Daniel Finneran explores how eBPF has evolved far beyond its roots in packet filtering into a robust, safe way to extend the Linux kernel. He explains how the eBPF "verifier", the security guardrail, enables implementation of deep observability and networking without the risks of traditional kernel modules or the slow upstreaming process. He touches on tools like Tetragon that leverage eBPF for "front-foot" security enforcement, proactively intercepting threats such as buffer overflows before th...
Jun 22, 2026•44 min
Martin Kleppmann, an associate professor at Cambridge and author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, discusses the evolution of data systems over the last decade, mainly the shift from monolithic databases to modular building blocks. Kleppmann underlines the importance of moving from cloud-centric data storage systems to decentralised data storage similar to Bluesky’s AT protocol. He also dives into explaining the local-first movement and the importance of users owning their data. Read a t...
Jun 15, 2026•40 min
Birgitta Böckeler, Distinguished Engineer at Thoughtworks, returns to discuss the rapid evolution of AI in software delivery. She touches on the evolution from vibe coding, the changing tools landscape and the more autonomous agents that, besides higher velocity, introduce higher risk. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4o62JHU Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging ...
Jun 08, 2026•41 min
In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Sonya Natanzon about the intersection of technical and social aspects of software architecture. Understanding the business and how a company operates is more important than the specific technologies used. Effective requirements analysis requires focusing on problems to be solved that describe good and bad outcomes, rather than statements of need or solution statements. Embracing constraints enable architects to narrow down the available options, which mak...
Jun 01, 2026•42 min
Gunnar Morling, technologist at Confluent and Java Champion, shares his experiences with building high-performance applications in Java, especially in the data space. He shares insights from experiments with building durable execution engines, bootstrapping, and AI natively developing Apache Hardwood - a minimal dependencies Java parser for Apache Parquet. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/49cwnoI Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly gui...
May 25, 2026•41 min
In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Baruch Sadogursky about software architecture in the age of agentic AI. Large Language Models can function, albeit stochastically, as reasoning machines capable of interpreting human ambiguity. With the appropriate rigorous context artifacts to control the LLM’s reasoning, software specifications can become the source of truth, while the code becomes a disposable intermediate language. These context artifacts are managed through an engineering discipline,...
May 18, 2026•52 min
Adam Bien, an independent consultant and pioneer of zero dependencies in the enterprise world of Java, highlights the benefits of consistently using standards, regardless of whether they involve Java or existing patterns. He argues that by doing so, he managed to future-proof the systems he built, preparing them for the cloud era and even for the AI-Native era. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4cFAn3g Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthl...
May 11, 2026•37 min
Andy Damevin, a developer who worked on Quarkus for almost a decade, talks about Roq. A project that started as an experiment to try to see if it’s possible to build a static web site generator on top of quarkus. He touches on the rationale for choosing Java and Quarkus, how to migrate to Roq, and the platform's future. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/48Q5SoJ Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experien...
May 04, 2026•21 min
In this podcast, Jaromir Hamala, a seasoned Java engineer specialising in high-throughput data systems, shares his thoughts on how developers can tackle high-performance software development. He touches on the benefits of modern Java that allow writing idiomatic Java code while remaining "mechanically sympathetic", and also on his experience debugging a Linux kernel bug. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4mIDdrA Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly ...
Apr 27, 2026•41 min
In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Matthew Liste about building and managing software platforms. Platform services act as the basis for application development, and must always be stable, secure, and scalable. Scaling these systems is particularly difficult because unknown resource contention often causes them to break. Using customer journeys, one can pinpoint the places where the system is particularly at risk. Platform engineering also requires managing limited resources, and making dif...
Apr 20, 2026•57 min
Viktor Peterson, part of the CISA task force working on SBOM blueprints and co-founder of sbomify, explores the shifting landscape of software supply chain security as the EU's Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) comes into force, a "GDPR moment" for the industry. Beyond mere compliance, Peterson argues that SBOMs provide significant operational value as tools for automated security audits and license management, provided they are generated using ecosystem-specific tools rather than generic scanners. He ...
Apr 13, 2026•38 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts and Adi Polak talk about the need for context engineering when interacting with LLMs and designing agentic systems. Prompt engineering techniques work with a stateless approach, while context engineering allows AI systems to be stateful. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4168Wcj Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: http...
Apr 06, 2026•31 min
In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Lorin Hochstein about how real-world failures provide insight into how software systems actually work. Our first topic was understanding that while automated fault injection tools can introduce basic robustness into a system, they cannot replicate the understanding that comes from mitigating complicated software failures in the real world. We then pondered how do we get this information to software architects so that they can learn from failure. Ironicall...
Mar 31, 2026•52 min
Are you ready for your new non-deterministic co-workers? Autonomous agents promise to help build, operate, and run software systems, but they can also be unpredictable, chaotic, and difficult to control without the right operating model. In this episode of Next Generation Architecture Playbook, Shweta Vohra and Joseph Stein explore what changes when software systems start planning, acting, and making decisions on their own. The conversation distinguishes truly agentic use cases from traditional ...
Mar 25, 2026•55 min
Andres Almiray, a serial open-source contributor and the creator of JReleaser, discusses the project's state, noting that the tool is usable across any ecosystem, not just Java. He also touches on the Common House Foundation's mission. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4sGNOFg Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: https://www.infoq.com/software-archi...
