discussions on software development
Similar Podcasts
The Cynical Developer
A UK based Technology and Software Developer Podcast that helps you to improve your development knowledge and career,
through explaining the latest and greatest in development technology and providing you with what you need to succeed as a developer.
New Rustacean
A show about the Rust programming language and the people who use it.
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
The Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Podcast (aka ADSP: The Podcast) is an informal podcast inspired by Magic Read Along. We plan to talk about whatever we feel like - algorithms, data structures, programming languages, latest news in tech and more. Feel free to follow us on Twitter at @adspthepodcast.
#42 Eric Schles, Ending Slavery with Data
Summary Eric Schles tells me that "slavery is the most extreme version of income inequality" and how he is using technology to end it. Details Who he is, how he became interested in human trafficking; Manhattan district attorney, technological deficiencies, Eric introduced databases, predictions not allowed; Demand Abolition, factors leading to trafficking, changing policies to fight trafficking; types of data analysis and how it helps, where the data comes from, scanning multiple sources, cross referencing with homeless databases; languages and technologies used; in DA office what comes first - the case or the data, once a case is closed the data is sealed; some of Eric's successes, reduced workload on DA, saving a woman from slavery; how you can help.
#41 Ken Finnegan, What Ireland Offers the Tech World
Summary Ken Finnegan, chief technologist of the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland tells me about what Ireland has to offer the tech industry. Details Who he is, what the Industrial Development Agency does, sales and marketing for Ireland; why should companies invest in Ireland, 1,200 foreign companies, favorable tax rate, high education level; proximity to European cities, technology backpackers; university incubators, Nova startup incubation at UCD; successful Irish tech companies, Decawave smallest location sensor, S3 Group smallest analog to digital converter; Web Summit; access to venture capital in Ireland; IoT in Ireland - a "technological horizontal", sensors, communications networks, cloud storage, analysis and deriving value from the data; what happens to Ireland in the next recession, dot-com bust hit hard, lessons learned - investing in fundamental research and commercialization of products, heavy investment for foreign companies and harder to walk away from; Ken invites you to visit.
#40 Keen IO, A Different Way of Doing Business
Summary Lisa Nielsen and Daniel Kador of Keen IO tell about their approach to business, decision making, managers and building software. Details Who they are; what Keen IO does, types of analytics; type of organization, going their own way, hiring and firing, voting, holacracy; ideas that didn't work and the response from staff; developing people, coaching program, who trains the coaches, non violent communication training, sharing with the community; specific hiring criteria; no bosses, self directed employees, trusting your employees, feedback without managers, conflict mediation, the most talkative engineers I've heard of, group therapy in the weekly "anxious, excited", changing teams; the Keen.io operating system; removing a person from a team.
#39 Scott Allen, ASP.NET 5
Summary Scott Allen, author, Pluralsight author, podcast host and consultant tells me all about the upcoming release of ASP.NET 5. Details Who he is; is ASP.NET 5 a rewrite; lightweight, better for SPAs; Scott's favorite new features ; don't need vs 2015, works on Linux; more modular; cross platform, core (subset) CLR; lighter on resources; inbuilt dependency injection; new configuration system; middleware, its history and how it differs from handlers and filter, middleware sees more; combining MVC and Web API; tag helpers; web forms are gone; is Microsoft providing better documentation and examples; front-end improvements, angular, bootstrap, Grunt, Gulp, Bower.
#38 Mark Eisenberg, Private Cloud
Summary Mark Eisenberg of Microsoft talks to me about the private cloud and why it has failed. Details Definition of private cloud, virtualized data centers, getting value from the cloud; enterprise scale, web scale and hyper scale; differences between private and public cloud, daytime and nighttime workloads; cultural change is needed when adopting cloud; same software problem, different decade; companies expected cost reduction, but didn't get it; vertical scale doesn't work anymore, start small in cloud and grow; we got it wrong so often why would you expect anything different now; current state of private cloud; private cloud is failing; bringing in the skills to deploy private cloud, need exec buy-in; how to get buy-in; agility, complexity and cost example of success at Lowe's; wrap up.
#37 Andrei Simionescu, Lavaboom
Summary Andrei Simionescu of the now closed Lavaboom talks to me about the encrypted email service they wanted to make. Details Who he is; a little about Lavaboom; PGP is unfriendly, why did they make it, connection to Lavabit; "but I've got nothing to hide", do I make myself a target by using it; other PGP email initiatives; lawful legal requests; open source for core features, verifying the builds are from the source; how Lavaboom works; is there any clear text ever; losing a password; what kind of encryption is in use; open source problems; hosting; scaling; making money; raising money.
