The Stack Overflow podcast is a weekly conversation about working in software development, learning to code, and the art and culture of computer programming. Hosted by Paul Ford and Ben Popper, the series features questions from our community, interviews with fascinating guests, and hot takes on what’s happening in tech. Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow is empowering the world to develop technology through collective knowledge. It’s best known for being the largest, most trusted online community for developers and technologists. More than 100 million people come to Stack Overflow every month to ask questions, help solve coding problems, and develop new skills.
Being creative with math: The immersive artist who traded a sketchpad for a keyboard
Check out Luyang’s work at his website or in this Youtube playlist. To make these animations, Luyang uses Processing, a 20-year-old language that started out as a visual way to teach programming but evolved into a professional development tool. Logitech selected Luyang as one of the ambassadors to show off what you can do with their MX Keys S Combo. Shout out to George Profenza for dropping a top answer on Position of a vector in coordinate system (Processing/p5.js).
Like Python++ for AI developers
If you missed the first part of our conversation with Chris, listen to it here.Modular’s new programming language, Mojo, is built for AI developers. Check out their docs or find them on GitHub.Connect with Chris on LinkedIn. Shoutout to user DanielGibbs, who earned a Lifeboat badge by answering what is the difference between getType() and getClass() in java?.
Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C
Modular built a new programming language, Mojo, for AI developers. Explore their docs or find them on GitHub.Chris is on LinkedIn. Congratulations to user Shengyuan Lu, whose answer to Priority queue ordering of elements merited a Lifeboat badge.
Forget AGI. Let’s built ADI: Augmented Developer Intelligence
If you missed the first part of this conversation, listen to it here.Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). Check out their blog or start coding.ICYMI: Stack Overflow recently implemented semantic search, allowing users to search using natural language.Explore Stack Overflow Labs to learn more about OverflowAI and other projects.Amjad Masad is on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub.Congratulations to Stack Overflow user macxpat, whose answer to How to install Linux packages in Replit earned a Lifeboat badge.
Multiplayer programming on mobile: a chat with Replit CEO Amjad Masad
Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). See what they’re up to on their blog or just start coding.RIP Google Wave, one of the greats.Find Amjad on LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, or via his website.
Founder vs Investor: What VCs are really looking for
After founding two companies, including StrongDM, a dynamic management access platform (explore their docs here), Elizabeth took a “break” by co-authoring a book. Founder vs Investor: The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO is about what she learned as a founder and executive about the founder-investor relationship. Order it on Bookshop or Amazon.Elizabeth’s co-author is investor and advisor Jerry Neumann, managing director of Neu Venture Capital.One option for your next weekend outing: a ride and tie.Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn.Connect with Jerry Neumann on LinkedIn.Nice work: User Reap’s answer to Get String Name from Enum in C# earned them a Lifeboat badge.
Computers are learning to read our minds
Gašper’s work combines machine learning, statistical modeling, neuroimaging, and behavioral experiments “to better understand how neural networks learn internal representations in speech and how humans learn to speak.”One thing that surprised him about generative adversarial networks (GANs)? How innovative they are, capable of generating English words they’ve never heard before based on words they have.Read about how AI is restoring a stroke survivor’s ability to speak.Universal grammar proposes a hypothetical structure in the brain responsible for humans’ innate language abilities. The concept is credited to the famous linguist Noam Chomsky; read his take on GenAI.AI expert Yoshua Bengio recently signed an open letter asking AI labs to pause the training of AI systems powerful enough to pass the Turing test. Read about his reasoning.Find the Berkeley Speech and Communication Network here.Find Gašper on his website, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Or dive into his research.Congratulations to Lifeboat badge winner and self-proclaimed data nerd John Rotenstein, who saved How can I delete files older than seven days in Amazon S3? from the ignominy of ignorance.
You can’t spell Zapier without API
Zapier is a no-code automation platform that allows users to create custom workflows for their critical work apps. Learn how it works, peruse the blog, or sign up to try beta AI features.Check out Reid’s article about how to write more effective AI prompts.Zapier built a natural language actions (NLA) API to enable AI models to independently use natural language to complete Zapier actions.You know the doge, but do you know the dog? RIP Balltze.Find Reid on LinkedIn and the social network formerly known as Twitter.Find Kyle on LinkedIn, GitHub, and text-based social media.
Job description: professional workplace bestie
Stack Overflow’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) focus on aspects of employees’ personhood, “who you are outside of your role, who you bring to every single room that you enter,” Joey explains. Among our ERGs are Black and Brown, LGBTQ+, MIND (mental illness and neurodiversity), and a group for caregivers and parents. Interested in learning more about our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, plus more about what it’s like to work at Stack Overflow? Start here.Members of Stack’s MIND ERG contributed invaluable perspective, insights, and feedback that helped us write our two-parter on ADHD and neurodiversity: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone and What developers with ADHD want you to know.Joey is on LinkedIn.Natasha is also on LinkedIn.Kyle is on Linked, GitHub, and text-based social media.Stack Overflow user apostofes earned a Great Question badge for their query How do I get the value of a tensor in PyTorch?, which has helped 175,000 people and counting.
Fighting comment spam at Facebook scale
Rockset is a real-time search and analytics database. Explore their docs and developer tools here.We here at Stack Overflow recently implemented our own vector search. Here’s a technical deep dive into how we did it. Louis is on LinkedIn.Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner user7610, who rescued C++ application terminates with 143 exit code. What does it mean? with a solid answer.
Medical research made understandable with AI
Sorcero uses a mix of natural language processing, generative AI, and even more old school symbolic AI, where they craft their own ontologies, to try and ingest that river of new medical data and make it easier to search and comprehend. Less than 0.2% of the global population can read a medical paper! AI can help make these dense works up to 700x more readable. Medical Affairs Teams are the groups inside big pharmaceutical companies that helps surface the right information to health providers. It’s hard for them to keep up with the thousands of new articles and research papers being published each month, much less unpack that information. Connect with Dipanwita Das and Hellmut Adolphs on LinkedIn. Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner John Carrell for saving the question Self join vs. inner join with an excellent answer.
Semantic search without the napalm grandma exploit
Last month, we announced the launch of OverflowAI from the stage of WeAreDevelopers. To learn more about AI-driven products and features in the works, check out Stack Overflow Labs. Among the projects Alex works on is a semantic search API and the new search experience on Stack Overflow for Teams.LLMs can be vulnerable to jailbreak attacks like the napalm grandma exploit.Kyle is on GitHub, Linked, and text-based social media.Michael is on LinkedIn.Alex is on LinkedIn.Shoutout to Lifeboat badge winner Pushpendra, who scooped Error: Invalid postback or callback argument from a churning ocean of ignorance.
Making event-driven development predictable with Discover
SPONSORED BY DISCOVER FINANCIALGo deeper into Technology at Discover. If your interested in working on an event-driven architecture that uses domain-driven design within a financial organization, check out jobs.discover.com.Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.
Want better answers from your data? Ask better questions
The mission of Night Shift Development is to democratize data analytics to help organizations and users of all skill levels understand their data. Their flagship product, ClearQuery, is a data intelligence and analytics platform designed for nontechnical users. ClearQuery has a free version that lets you try out the full array of features. Learn how it works and register here to get started, gratis.Learn how Stack Overflow implemented semantic search to allow users to search using natural language.Read about why self-healing code is the future of software development.Tim is on LinkedIn. Thanks and congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Boann, whose answer to Sort four numbers without an array has been viewed 23,000 times and counting.