Cillers Developer Experience

Meet Shai Ben Shalom, Senior Software Engineer at Torque (ex-Microsoft) Theme: AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding (and hackathons...)  Highlights from the conversation: Your job just changed completely : Developers are becoming "mini-architects" instead of code writers. AI writes the code now, but you need to focus on security, scalability, and system design to make it production-ready. Put everything...

Meet Moshik Shir - Principal Program Manager for Startups and Software Development at Microsoft, working across EMEA with 25+ years in tech, covering everything from VoIP pioneers to Azure resilience engineering, in a conversation about AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding. Highlights from the conversation: Context is everything - developers who are good at giving AI detailed, specific information become...

Meet Kieran Llarena - a hacker, startup/community founder, Capital One intern, and co-founder @ Filipino Americans! In this episode, we talked about AI-assisted enterprise coding. Context management is one of the most critical keys to success when working with AI (LLMs) - and in this episode, Kieran shared his experiences and best practices. We dove into his favorite tools and why Kieran loves the...

Meet Balaj Saleem - Software Engineer at Amazon working on AI adoption at IMDb, with experience from both startups and big tech, in a conversation about AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding. Highlights from the conversation: The 80/20 rule for AI coding - spend 80% of time planning and providing context to the LLM, only 20% implementing. The cost of fixing bad code later far outweighs upfront planning. R...

Meet Rian Corcino - 7-time hackathon winner and AI Systems Support Specialist at Ayzenberg in a conversation about AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding. Rian shares his experience and insights - some highlights from the conversation: 🏆 90% of his professional development came from hackathons - not from school, but from 20 hackathons in one year traveling across the US 🎯 His "responsible vibe coding" ap...

Meet JD Fiscus - Director of Research & Development, creator of the n8n MCP community node with 1 million downloads and host of Nerding I/O Youtube, in a conversation about AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding. JD shares his experience and insights - some highlights from the conversation: 🛠️ Why he always returns to Cursor - loves their auto model feature that picks the right model for each task, kee...

Meet Ventsislav Petrov, Frontend Developer at Knowify. Topic: AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding Ventsislav shares his experience and insights - some highlights from the conversation: 🤯 He writes 100% AI code now - only does analysis, architecture and orchestration while AI handles all the typing ⚡ Got 4000x performance improvement in 12 iterations - turned an 8-hour data analysis into 4 minutes with...

Meet Viktor Farcic, Developer Advocate, Upbound. Topic: AI-Assisted Enterprise Coding. Viktor shares his experiences - that I first found surprising... but when I thought about it... absolutely obvious: 💸 He spends $1000/month on AI tools but saves $10,000 - gets the equivalent of 3 extra developers working for him 🎯 Why he ditched "cheap" AI subscriptions - they limit context to save tokens, gi...

Meet Saoud Rizwan, Founder/CEO at Cline In this episode we talked about AI Agentic Coding and Enterprise Development, here are some of the talking points: From hackathon reject to world-leading AI coding startup - Cline started as "Cloud Dev" for an Anthropic hackathon just 10 days after Claude 3.5 Sonnet launched, Saoud actually lost but posted it on Reddit, open-sourced it, and things exploded f...

Meet Alfredo de Candia, CTO, Hoken Tech (ex-Google) In this episode we talked about AI Assisted Enterprise Coding, here are some of the talking points:  Essential developer knowledge required - While AI coding tools are powerful, you still need basic programming skills to choose the right frameworks, implement security measures, and understand backend requirements. The tools support you but can't...

Meet Hemant Kumar, Senior Director of Software Development, Oracle. In this episode we discussed: Understanding what customers actually need - Before building anything, you need to know what real problems you're solving for people. AI is changing how we write code fast - Big companies like Microsoft and Google already use AI tools to write 25% of their code. AI isn't just writing code anymore - it...

Meet our guest Leon Lobo, Software Engineering Director, Oracle.  Startups offering AI-Assisted Coding tools are the fastest-growing companies ever….We are now taking a deep dive in the podcast to explore how this technology can be used for enterprise environments with large codebases and high requirements for security, compliance, and confidentiality.  In this episode we talked about: Enterprise...

Meet Monika Lionaite - CEO & Chief Innovator and Founder of Openhack 2020 Austrailia. In this episode, Monika shares insights from her research on hackathon participation benefits. Her findings reveal several inspiring takeaways. What participants experience they develop most in is collaboration, problem-solving, and learning new technologies. Resources provided by Monika: Here is the link to...