#36 Nicholas Blumhardt Seq and Serilog
Summary Nicholas Blumhardt discusses Seq, Serilog and structured event logging with me. Details Who he is, what is serilog, Event Tracking for Windows (ETW) and Semantic Logging Application Block (SLAB), structured event streams, no more regex; finding events in your log, navigating from one type of event to another; what feedback he gets; datastore; seq, use cases, filtering by type; seq data storage, Microsoft Extensible Storage Engine; making money; releases and new versions; simple install and usage instructions.
#34 Trevor Stricker, Indie Games
Summary Trevor Stricker of Disco Pixel tells me all about indie game development. Details Who he is and what he does; what is an indie game developer; skills needed to be an indie dev; protecting your work; platforms to develop on, naming your child Unity, learning about Unity, technical limitations; importance of partnerships as a game developer, corporate and developer partnerships; learning non games skills to scale your game; making money; book recommendations, Creativity, Inc.
#33 Justin Mills, Yesware
Summary Justin Mills, software engineer at Yesware tells me about their flat organizational structure and development practices. Details Little about Justin and Yesware; team structure, no test team, no defined team leads; no cohesive architecture; shared infrastructure, hierarchy might be needed; getting approval to reduce technical debt; assigning teams to tasks, trying open allocation, ending open allocation; no titles in engineering but other departments have titles; no one in a position to make a tough decision; struggling with agile, speed of development is the goal. **extended interview** SDLC, frequent releases probably break often, Justin's hopes for the company's future.
#32 Eliot Knudsen, Tamr and a Brave New World of Data
Summary Eliot Knudsen, field engineer at Tamr talks to me about their machine learning tool and a new way of examining data. Details Who he is and what he does; what is Tamr; working with data sources, the traditional way, the Tamr way, machine learning combined with human guidance;data quality and foreign languages; Thompson Reuters example, curating data, increasing speed; deploying Tamr; how Tamr works, db, java, web client; competitors; future work.
#31 Jason MacInnes, Draft Kings
Summary Jason MacInnes, CTO of Draft Kings tells me about their architecture and scaling demands. Details A little aabout Jason; what Draft Kings is, why it's not gambling, how Draft Kings started; controlling growth, SDLC, Agile growing pains, aligning skills; software stack (MySql, RabbitMq, MassTransit), choice of ASP.NET; scaling the system; transitioning to micro-services, dev ops; service level agreements, dealing with unpredictable events; where the statistics and data come from, customer privacy, future work.
#30 Open Data Science Conference
Summary Boston was host to the first ever Open Data Science Conference over the weekend of May 30th and 31st 2015. I spent the days wandering around talking to people with interesting stories. I hope you enjoy this episode, it was fun making it. My next podcast will be back to the normal interview format.
#29 Lucybot, The Importance of Developer Experience
Summary Andrew and Bobby Brennan, and I discuss Lucybot and why good API design and documentation lead to good developer experience. Details Who they are; what Lucybot is, more than simple documentation; API economy, easier to work with is more important; easier to use API wins with developers; good vs bad API, good documentation, sandbox, example code; what Lucybot does, auto doc generation, auto code generation, machine readable API description, swagger; client libraries, auto generation; APIs for now developers, API recipes; other tools, swagger and alpaca; future work, repository for APIs, on premises deployment.
#28 Eric Bloom, Getting Promoted and Managing in IT
Summary Eric Bloom of Manger Mechanics and I discussing how to get promoted in IT and what to expect as a manager. Details Who he is, new book, a productivity cocktail; getting promoted, what got you here won't get you there, staying or going, accidental managers, management is a skill; what if you don't want to manage; advice on getting promoted, get management experience outside the office, nepotism in companies; what changes when promoted, Manager Mechanics; leading without authority, difficult team members, people are for themselves not against you; common problems new managers face; learning to delegate; politics; professional friends come and go enemies accumulate; dealing with superiors, your manager and your manger's manger; you always have a boss; mangers live in fish bowls.
#27 Deb Biggar, The Importance of User Experience
Summary Deb Biggar of Boston Human Factors and I discuss what UX is and why it is important. Details Who she is; a story of why is UX important; what is UX, disciplines in UX - experience design, interaction design, information architect, user researcher, UX unicorns; phases of UX work - concept, design, prototype, validate, implement; what if a company can't afford UX; should you copy from big companies; relationship between UX and front-end, nitpicking and deadlines; agile or fragile, UX stays sprints ahead; books, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Deb's UX play book.