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Issue 297: Making your dev life easier

Ah, the life of the developer. It's never quite easy, is it? But this week, we're looking at the ways your world might be incrementally improved. On the pod, Pia Nilsson from Spotify's Backstage joined us to talk about what makes their open-source IDP so ideal for developers. Jeff Hollan from Snowflake shared how they went from a database to an AI platform, and how their data marketplace is making AI development easier. And if you'd like to be reminded how hard things used to be, we've got the history of software development on the blog from AWS' Darko Mesaroš, looking back as far as 70 years to how development has changed through the years.

But nothing is easy in life, right? For instance, math is hard, and some are wondering if life is a form of computation. We've got that story for you from the web, plus the tales of two beginners trying to break into software development—one who can't read technical tutorials, and one who can't get an entry-level job with no experience. And we have one of the hardest things of all for you too...a set of IKEA instructions (although it's a pretty good medium to visualize quicksort, unlike when you're trying to build a desk.)

So in conclusion? The life of a developer may not be so easy, but we made finding some more interesting tales and answers from around the web easy for you. If you're curious about Leonardo da Vinci, becoming first author, or Jack Swigert's thought processes, we have all those answers from users. We've even made it easy for you to add a website to your vape, if that's something you're into. That one's easy access for you in the links below.

From the blog

Getting Backstage in front of a shifting dev experience

Ryan welcomes Pia Nilsson, GM for Backstage and head of developer experience at Spotify, to discuss the evolution and adoption of Backstage, the impact of AI on dev experience, and how Spotify approaches platform engineering and standardization to help teams solve for specific needs.

The history and future of software development (part 1)

Even if we go back just a few years, software engineering looked a bit different. But what if we go back 20 years? How about 70? Would we even be able to recognize the way software was being built back then?

Democratizing your data access with AI agents

Jeff Hollan, director of product at Snowflake, joins Ryan to discuss the role that data plays in making AI and AI agents better. Along the way, they discuss how a database leads to an AI platform, Snowflake’s new data marketplace, and the role data will play in AI agents.

2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey: A TL;DR for Leaders

We’ve consolidated six key learnings from this year’s survey—what the data says, trends from year’s past, why it matters—along with actionable takeaways for business leaders in any organization.

Interesting questions

Was Leonardo da Vinci recognized as an inventor during his lifetime, or mainly as an artist?

That depends on what the 16th century Italians meant by inventore.

Did Jack Swigert really cover the LEM detachment switch with a paper note in Apollo 13?

Sometimes you have to fix lousy UI design yourself.

Advice for a help desk guy trying to break into software development

To get an entry-level job, you still need to some experience in the programming language it requires.

My supervisor wants to make herself the first author on our paper, what should I do?

If you're the senior contributor, first author isn't even the best spot on the list.

Links from around the web

Kvick sört

Copy this for your next whiteboard interview.

How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner

Jokes on you: Snarfus are old news. All the cool kids implement Chumbucket.

Is life a form of computation?

The difference between stoners and cutting-edge scientists is peer review.

Hosting a website on a disposable vape

Careful, kids! You could be smoking someone's Green Day fan page.

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