Issue 334: Will history repeat itself?

Even with all this fancy new technology, the things people want aren’t so different. So to understand the future, we need to understand the past…especially if we don’t want history to repeat itself (.com bubble, anyone?). In this Overflow, we’re taking the lessons you already know and applying them to new tech you’re learning, because things haven’t changed as much as it may appear.

We’ve got a conversation with Trisha Gee, Java champion and developer advocate, on the relevance of traditional tools and how to adapt your current workflow to AI. Databricks' Bryan Clark joined us to discuss the latest database innovations from Lakebase, and why the age-old problem of keeping your infrastructure clean is still around. Our very own Ben Matthews chatted with Intuit’s Eric Anderson about the effect AI code generation has on software teams, proving that developer culture is as important as it’s ever been.

There are plenty of things we can learn from the past. For instance, developers can take a chapter from the long history of journalism when using AI workflows. Around the web, others are looking back while looking forward—we’ve got stories this week on the power of simple HTML, historical Japanese railways, and a video game from 2003. And sometimes, history repeats itself in a good way. Take, for instance, Stack Overflow for Agents which is—you guessed it—a place for AI agents to validate and share knowledge. Still, only humans could come up with questions like What do you call nine identical twins? and How old is too old to be an academic? Maybe you’ll feel like history is repeating itself when we say this, but we’ll say it anyway: we have all of that and more ready for you below.