Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Chris Love , co-author of the book Core Kubernetes , joins host Robert Blumen for a conversation about kubernetes security. Chris identifies the node layer, secrets management, the network layer, contains, and pods as the most critical areas to be addressed. The conversation explores a range of topics, including when to accept defaults and when to override; differences between self-managed cluster...

Jacob Visovatti and Conner Goodrum of Deepgram speak with host Kanchan Shringi about testing ML models for enterprise use and why it's critical for product reliability and quality. They discuss the challenges of testing machine learning models in enterprise environments, especially in foundational AI contexts. The conversation particularly highlights the differences in testing needs between compan...

Samuel Colvin , the CEO and founder of Pydantic, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the ecosystem of Pydantic's Python frameworks, including Pydantic, Pydantic AI, and Pydantic Logfire. Along with discussing the design, implementation, and use of these frameworks, they dive into the refactoring of Pydantic and the follow-on performance improvements. They also explore ways in which Python...

Brian Demers , Developer Advocate at Gradle, speaks with host Giovanni Asproni about the importance of having observability in the toolchain. Such information about build times, compiler warnings, test executions, and any other system used to build the production code can help to reduce defects, increase productivity, and improve the developer experience. During the conversation they touch upon wh...

Vilhelm von Ehrenheim , co-founder and chief AI officer of QA.tech, speaks with SE Radio's Brijesh Ammanath about autonomous testing. The discussion starts by covering the fundamentals, and how testing has evolved from manual to automated to now autonomous. Vilhelm then deep dives into the details of autonomous testing and the role of agents in autonomous testing. They consider the challenges in a...

In this episode of Software Engineering Radio , Abhinav Kimothi sits down with host Priyanka Raghavan to explore retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), drawing insights from Abhinav's book, A Simple Guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation . The conversation begins with an introduction to key concepts, including large language models (LLMs), context windows, RAG, hallucinations, and real-world use c...

Luca Palmieri , author of Zero to Production in Rust and Principal Engineering Consultant at MainMatter, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about Rust in production. They discuss what production Rust means, how to get Rust code into production, specific Rust issues to think about when getting an application into production, what Rust profiles are, expected performance, telemetry options, error...

In this episode, SE Radio host Sriram Panyam explores HTMX with its creator, Carson Gross , who is also creator of   Hyperscript , the mind behind the Grug Brained Developer , a professor of software engineering at Montana State University, and co-author of Hypermedia Systems . HTMX is a modern JavaScript library that allows developers to access AJAX, WebSockets, CSS Transitions, and Server-Sent E...

Matthias Endler , Rust developer, open-source maintainer, and consultant through his company Corrode, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about prototyping in Rust. They discuss prototyping and why Rust is excellent for prototyping, and Matthias recommends a workflow for it, including what parts of Rust to use, and what parts to avoid at this stage. He describes the key components that Rust prov...

Will McGugan , the CEO and founder of Textualize, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about how to use packages such as Rich and Textual to build text-based user interfaces (TUIs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs) in Python. Along with discussing the design idioms that enable developers to create TUIs in Python, they consider practical strategies for efficiently rendering the components of a T...

Steve Summers speaks with SE Radio host  Sam Taggart about securing test and measurement equipment. They start by differentiating between IT and OT (Operational Technology) and then discuss the threat model and how security has evolved in the OT space, including a look some of the key drivers. They then examine security challenges associated with a specific device called a CompactRIO, which combin...

Ashley Peacock , the author of Serverless Apps on Cloudflare , speaks with host Jeremy Jung about content delivery networks (CDNs). Along the way, they examine dependency injection with bindings, local development, serverless, cold starts, the V8 runtime, AWS Lambda vs Cloudflare workers, WebAssembly limitations, and core services such as R2, D1, KV, and Pages. Ashley suggests why most users use a...

Eran Yahav , Professor of Computer Science at Technion, Israel, and CTO of Tabnine, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Tabnine AI coding assistant. They discuss how the design and implementation allows software engineers to use code completion and perform tasks such as automated code review while still maintaining developer privacy. Eran and Gregory also explore how research in the f...

