The Stack Overflow Podcast

Alex graduated from NYU with a degree in computer science and worked as a developer and engineer at several startups in New York City, eventually assuming senior roles like engineering team lead and director of technology.  Along the way, however, she found herself face with discrimination and harassment. In 2016, she dramatically altered her appearance, an experience she discusses in a humorous a...

Three months ago, we interviewed Prashanth during his first week on the job. Now, with a full quarter of work under his belt, our new CEO reflects on what we accomplished over the last decade and lays out his vision for where Stack Overflow, as a company and community, will be heading over the next year and beyond. Paul explains why engineers prefer to give blunt feedback, even in a public setting...

Software is eating the world, but what's on the menu for dessert? This week we chat about the best way for engineers to give feedback to executives. Paul explains the Purple room method they use at Postlight. Sara references Zero to One and why engineers and marketers have so much trouble communicating. As a member of a marketing department , it's true our job is to see the glass as half full. But...

For many years Matt worked on defending the quality of Google's web search results, and you may know him as the creator of the first version of SafeSearch. As Paul noted on the show, he was seen as one of the few people  with whom ordinary folks could communicate about the often inscrutable world of Google search results and rankings.  You can read his blog here . In 2016 Matt joined  USDS , initi...

To kick things off, we talk about Yap , a fun new project from Paul’s company, Postlight. Employees get to partake in a Labs program where they can pursue side projects that interest them. Yap is "an ephemeral, real-time chat room with up to six participants. Your messages appear and disappear as quickly as you type them.” It was built with Elixir...ooooh. For our interview this week we sat down w...

You can check out the back story of Dixon’s first company, SiteAdvisor, here . It was built during a time when spyware was a booming business and browsers had few systems in place to combat bad actors. The company was acquired by McAfee in 2006. It's a great trip through the history of web security at the time.   Dixon next turned his attention to machine learning. He and his co-founders created H...

We discuss how a demand for more diverse clip art helped lay the foundation for some of the first black owned and operated software companies in the United States, and the ways in which social media has helped to empower a new generation of voices to demand change in the tech industry and beyond.  You can check out some of the pioneering work on building digital community at Afrolink, NetNoir , an...

Brian shares a delightful tale of the time one of his co-workers accidentally deleted the company's database, and how they recovered it through binary transaction logs. No better way to learn than a trial by fire. Juan explains why typing is taking over frontend development. First off, we discovered unit tests, and learned types can take care of it. Paul dreams of a day when object-oriented PHP ru...

  Part 1 The crew chats about how Paul and Sara made the transition from individual contributors to managers overseeing teams of engineers. Sara used to see this transition as a form of selling out, but has a new perspective after having made the shift. Paul admits he still doesn’t feel like a “CEO” and how he approaches his role as the co-founder who focuses on creating signal instead of operatio...

Part 1 Paul and Sara chat about what language is best to choose as your first when you're just getting started on your journey as a programmer. Probably not Mathmatica, but it's a neat one. Jupyter Notebooks - an in-browser notebook for working with Python. You can write your words, have your code right next to it, and see how things play out. Or as Tom Butterworth put it on DEV . "Jupyter Noteboo...

SHOW NOTES Part 1 (0:00-9:58) the crew discusses Google's declaration of Quantum Supremacy and tries to wrap their mind around qubits and superpositions. Ben mangles the pronunciation of ASP.net, Sara finds a name for her new pet snake, and Paul wonders how JFK would have pronounced quantum. Also, updates on the Stack Overflow helicopter. From our Physics and Quantum Computing Stack Exchanges:  Is...

Chloe Condon has a great post about how she created her medication reminder app and an official endorsement from Smash Mouth .  You can find some writing from Iheanyi Ekechukwu on our blog here and you can find his podcast here .  Learn about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 . It’s not funny so don’t laugh.    Decades old code is putting millions of critical devices at risk . Should we be regulati...

Tilde Club : It’s your chance to LARP as a 70s sys admin!  What you do on your computer is your business. Don’t be tricked by scammers . Paul makes the mistake of sharing his Anxiety Box on This American Life Sara’s favorite Kanye tweet is available, beautifully framed, for only $75.  cKeys is an amazing Seattle non-profit that teaches folks how to make their own keyboards! When we recorded this e...

Is it legal for source code containing undefined behavior to crash the compiler? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57652799/is-it-legal-for-source-code-containing-undefined-behavior-to-crash-the-compiler True, you’re the boss, and the compiler works for you. But that doesn’t mean it always behaves just as you instructed. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. https://stackoverflow.com/questions...

In this episode, Host Jon Skeet takes the reins along with Jay, Jess, Ilana, and special guests Casey Ashenhurst (SO Inclusion Manager & Senior People Ops Partner) and Cassie Montrose (SO Executive Assistant) to chat about hitting a million rep on Stack Overflow; Jon's thoughts on feminism and inclusion and how those have evolved over the years; and a rant about a regrettable Applebee's experi...

Happy Holidays from The Stack Overflow Podcast! On today's episode: Winter Bash 2017 details are revealed, Abby Reads Nice Tweets, and we ponder the questionable morality behind Santa's favorite narc, The Elf on the Shelf. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Today's hijinks include: Talking about engineering management (and pranks)with Ben Kamens; discussing a new study on how to ask a question on Stack Overflow, and chatting way too much about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Today's episode is a real scream. Recorded in a haunted house, this week's host is longtime podcast friend Anil Dash, joined by Fog Creek's Jenn Schiffer, Stack Overflow engineering manager Matt Sherman, news editor Ilana Yitzhaki, and executive producer Kaitlin Pike. Special guest is Leon Young of Cogniss. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://ar...

On today's episode we chat about the nature of VR and reality with IBM Watson's Michael Ludden, plus SO marketing manager Rachel Ferrigno stops by to present the NYC Dev Hiring Ecosystem report. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

On today's episode, we learn about travel-hacking and building a fully remote company with the co-founders of FlightFox, as well as chat with former Stack Overflow mods turned current Stack Overflow developers to learn about moderator processes at SO. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

On this week's edition of The Stack Overflow Podcast, we get a visit from Gitlab CEO Sid Sijbrandij. We also chat with UX Research Kristina Lustig about Stack Overflow's mentorship program experiment. As usual, the gang gets into other shenanigans. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Today we welcome Jonathan Lipps, Dir. of Open Source at Sauce Labs, to chat (and sing) about some of the philosophies behind the tech that we all use every day. Also Stack Overflow PM Joe Friend is here to continue the conversation about improving the user experience on SO. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-inf...

We're back! In today's episode: Jay, David, Ilana, Jess, and special guest Abby Mars read mean tweets, discuss what we are doing to prevent further mean tweets, and wait, the iPhone X does what with your face? Warning: Explicit content See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Join us for a chat with CodeNewbie Founder (and all-around amazing person) Saron Yitbarek, stay for Kevin's failures and many many banana references. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

In this week's episode: We chat with Linux Academy CEO and Founder Anthony James, we play a "Florida Man" edition of Fake News, and Matt Sherman wonders how computers work. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .