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.
Similar Podcasts
TED Talks Daily
Every weekday, TED Talks Daily brings you the latest talks in audio. Join host and journalist Elise Hu for thought-provoking ideas on every subject imaginable — from Artificial Intelligence to Zoology, and everything in between — given by the world's leading thinkers and creators. With TED Talks Daily, find some space in your day to change your perspectives, ignite your curiosity, and learn something new.
El Estoico | Estoicismo en español
En este podcast vamos a hablar Estoicismo, figuras estoicas y ejercicios estoicos para mejorar tu vida y tu resiliencia ante las adversidades.
Greater Than Code
For a long time, tech culture has focused too narrowly on technical skills; this has resulted in a tech community that too often puts companies and code over people. Greater Than Code is a podcast that invites the voices of people who are not heard from enough in tech: women, people of color, trans and/or queer folks, to talk about the human side of software development and technology. Greater Than Code is providing a vital platform for these conversations, and developing new ideas of what it means to be a technologist beyond just the code.
Featuring an ongoing panel of racially and gender diverse tech panelists, the majority of podcast guests so far have been women in tech! We’ve covered topics including imposter syndrome, mental illness, sexuality, unconscious bias and social justice. We also have a major focus on skill sets that tech too often devalues, like team-building, hiring, community organizing, mentorship and empathy. Each episode also includes a transcript.
We have an active Slack community that members can join by pledging as little as $1 per month via Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode)
Want to be a great software engineer? Don’t be a jerk.
A developer discovered a backdoor in XZ, a popular open-source compression utility. Read more about the cyberattack here.A Microsoft technical report pinpoints 54 attributes of great software engineers.A new report from The Economist lays out how AI is changing drug development.Are you sick of hearing about AI? What topics or technologies would you rather hear us talk about? Email us at podcast@stackoverflow.com or DM Ben here.
What a year building AI has taught Stack Overflow
You can find Jessica on LinkedIn.We've published several posts, including this most recent one, about our attempt to shape an ethical approach to combining our community of knowledge and today's AI systems.Check out this blog post that details some of the work we did to build our data platform. Congrats to macfij on your lifeboat badge for answering the question: How can I do a CTRL + A and a CTRL + C?
Are long context windows the end of RAG?
DBRX, an open, general-purpose LLM created by Databricks, reportedly outperforms GPT-3.5 and is competitive with Gemini 1.0 Pro.Recent research found that large, complex LLMs use a simple mechanism to retrieve stored knowledge in response to a user prompt. These mechanisms can help researchers reveal what the model knows and potentially even correct false information it has stored.FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, whose downfall began in late 2022, was sentenced last week to 25 years in prison for conspiracy and fraud. Find Michael on LinkedIn.Find Cassidy on her website.Stack Overflow user Bucket received a well-deserved Lifeboat badge for rescuing How to calculate decimal(x, y) max value in SQL Server from an ocean of ignorance.Chapters (please note that these timestamps may not be exact): 00:00 Introduction and White Paper Discussion02:01 Long Context Windows and Retrieval Augmented Generation05:56 Models' Ability to Recall Relevant Information07:18 Models' Creativity and Thinking Outside the Box09:41 Advantages and Limitations of Models' Knowledge15:09 Databricks' Open Language Model22:25 Sam Bankman-Fried’s Sentence and the Effects on Crypto/Blockchain31:28 Closing Remarks and Lifeboat Badge
Will antitrust suits benefit developers?
Small nations like Anguilla (.ai) and Tuvalu (.tv) are benefiting from their coveted domain names.The US government is suing Apple for violation of antitrust laws, which could have a huge impact on devs, end users, and the whole ecosystem. Reddit went public last week despite not being profitable since its launch in 2005.How can you give feedback on a poorly reviewed PR? The Software Engineering Stack Exchange has ideas.The four day work week is probably not the solution to our work-life balance problems.AI-powered software development tools like Devon show promise, but their impact on code quality and maintainability remains an open question.Shoutout to Robert, who earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining Square brackets in CSS.Chapters00:00 Introduction00:31 The Impact of Dot AI Domain Space01:07 Antitrust Cases Against Apple04:01 Vendor Lock-in and Apple's Ecosystem05:08 Issues with Infotainment Systems and Apple Play06:29 The Benefits and Challenges of a Four-Day Work Week08:03 Providing Feedback on a Badly Reviewed PR10:00 The Importance of Clear Expectations in Code Reviews11:40 The Potential of AI Tools in Development14:01 Reddit Going Public and the Future of Tech Companies15:29 AI Tool Devon and the Challenges of Operationalizing AI Projects21:22 Shoutout and Closing Remarks
Controlling cloud costs: Where to start, and where to go from there
To learn more about the signs that indicate you may be paying more for your cloud computing that you should, check out DoIT’s seven red flags guide. We’ve spoken with DoiT on the podcast before about LLM hallucinations and the security threats that LLMs open.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.Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Sravan K Ghantasala for their answer to How to sort file lines in Bash?Find Joshua at joshuafox com.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Cloud Cost Control01:08 Joshua Fox's Background04:20 Understanding FinOps06:17 The Importance of Good Architecture08:18 Balancing Flexibility in Architecture10:04 Surprise Costs and Dealing with Them13:19 Bracing for Unexpected Cloud Costs25:41 The Future of Cloud Cost Optimization27:09 Closing Remarks
Data, data everywhere and not a stop to think
Cribl is a data management platform. Check out their sandbox or explore their products.Cribl Stream is their vendor-agnostic observability pipeline.If you’re new to the term, the observability pipeline is a crucial component of the cloud-native world.Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Background03:23 The Data Landscape and Generative AI06:08 Incumbents vs. Startups in the Data Space07:46 Challenges of Data Storage and Exfiltration09:38 Securing Large Warehouses of Data12:21 Data Quality and ETL Pipelines16:05 Measures of Data Quality for Gen AI22:04 Cribl’s Role in the Data and Observability Space26:20 The Pros and Cons of Richer Observability Monitoring28:11 Closing Remarks and Shoutout
Is AI making your code worse?