Malcolm Matalka , founder of Terrateam, joins host  Giovanni Asproni to talk about the reasoning behind choosing a not-so-widespread language (OCaml) and (almost) totally avoiding frameworks for the development of Terrateam. While discussing the reasons for choosing this specific programming language and the advantages and disadvantages of using external frameworks, they also consider a range of r...

Emre Baran , CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, and Alex Olivier , CPO and co-founder, join SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan to explore "stateless decoupled authorization frameworks. The discussion begins with an introduction to key terms, including authorization, authorization models, and decoupled frameworks. They dive into the challenges of building decoupled authorization, as well as the benefits of...

Tyler Flint , CEO of qpoint.io , joins host Robert Blumen for a conversation about managing external vendor dependencies, including several best practices for adoption. They start with a look at internal versus external services, including details such as the footprint of external services within a micro-services application, and difficulties organizations have tracking their service consumption,...

Software architect and author Vlad Khononov joins host Jeff Doolittle for a discussion on balancing coupling in software design. They start by examining coupling and its relationship to complexity and modularity. Vlad explains the historical models for assessing coupling and introduces his updated approach, integration strength , which aims to simplify earlier frameworks and adapt them for modern...

Sunil Mallya , co-founder and CTO of Flip AI, discusses small language models with host Brijesh Ammanath . They begin by considering the technical distinctions between SLMs and large language models.  LLMs excel in generating complex outputs across various natural language processing tasks, leveraging extensive training datasets on with massive GPU clusters. However, this capability comes with hig...

Pete Warden , CEO of Useful Sensors and a founding member of the TensorFlow team at Google, discusses TinyML, the technology enabling machine learning on low-power, small-footprint devices. This innovation opens up applications such as voice-controlled devices, offline translation tools, and smarter embedded systems, which are crucial for privacy and efficiency. SE Radio host  Kanchan Shringi spea...

Brenden Matthews , a seasoned software engineer, entrepreneur, and author of the Idiomatic Rust and Code Like a Pro in Rust books (both from Manning), speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about Idiomatic Rust. They start with a look at what "idiomatic" means, and then discuss Generics, Traits, common design patterns you'll see in well written Rust code, and anti-patterns to avoid. Matthews sugges...

Tanya Janca , author of Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding , discusses secure coding and secure software development life cycle with SE Radio host  Brijesh Ammanath . This session explores how integrating security into every phase of the SDLC helps prevent vulnerabilities from slipping into production. Tanya strongly recommends defining security requirements early, and discusses the importance of t...

Hong Minhee , an open source developer and creator of the Fedify ActivityPub library, discusses the ActivityPub protocol and the fediverse with SE Radio's Jeremy Jung . They explore ActivityPub use cases, including microblogging applications such as Mastodon and Misskey, as well as activities built into the specification such as Like, Follow, and Accept. They also discuss extending the specificati...

Ivett Ördög speaks with host Sam Taggart about rewrite versus refactor -- a choice that many projects face as they grow. It's a topic that inspires a lot of dogmatic feelings. They discuss how companies and projects end up at this crossroads and consider some strategies to try to avoid it. Ivett challenges the myth that you should never rewrite but points to two key factors that need to be present...

In this episode,  Charles Humble  speaks withhost Brijesh Ammanath  about skills that can provide developers a grounding in systems thinking . Charles is a 30-year veteran of the IT industry, including as a former software engineer, architect, and CTO, as well as former editor in chief of InfoQ and chief editor for Container Solutions.  He has published "Professional Skills for Software Engineers"...

Chris Patterson , founder and principal architect of MassTransit, joins host Jeff Doolittle to discuss MassTransit, a message bus framework for building distributed systems. The conversation begins with an exploration of message buses, their role in asynchronous and durable application design, and how frameworks like MassTransit simplify event-driven programming in .NET. Chris explains concepts li...