Would updating a tool few think about make a diff(erence)?

Bill Harding

It's time to delegate to the robots.

Ben Popper

Ben and Ryan catch up with Nenne Adaora “Adora” Nwodo, who recently joined Stack Overflow as a platform engineering manager. From her childhood fascination with computers to her years as a software engineer at Microsoft, Adora shares her evolution as a technologist. She tells Ben and Ryan about her experience interviewing for and accepting a role at Stack Overflow, the projects she’s working on in her new role, her nonprofit work in the edtech space, and how she prioritizes happiness in her career choices.

Eira May

Mark Doble, CEO of Alexi, an AI-powered litigation platform, joins Ben to talk about GenAI’s transformative effect on the legal world. Their conversation touches on the importance of ensuring accurate results and eliminating hallucinations when AI tools are used for legal work, how lawyers (like the rest of us) can adapt to GenAI, and what Alexi’s tech stack looks like.

Eira May

Dan Parsons, co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Thoughtful AI, talks about how his company is using AI to simplify how providers get paid by insurance companies.

Ryan Donovan

The home team is joined by Kinnaird McQuaid, founder and CTO of NightVision, which offers developer-friendly API and web app security testing. Kinnaird talks about his path from school-age hacker to white-hat security expert, why it’s important to build security practices into the software development lifecycle, how GenAI is changing security testing, and what security teams need to understand about developers’ working lives.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan talk all things mobile app development with Kenny Johnston, Chief Product Officer at Instabug. They explore what’s unique about mobile observability, how AI tools can reduce developer toil, and why user experience matters so much for app quality.

Eira May

Wondering how to go about creating an LLM that understands your custom data? Start here.

Cameron R. Wolfe, PhD

Ben talks with Eran Yahav, a former researcher on IBM Watson who’s now the CTO and cofounder of AI coding company Tabnine. Ben and Eran talk about the intersection of software development and AI, the evolution of program synthesis, and Eran’s path from IBM research to startup CTO. They also discuss how to balance the productivity and learning gains of AI coding tools (especially for junior devs) against very real concerns around quality, security, and tech debt.

Eira May

Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti, who spent many years as a technical writer for Splunk and New Relic, joins Ben and Ryan for a conversation about the evolving role of documentation in software development. They explore how documentation can (and should) be integrated with code, the importance of quality control, and the hurdles to maintaining up-to-date documentation. Plus: Why technical writers shouldn’t be afraid of LLMs.

Eira May

Ben and Ryan sit down with public interest technologist Sukhi Gulati Gilbert, a senior product manager at Consumer Reports, for a conversation about digital data privacy. They talk about why digital privacy matters, the challenges consumers face in safeguarding their data, and the legislative gaps in privacy protection, along with the app Sukhi is working, Permission Slip, that helps users exercise their rights to digital data privacy. Plus: Why it might be worth reducing your digital footprint.

Eira May

Most job interviews are stressful. This one is not.

Kyle Mitofsky

Web2 and Web3 developers don’t always have the kindest view of one another.

Mayukha Vadari

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

Will prompt engineering replace the coder’s art or will software engineers who understand code still have a place in future software lifecycles?

Ryan Donovan

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

An update to the research that the User Experience team is running over the next quarter.

Piper Lawson

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

Here's a (brief) summary of language model finetuning, the various approaches that exist, their purposes, and what we know about how they work.

Cameron R. Wolfe, PhD

On this sponsored episode, Ben and Ryan talk to Sunny Patel, Staff Software Engineer at PayPal, and Kyle Prinsloo, a developer and a PayPal partner, about all the ways that Fastlane by PayPal makes developers’ lives easier. They explore the needs that both merchants and consumers have for creating a seamless checkout experience, the importance of reducing friction in payment processes, and how documentation can directly assist the integration experience.

Ben Popper

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