GitClear is a developer-friendly code review tool that aims to deliver higher developer satisfaction and faster releases. Check out their blog or find them on GitHub.GitClear’s research focuses on how AI code-gen tools have impacted code quality (and not in a good way).Find Bill on LinkedIn.Chapters00:00 Introduction 00:30 Background of the Research06:09 Business Model of GitClear09:46 Copy Pasted Code10:26 Churn Code12:21 Code Readability14:12 Code Suggestions and Auto-Completion16:34 Drop in Moved Code23:18 Larger Token Windows26:31 Improving Gen AI28:46 Conclusion
Why the creator of Node.js® created a new JavaScript runtime
Node.js® is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment.Deno is an open-source JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly runtime. Explore the quick start or check out Deno by example, a collection of annotated examples of how to use Deno.JSR is an open-source package registry for JavaScript and TypeScript.Keep up to date with Ryan on GitHub or his blog.Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Squadrons, who earned a Great Question badge by asking for a Pure javascript method to wrap content in a div.Chapters:00:00: Introduction and Background01:08: Creating Node.js05:00: JavaScript on the Server Side07:23: Impact of Node.js09:18: Edge Function System12:13: Protecting Against Malicious Use16:02: JSR: Alternative to NPM31:01: JSR and its Stage34:20: Future of JavaScript36:19: Closing and Shoutouts
Your whole repo fits in the context window
AI shops are now releasing LLMs optimized for RAG. Turn a repo into a prompt for a long-context LLM.Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search and discovery tool.Good news for developers: Apple will not remove progressive web app support on iOS in the EU.Basil Bourque earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining How to get full name of month from date in Java 8 while formatting.
How Stack Overflow is partnering with Google to encourage socially responsible AI
Stack Overflow has teamed up with Google Cloud to develop an API—Overflow API—to give Gemini, Google’s AI model, access to Stack Overflow knowledge communities. Learn how Ryan’s team is working toward socially responsible AI.Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.Stack Overflow user verygoodsoftwarenotvirus earned a Great Question badge by asking something at least 87,000 people have also wondered: How can I get all keys from a JSON column in Postgres?.
A leading ML educator on what you need to know about LLMs
Check out Maxime’s three-part LLM course. Part 1 “covers essential knowledge about mathematics, Python, and neural networks.Part 2 “focuses on building the best possible LLMs using the latest techniques."Part 3 “focuses on creating LLM-based applications and deploying them.” Read Maxime’s blog.Follow Maxime on GitHub or LinkedIn.Nikhil Wagh earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining how to Efficiently compare two sets in Python.
Building GenAI features in practice with Intuit Mailchimp
Intuit shares more about their generative AI operating system (GenOS) in this Medium blog. If you want to try out generative AI in MailChimp, sign up here. Learn more about Intuit technology here.Many thanks (and a Lifeboat badge) to Dherik for dropping an answer on cURL: how can I return 0 if status is 200?Connect with Shivang on LinkedIn.
Chunking express: An expert breaks down how to build your RAG system
Build GenAI applications faster and cheaper with a vector database like Pinecone.New to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and other GenAI topics? Our guide is a good place to start.Learn more about RAG and Pinecone.Connect with Roie on GitHub or LinkedIn.
It’s RAG time for LLMs that need a source of truth
Pinecone is a vector database that lets companies build GenAI applications faster for less cost.Read our primer on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or explore RAG and Pinecone.Follow Roie on GitHub or LinkedIn.If you need a handy guide to what’s what in the AI space, check out Stack Overflow’s Industry Guide to AI.
Optimizing both hardware and software for GenAI
SPONSORED BY INTEL Ryan and Ben chat with Raymond Lo, AI software evangelist at Intel, about the AI PC, the software that powers AI breakthroughs, and optimizing hardware and software in unison to improve generative AI performance. Bonus: what’s the difference between a GPU optimized for graphics and a VPU or NPU optimized for AI? Episode notes If you’re interested in trying any of the demos that Raymond talked about, check out Intel’s OpenVINO notebooks. Learn more about Intel’s Edge AI resources here. Raymond previously wrote about enhancing image and video resolution using OpenVINO. You can reach out to Raymond Lo on LinkedIn. Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner, Andrey Korneyev, for saving the question, How can I delete specific nodes from an XElement?