Meet Dr Mamta Nagaraja. Mamta Nagaraja is a STEM leader who previously served as NASA's Associate Chief Scientist for Exploration and Applied Research. She managed science programs for the International Space Station, Moon missions, and commercial space projects, with special focus on space biomedicine. Mamta also led NASA's science communication efforts, helping share space discoveries with the p...

Meet Maximilian Vovk and Simon Van Schuylenbergh. Together with Ian Chow and Dakota Cecil they are the WMPGang, the team that won the Best Use of Science award at the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2024! In this episode we talked about their cutting-edge research in astronomy, their innovative approach to visualizing Earth, comets and potentially hazardous asteroids, the heart-stopping moment when thei...

Meet Slayde Sequeira who has participated in 30+ hackathons, came 1st place in 3 and in the final round more than 10 times. He is a Computer engineer in his final year of engineering and he is 21 years old. His recent win was S.P.I.T hacks 2025 where over 700 teams competed - that is 2800 individuals - and his team secured the 1st place. In this podcast we talked about his journey from starting te...

Meet Team 42 Heroes - Winner Of NASA SPACE APPS 2024. In this episode I interview three of the members of the winning team: The Leader of the Project, Gabriel Chayb, Project Management and UI/UX: Ana Miziara and AI DEV: Gustavo Teixeira. We talked about how this team from Brazil became the first in South America to win NASA's top technology award. They explained their clever solution for detecting...

Meet Monika Lionaite, CEO Chief Innovator & Founder @Openhack 2020 Australia In this episode we talked about her fascinating journey from fire dancing performer to global hackathon expert. Monika shares how her diverse background in photography, gaming, and international leadership shaped her unique approach to designing impactful hackathons. We explore how she launched her company in Australi...

Meet Bhavya Soni, AI Code Evaluator at Outlier, 6X Hackathon Participant, 2X Hackathon Winner etc In this episode we talked about how Bhavya discovered programming after being publicly insulted by his math teacher, which became a pivotal moment in choosing his tech path. We explored his hackathon experiences, including his first police hackathon in Jaipur with five-star accommodations, and the cha...

Meet Vladimir Pavlovskii, Senior Software Engineer at Twilio. In this episode we talked about: Vladimir's journey from growing up in Moscow to moving to Tallinn and working at Twilio How Twilio's annual internal hackathons are structured and what Vladimir has learned from participating in two of them The value of hackathons for rapidly prototyping ideas that can turn into real product features Com...

Meet Diwakar Thakore, Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, Mentor@lablab.ai etc... In this episode, we discuss the amazing learning experience that hackathons provide: how quickly you can test your idea, the benefits of fast prototyping, and execution speed. We also touch on a very special kind of hackathon: "Legal Hackathons." Additionally, we delve into Diwakar's experience as a mentor at lablab.ai an...

Meet Carl Norling Makai, Impact Initiative Developer, AI Sweden In this episode, we talked about: Historical Insights into Hacking: Carl talked about the roots of the term "hack" from the book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" discussing its origins at MIT in the 1950s, where it symbolized an innovative solution or improvement and carried a prestigious title among tech enthusiasts The E...

Meet Pawel Czech, Co-Founder, New Native & lablab.ai This episode is a must-listen for all business-driven AI builders! I had the great honor to interview Pawel Czech, the co-founder of New Native and lablab.ai. We discussed the origins of his ventures, the rapid growth they’ve achieved, and his inspiring vision. We delved into the dynamics and connections between AI hackathons and accelerator...

Meet Joanna Slupczewska, Partner & Marketing Manager at New Native (that owns the famous lablab.ai.) In this episode, we talked about New Native and their initiatives like lablab.ai hackathons and the accelerator program, Lablab Next. We focused on the important topics of marketing and community building, specifically how to attract thousands of participants from around the world to these hack...

Meet Amna Hassan—a skilled developer specializing in games, web, and AI. She also teaches and mentors at Stanford's Code in Place program. Amna has won numerous hackathons, including Harvard's 2024 CS50 Puzzle Day, and has competed in over 20 international hackathons. Additionally, she serves as a project administrator for SereniFy, an open-source app featured in Girlscript's Summer of Code Extend...