and solve problems.

Eira May

Today’s guest is Logan Kilpatrick, a senior product manager at Google, who tells Ben about his journey from software engineering to machine learning to product management, all with an emphasis on reducing developer friction. They talk through the challenges of non-determinism in AI models and how Google is addressing these issues with a new feature: Grounding with Google Search. Plus, what working at the Apple Store taught Logan about product management.

Eira May

Tom Occhino, now Chief Product Officer at Vercel, tells Ben about how he contributed to the development of React at Facebook and the contentious decision to make React open-source. They also talk about what community feedback has been like on Next.js 15, Vercel’s GenAI web development tool, and how Vercel is rethinking IDEs.

Eira May

Ben welcomes Ricky Robinett, VP of Developer Relations and Community at Cloudflare, and his eight-year-old daughter Fay for a chat about how AI tools are helping new developers get started and how to encourage your kids to try coding.

Eira May

Ben chats with Shayne Longpre and Robert Mahari of the Data Provenance Initiative about what GenAI means for the data commons. They discuss the decline of public datasets, the complexities of fair use in AI training, the challenges researchers face in accessing data, potential applications for synthetic data, and the evolving legal landscape surrounding AI and copyright.

Eira May

Ben welcomes Sonar CEO Tariq Shaukat for a conversation about AI coding tools’ potential to boost developer productivity—and how to balance those potential gains against code quality and security concerns. They talk about Sonar’s origins as an open-source code quality tool, the excellent reasons to embrace a “clean as you code” philosophy, and how to determine where AI coding tools can be helpful and where they can’t (yet).

Eira May

Ben Popper chats with Keith Babo, Head of Product at Solo.io, about how the API security landscape is changing in the era of GenAI. They talk through the role of governance in AI, the importance of data protection, and the role API gateways play in enhancing security and functionality. Keith shares his insights on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, protecting PII, and the necessity of human-in-the-loop AI development.

Eira May

Austin Spiegel, CTO and co-founder of Sift, tells Ben and Ryan about his journey from studying film to working at SpaceX to founding Sift.

Eira May

Ben Popper interviews Vladislav Voroninski, CEO of Helm.ai, about unsupervised learning and the future of AI in autonomous driving. They discuss GenAI’s role in bridging the gap between simulation and reality, the challenges of scaling autonomous driving systems, the commercial potential of partial autonomy, and why software is emerging as a key differentiator in vehicle sales. Vlad spotlights the value of multimodal foundation models and how compute shortages affect AI startups.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan chat with Daniela Miao, cofounder and CTO of Momento, a real-time data platform, about real-time observability, the challenges of multi-tenancy in databases and caching, the use of WebAssembly in UI development, and the benefits of Rust.

Eira May

How are developers actually using GenAI-powered coding tools now that some of the initial hype has faded?

Eira May

Founder and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal tells Ben, Cassidy, and Eira about the developer challenges he aims to solve with his new venture, Harness, an AI-driven software development platform meant to take the pain out of DevOps. Jyoti shares his journey as a founder, his perspective on the venture capital landscape, and his reasons behind his decision to raise debt capital for Harness.

Eira May

Ben chats with Gias Uddin, an assistant professor at York University in Toronto, where he teaches software engineering, data science, and machine learning. His research focuses on designing intelligent tools for testing, debugging, and summarizing software and AI systems. He recently published a paper about detecting errors in code generated by LLMs. Gias and Ben discuss the concept of hallucinations in AI-generated code, the need for tools to detect and correct those hallucinations, and the potential for AI-powered tools to generate QA tests.

Eira May

Ryan chats with Russ d’Sa, cofounder and CEO of LiveKit, about multimodal AI and the technology that makes it possible. They talk through the tech stack required, including the use of WebRTC and UDP protocols for real-time audio and video streaming. They also explore the big challenges involved in ensuring privacy and security in streaming data, namely end-to-end encryption and obfuscation.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan talk to Scott McCarty, Global Senior Principal Product Manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, about the intersection between LLMs (large language models) and open source. They discuss the challenges and benefits of open-source LLMs, the importance of attribution and transparency, and the revolutionary potential for LLM-driven applications. They also explore the role of LLMs in code generation, testing, and documentation.

Eira May

A conversation with our developers about how we made Stack Overflow for accessible for everyone.

Eira May

Ryan and Eira talk with Stack Overflow senior research analyst Erin Yepis about the results of our 2024 Developer Survey, which polled more than 65,000 developers about the tools they use, the technologies they want to learn, their experiences at work, and much more. Erin highlights what the survey reveals about devs’ favorite programming languages (JavaScript, HTML, Python), the rise of Rust, the popularity of embedded technologies (Raspberry Pi, Arduino), developer sentiment around AI, and why tech debt tops the list of developer frustrations.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan are joined by Cortex cofounders Anish Dhar, CEO, and Ganesh Datta, CTO. Cortex offers an internal developer portal that helps devs document and reinforce organizational best practices and improve developer productivity. The portal includes features like scorecards that incentivize developers to improve their work and AI-powered search to make finding information easier.

Eira May

Josh Zhang, a staff site reliability engineer at Stack Overflow, tells Ryan and Eira how the Stack Exchange network defends against scraping bots. They also cover the emergence of human botnets, why DDoS attacks have spiked in the last couple of years, and the constant balancing act of protecting sites from attack without inhibiting legitimate users.

Eira May

In this episode, Ben interviews Jannis Kallinikos, a professor at Luiss University in Rome, Italy about his new book Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy, coauthored with Cristina Alaimo. They discuss the social impact of data, explore the idea that data filters how we see the world and interact with each other, and highlight the need for social accountability in data tracking and surveillance.

Eira May

Ryan chats with Jon Bevan, a software engineer currently building the cloud version of Scriptrunner, an Atlassian app, about the concept of tech debt. They explore how tech debt can arise from outdated technology choices, shortcuts, and the need for maintenance work. They also delve into the challenges of upgrading dependencies and the potential scope creep of requirements and features over time.

Eira May