Mar 16, 2026•32 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts and Sam McAfee discuss how AI hype is reshaping organizational behavior, why many companies struggle with experimentation, and how unclear decision structures create friction. They explore psychological safety and mindful leadership as essential foundations for healthier, more effective engineering cultures. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4l6G7FN Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and ex...
Mar 09, 2026•38 min
This conversation explores why generative AI is not just another automation layer but a shift into autonomy. The key idea is that we cannot retrofit AI into old procedural workflows and expect it to behave. Once autonomy is introduced, systems will drift, show emergent behaviour, and act in ways we did not explicitly script. The real architectural shift is not about controlling every step, but about defining clear boundaries. Instead of telling AI exactly how to do the work, we must define what ...
Mar 04, 2026•52 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts talks with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, the author of Accelerate and one of the most prominent and important minds in DevOps and developer productivity. The conversation is about identifying and removing developer friction, the subject of her new book, Frictionless. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/40vbpMN Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns a...
Mar 02, 2026•40 min
In this podcast, Michael Stiefel spoke with Chris Richardson about using microservices to modernize software applications and the use of artificial intelligence in software architecture. We first discussed the problems of monolithic enterprise software and how to use microservices to evolve them to enable fast flow - the ability to achieve rapid software delivery. The discussion also focused on some of the key problems in accomplishing this. We also discussed how greenfield development fails bec...
Feb 23, 2026•55 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts chats with Muzeeb Mohammad about building event-driven microservices for financial systems. The discussion covers some of the core principles and patterns for event-driven architectures, reasons for using these patterns, and some of the challenges related to finance and other highly-regulated industries. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3LZAgoI Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experi...
Feb 16, 2026•35 min
AI coding assistants promise speed, but what do they mean for quality, trust, and the architect’s craft? In this inaugural episode of Next Gen Architecture Playbook, Shweta Vohra and Grady Booch explore a principled view of how architecture must evolve when machines begin writing code alongside humans. They unpack the third golden age of software engineering, where productivity gains are real, where the risks lie, and how architects can design review gates and practices that preserve long term i...
Feb 11, 2026•51 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts chats with Madelyn Olson, a maintainer of the Valkey project and a Principal Software Development Engineer at Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon MemoryDB. The conversation covers how Valkey started as an open source fork of Redis and how the maintainers optimized the memory usage and improved throughput. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4qhsIM6 Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience ...
Feb 09, 2026•38 min
Erica Pisani, host of the performance and sustainability track at QCon London 2025, retrospects on the lessons learned from assembling the track and the lessons learned from attending the talks. She touches on the importance of the environmental-social aspects of software and hints on how developers can improve these aspects with small steps in the architecture and practices of building software. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3Zquqjj Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Ne...
Feb 02, 2026•31 min
In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke with David Gudeman about software architecture for startups. The discussion starts by illuminating how to make decisions with imperfect information, and how uncertainty and ambiguity flow through all aspects of developing the architecture. This leads to analyzing how the architect must focus on both product strategy and technical decisions, and how there must be a collaborative effort between the product and technical teams. David Gudeman then talks about ho...
Jan 26, 2026•58 min
In this episode, Thomas Betts chats with Olivia McVicker, a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft about AI-driven software development. The conversation covers the current, mainstream AI coding assistants and gets into where those tools are quickly heading. They then look to the future of how the entire software development lifecycle will see the benefits of AI in the next few years. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4qIJT9F Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for you...
Jan 19, 2026•39 min
In this podcast, InfoQ spoke with Somtochi Onyekwere on recent developments in distributed data systems, how to achieve fast, eventually consistent replication across distributed nodes, and how Conflict-free Replicated Data Type (CRDTs) can help with conflict resolution when managing data. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3Lrq9Zf Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns...
Jan 12, 2026•31 min
In this end-of-year panel, the InfoQ podcast hosts reflect on AI’s impact on software delivery, the growing importance of sociotechnical systems, evolving cloud realities, and what 2026 may bring. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3Lk6SsF Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: QCon ...
Jan 06, 2026•55 min
In this episode, Simon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul, sat down with podcast host Michael Redlich, Lead Editor of the Java topic at InfoQ, and discussed the latest features in OpenJDK and Simon’s experiences serving on the JCP Expert Group since JDK 9. OpenJDK topics included: the six-month release cycle, Generational Shenandoah, JDK Flight Recorder, Project Leyden and Compact Object Headers. Please note that this podcast was recorded on October 29, 2025 before anticipated upcoming events were discu...
Dec 22, 2025•39 min
Will McGugan, the maker of Textual and Rich frameworks, speaks about the reasoning of developing the two two libraries and the lesson learned. Also, he shares light on Toad, his current project, which he envisions being a more visually appealing way of interacting with agentic LLMs through command line. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4j1MtFq Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on eme...
Dec 15, 2025•33 min
QCon AI New York Chair Wes Reisz talks with LinkedIn’s Karthik Ramgopal and Prince Valluri about enabling AI agents at enterprise scale. They discuss how platform teams orchestrate secure, multi-agentic systems, the role of MCP, the use of foreground and background agents, improving developer experience, and reducing toil. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4prPukO Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from i...
Dec 10, 2025•33 min
