In this episode of Leaders of Code, host Ben Popper, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar, and GitLab Field CTO Lee Faus explore how GenAI is reshaping software development practices.

Ryan speaks with Edo Liberty, Founder and CEO of Pinecone, about building vector databases, the power of embeddings, the evolution of RAG, and fine-tuning AI models.

Eira May

Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar sat down with Ryan at HumanX 2025 to talk about how Stack is integrating AI into its public platform, the enormous importance of a high-quality knowledge base in your AI journey, how AI tools are empowering junior developers to build better software, and much more.

Eira May

Kyle interviews Maria Hutt about building the Ionic mobile framework.

Ryan Donovan

Tillman Elser, AI/ML lead at Sentry, joins Ryan for a conversation about improving error monitoring with AI and ML. They talk through the challenges of analyzing stack traces, the innovative use of embeddings to improve error grouping, the trial-and-error process of developing algorithms, and where Sentry’s AI capabilities are headed next.

Eira May

Lisbeth Kaufman, Head of Climate Tech at AWS, sits down with Ryan to talk about her work helping climate tech startups get off the ground and the role startups can play in addressing the climate change crisis. She highlights a few projects to get excited about, including ones focused on fusion energy and sustainable agriculture.

Eira May

In our very first episode, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar talks to Don Woodlock, Head of Global Healthcare Solutions at InterSystems, about the challenges in their AI journey and the critical role of a robust data strategy in any successful AI initiative.

Ryan welcomes Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp, to the show to talk about reimagining the terminal. They also discuss why Warp was built in Rust (“it’s definitely harder”), how AI is transforming developer tools, and what Zach (formerly a principal engineer at Google) learned building Docs and Sheets.

Eira May

Jeremy “Jezz” Kellway, VP of Engineering for Analytics and Data & AI at EDB (Enterprise Database), joins Ryan for a conversation about Postgres and AI. They unpack how Postgres is becoming the standard database for AI applications, the importance of managing unstructured data, and the implications of data sovereignty and governance in AI.

Eira May

What are the capabilities, constraints, and benefits of running AI models on edge devices?

Ryan Donovan

Software security expert Tanya Janca, author of Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding and Staff DevRel at AppSec company Semgrep, joins Ryan to talk about secure coding practices.

Eira May

Olga Beregovaya, VP of AI at Smartling, joins Ryan and Ben to explore the evolution and specialization of language models in AI.

Eira May

How Diffblue leverages machine learning techniques to write effective unit tests.

Eira May

And how the platform engineering landscape is evolving.

Eira May

How a theater major became a fullstack engineer building software to manage climate change.

Ryan Donovan

Minh Nguyen, VP of Engineering at Transcend, joins Ryan for a conversation about the complexities of privacy and consent in tech, from the challenges organizations face in managing data privacy to the importance of consent management tools to the evolving landscape of privacy regulations.

Eira May

Ken Stott, Field CTO of API platform Hasura, tells Ryan about the data doom loop: the concept that organizations are spending lots of money on data systems without seeing improvements in data quality or efficiency.

Eira May

Can your database handle a billion customers per month?

Ryan Donovan

Sagar Batchu, CEO and cofounder of API tooling company Speakeasy, talks with Ryan about the evolving API landscape, AI integration, the role of human technologists in an increasingly automated environment, and what people building APIs right now should keep in mind.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan chat with Babak Behzad, senior engineering manager at Verkada, about running a pipeline that vectorizes 25,000 images per second into a custom-built vector database. They discuss whether the speed is due to technical brains or brawn, the benefits of processing on device vs. off, and the importance of privacy when using image recognition on frames from a video camera.

Ryan Donovan

Jaime Torrealba, a frontend developer currently at Push Security, joins Ryan to talk about 3D graphics and web development. Their conversation ranges from the evolution of technologies like WebGL and WebGPU to the importance of performance optimization for different devices to the frameworks available for creating 3D experiences. Jaime also explains the layers of abstraction in 3D development and shares some insight into what the future of 3D applications might look like.

Eira May

Ryan is joined by Fynn Glover (CEO) and Ben Papillon (CTO), cofounders of Schematic, for a conversation about managing feature flags in software development. They explore theoretical and practical applications of feature flags, the issue of tech debt, and how orgs could manage entitlements and pricing models more effectively.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan are joined by RJ Tuit, Head of UI Platform and Client Architect at ClickUp, formerly an engineering director at Microsoft. They talk about ClickUp’s vision for a comprehensive productivity platform, the complexities of measuring productivity and UX in software development, how to navigate the hype around AI, and more. Plus: What it was like scaling Microsoft’s cloud services to meet the unprecedented demands of a global workforce in quarantine.

Eira May

John Graham-Cumming, CTO of Cloudflare, joins Ben and Ryan for a conversation about the latest trends in internet usage highlighted in Cloudflare's 2024 Year in Review report.

Eira May