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.
Understanding SRE
Vlad is Head of Research and Development at Siemens Healthineers, the healthcare arm of tech conglomerate Siemens. He wrote about SRE on our blog here.His book, Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations, is available now. Site reliability engineering (SRE) applies a software engineering approach to IT operations and infrastructure, with the goal of building scalable, reliable systems capable of handling constant updates from dev teams. SRE is closely related to DevOps.ICYMI, we talked with Chef cofounder Adam Jacob about how he’s creating a new-and-improved approach to infrastructure automation. Listen to that conversation here.Connect with Vlad on LinkedIn, where you can also read snippets of his book on SRE.Lifeboat badge winner Abbas Galiyakotwala’s answer to How do I split a comma-separated string? filled a void of ignorance with a little extra knowledge.
The fine line between product and engineering
Twilio is a customer engagement platform whose communication APIs for voice, text, chat, email, and video are used by millions of developers. See what’s happening on their blog, dig into their docs, or check out their Stack Overflow Collective.This summer, Twilio announced CustomerAI, which applies the power of LLMs to the rich troves of customer data that flows through Twilio’s platform. Learn more here.ICYMI: From the stage of WeAreDevelopers, Stack Overflow announced a roadmap for integrating GenAI into our public platform and paid offerings. Check out Stack Overflow Labs to see what we’re working on.Also ICYMI: Listen to our conversation with Jody about his path from physics to sales to programming and what drew him to working at Stack Overflow.Register for SIGNAL 2023, Twilio’s customer and developer conference, happening virtually and for free on August 23, 2023. Attendees can expect a deep dive into AI and how it’s revolutionizing customer experience technology.Connect with Kathryn on LinkedIn or the social network formerly known as Twitter.Connect with Jody on LinkedIn. Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner blackgreen, who swooped in to save How can I write a generic function that accepts any numerical type? from the howling void of ignorance.
How engineering teams at a large org can move at startup speed
Find out why others have joined Shell. If you want to experience being a developer at one of the world’s largest energy companies, they’re hiring.Amber Webb is on LinkedIn.Naresh Kumar is on LinkedIn.Congrats to Tomasz Kula, today’s Lifeboat badge winner, for dropping some knowledge on Multiple components binding with the same reactive form control update issue and saving it from ruin.
From startup to Google and back again
Sean hosts Partially Redacted, a podcast about data privacy, security, and compliance.He also hosts the podcast Software Engineering Daily, which features technical interviews on everything from the ethics of GPTs to cloud-native search and WebAssembly. Start with the recent episode Surviving ChatGPT with Christian Hubicki (of Survivor fame).You can also read about how he crowdsourced a behavioral model for Survivor.Sean spent four years working in developer relations (DevRel) at Google. Here’s a Software Engineering Daily episode about the role DevRel plays at Google.Connect with Sean on LinkedIn or Twitter (I mean, X), or check out his website.Kudos to Great Question badge winner Kai Sellgren for asking How to remove an element from a vector given the element?.
Behind the scenes with the folks building OverflowAI
You can learn more about OverflowAI and sign up to be an alpha tester here.You can check out Ellen and Jody on Linkedin. Congrats to Ben Lindsay, who was awarded a Lifeboat badge for his answer to: How can I divide each element in a tuple by a single integer?
How the Python team is adapting the language for an AI future
Pablo is a Python core developer, Steering Council member, and release manager of Python 3.10 and 3.11. He’s currently a senior software engineer at Bloomberg.Looking for a comprehensive guide to contributing to Python? The Python Developer’s Guide is the place to start.The Zen of Python is a list of the language’s guiding principles, including, “There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.”Find Pablo on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub.Find Kyle, a senior software engineer on Stack Overflow’s public platform, on Linked, Twitter, and GitHub.
What it's like to be on the Python Steering Council
Pablo is a Python core developer, Steering Council member, and release manager of Python 3.10 and 3.11. He splits this work 50/50 with his day job as a senior software engineer at Bloomberg.An astrophysicist by training, he did his PhD on rotating black holes.Whether you’re a new contributor or a seasoned veteran, the Python Developer’s Guide is a comprehensive guide to contributing to Python.Pablo is on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub.Kyle is also on Linked, Twitter, and GitHub.Shoutout to Inquisitive Badge winner trever for asking well-received questions on 30 separate days.
How AI can help your business, without the hallucinations
DoIT’s sales pitch is simple: they provide technology and expertise to clients who want to use the cloud, free of charge, with the big cloud providers paying the bills.You can check out Sascha’s writing on machine learning on his Medium blog. Connect with him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his YouTube channel.
How ICs can get recognition for their work on big projects
Cat’s research centers on the socio-cognitive factors and processes that help people learn and succeed. In her role as director of Pluralsight Flow’s Developer Success Lab, she studies what makes software teams thrive and shares that research with the community so teams can learn from her findings.In a recent report, the Dev Success Lab explored how visibility can encourage higher-performing teams and better business outcomes.Pluralsight is an education platform for software developers. Pluralsight Flow, their software delivery intelligence platform, is designed to eliminate developer friction and wasted time.Cat is on LinkedIn and Twitter.Today’s Lifeboat badge winner is Kent Kostelac, who gave a terrific answer to One-line if-else in C#.
How terrifying is giving a conference talk?
ICYMI, listen to our episode with Agile pioneer Jim Highsmith: The meeting that changed how we build software (Ep. 579).Explore Connell’s website or his talks.Connell will be speaking at DDD East Midlands again this year: October 7, 2023 (with apologies to our British listeners for the date format). He’s also on GitHub, Twitter, and Stack Overflow (naturally).A very special Lifeboat badge is awarded to Connell for answering his own question: Why does this SelectMany perform several SQL queries instead of a single join?.
Jamstack is evolving toward a composable web
Netlify’s all-in-one development platform gives devs access to build, deploy, and backend services for websites and web apps. Get started with their docs.Jamstack is a web development architecture based on JavaScript, APIs, and Markup (the JAM in Jamstack). Learn what Jamstack is and what benefits it offers.Composable architecture has been called “the next big thing” in web development. Netlify defines it as “a development approach [that] provides the ability to more rapidly build technology stacks by making use of logically separated reusable and customizable components.”Dana is on LinkedIn.Warm congrats to Lifeboat badge winner hasectic saif, who rescued the question How can I print to standard error in C with 'printf'? from an answerless void.
From Sims to supercycle?
VerseProp is a digital real estate platform where users can buy, sell, and rent virtual properties.New to the concept of digital real estate? The Motley Fool has a useful primer for you.If you need to brush up on your investment terms, a supercycle is “a sustained period of expansion, usually driven by robust growth in demand for products and services.”Joel is on LinkedIn.Will is on LinkedIn.Follow VerseProp on Twitter, where the team welcomes questions.Today’s Lifeboat badge is awarded to Omar, for helping 44,000 people and counting with their answer to Event handlers on Message box buttons.
Developers use AI tools, they just don’t trust them
Our 2023 Developer Survey explored AI’s benefits for developers. Read about the results here.For more WWDC talk, listen to our episode from last month: Chatting with Apple at WWDC: Macros in Swift and the new visionOS (Ep. 578).Squarespace is acquiring Google Domains.Congratulations to Bruno Brant, who won a Lifeboat badge for answering Where can I view LINQ source code?.
Making computer science more humane at Carnegie Mellon
While he’s been the dean of the School of Computer Science since 2019, Martial started his career at Carnegie Mellon University way back in 1984. Ben covered LIDAR inventor Velodyne while at the Verge, while Martial has LIDAR’s ancestor, the laser rangefinder, which was state of the art in 1986. Martial’s area of research is in computer vision and perception for autonomous systems. Since 1985, he’s been a part of 388 publications. Congrats to Lifeboat winner mx0 for their answer to the question “How to use a reserved keyword in pydantic model?”
Improving the developer experience in the energy sector
Software might not be top of mind when you think of an energy company like Shell, but software engineering powers a lot of what they do. The tech stack includes React, Golang, Python, GraphQL, MongoDB, Kafka, and the list goes on. The experience their developers have at work is a priority for the organization and its leaders. Episode notes:Find out why others have joined Shell. If you want to experience what being a developer at one of the world’s largest energy companies looks like, they’re hiring.You can connect with Abhai on LinkedIn. Congrats to this episode’s lifeboat badge winner, CertainPerformance, for their answer to Convert different strings to snake_case in JavaScript. You saved the question and got some shinies for your profile.