In today’s podcast we sit down with Ryan Kitchens, a senior site reliability engineer and member of the CORE team at Netflix. This team is responsible for the entire lifecycle of incident management at Netflix, from incident response to memorialising an issue. Why listen to this podcast: - Top level metrics can be used as a proxy for user experience, and can be used to determine that issue should be alerted on an investigated. For example, at Netflix if the customer playback initiation “streams ...
Oct 04, 2019•29 min
In this podcast we sit down with Oliver Gould, co-founder and CTO of Buoyant. Oliver has a strong background in networking, architecture and observability, and worked on solving associated technical challenges at both Yahoo! and Twitter. Oliver is a regular presenter at cloud and infrastructure conferences, and alongside his co-founder William Morgan, you can often find them in the hallway track, waxing lyrical about service mesh -- a term they practically coined -- and trying to bring others al...
Sep 20, 2019•25 min
Today on the podcast, Bernd Rucker of Camunda talks about event sourcing. In particular, Wes and Bernd discuss thoughts around scalability, events, commands, consensus, and the orchestration engines Camunda implemented. This podcast is a primer on considerations between an RDBMS and event-driven systems. Why listen to this podcast: - An event-driven system is a more modern approach to building highly scalable systems. - An RDBMS system can limit throughput in scalability. Camunda was able to ach...
Sep 13, 2019•25 min
In this podcast we discuss a holistic approach to technical leadership, and Pat provides guidance on everything from defining target operating models, cultivating culture, and supporting people in developing the career they would like. There are a bunch of great stories, several book recommendations, and additional resources to follow up on. * Cultivating organisational culture is much like gardening: you can’t force things, but you can set the right conditions for growth. The most effective str...
Sep 06, 2019•27 min
Cilium is open source software for transparently securing the network connectivity between application services deployed using Linux container management platforms like Docker and Kubernetes. It is a CNI plugin that offers layer 7 features typically seen with a service mesh. On this week’s podcast, Thomas Graf (one of the maintainers of Cilium and co-founder of Isovalent) discusses the recent 1.6 release, some of the security questions/concerns around eBPF, and the future roadmap for the project...
Sep 02, 2019•27 min
The three pillars of observability are logs, metrics, and tracing. Most teams are able to handle logs and metrics, while proper tracing can still be a challenge. On this podcast, we talk with Yuri Shkuro, the creator of Jaeger, author of the book Mastering Distributed Tracing, and a software engineer at Uber, about how the Jaeger tracing backend implements the OpenTracing API to handle distributed tracing. Why listen to the podcast: - Jaeger is an open-source tracing backend, developed at Uber. ...
Aug 28, 2019•32 min
ROS is the Robotic Operating System. It’s been used by thousands of developers to prototype and create a robotic application. ROS can be found on robotics in warehouses, self-driving car companies, and on the International Space Station. Louise Poubel is an engineer working with Open Robotics. Today on the podcast, she talks about what it takes to develop software that moves in physical space, including the Sense, Think, Act Cycle, the developer experience, and architecture of ROS. Why listen to...
Aug 19, 2019•29 min
In this podcast we sit down with Matt Klein, software plumber at Lyft and creator of Envoy, and discuss topics including the continued evolution of the popular proxy, the strength of the open source Envoy community, and the value of creating and implementing standards throughout the technology stack. We also explore the larger topic of cloud natives platforms, and discuss the tradeoffs between using a simple and opinionated platform against something that is bespoke and more configurable, but al...
Aug 09, 2019•41 min
On this podcast, we’re talking to Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp. Alongside Mitchell Hashimoto, Armon founded HashiCorp over six years ago, and the company has gone from strength to strength, with their open source infrastructure product suite now consisting of Consul, Nomad, Vault and Terraform. We discuss the formation of the HashiCorp research division, and explore some of the computer science research underpinning Consul and Nomad. We also cover the challenges of supporting te...
Aug 02, 2019•23 min
In this episode recorded at QCon London 2019 Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, first spoke to Kingsley Davies about ethics and then with Cat Swetel about requisite variety and being mindful of the impact our decisions have for the future. Why listen to this podcast: • The need to explore the application of technology for good • The need for ethical standards in the technology industry • Data is the new oil and it is frequently used in ways that are not in the best interest of soci...
Jul 29, 2019•32 min
The promise of Java has always been, “write once, run anywhere.” This was enabled through just-in-time compilation, which allowed developers to target a platform at compilation. But, this flexibility has given rise to comments like, “Java is slow.” What if you could compile Java to Native Code? On this podcast, we’re talking to Thomas Wuerthinger, a senior research director at Oracle Labs. Leading programming language implementation teams for Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and R. He is the architect of...
Jul 19, 2019•26 min
On this podcast, Wes talks to John Xmas. Johnny works for Kasada, a company that offers a security platform to help ensure only your users are logging into your web applications. Johnny is a well-known figure in the security space. The two discuss common attack vectors, the OWASP Top 10, and then walk through what hackers commonly do attempting to compromise a system. The show is full of advice on protecting your systems including topics around Defense in Depth, Time-Based Security, two-factor a...
Jun 17, 2019•32 min
Today on the podcast, Wes talks with Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation. The Eclipse Foundation was chosen to govern the evolution of Oracle’s Java EE to Jakarta EE. The two discuss the project, the recent news about issues with the javax namespace, the challenges around bundling a Java Runtime with Eclipse, and the path forward for Jakarta EE 9 and beyond. Why listen to this podcast: - Java EE, unlikely Java SE, has always been a multi-vendor ecosystem. It made sense...
Jun 03, 2019•27 min
Ludwig is a code-free deep learning toolbox originally created and open sourced by UberAI. Today, on the podcast the creator of Ludwig Piero Molino and Wes Reisz discuss the project. The two talk about how the project works, its strengths, it’s roadmap, and how it’s being used by companies inside (and outside) of Uber. They wrap by discussing path ahead for Ludwig and how you can get involved with the project. Why listen to this podcast: • Uber AI is the research and platform team for everything...
May 24, 2019•29 min
Ben Sigelman is the CEO of Lightstep and the author of the Dapper paper that spawned distributed tracing discussions in the software industry. On the podcast today, Ben discusses with Wes observability, and his thoughts on logging, metrics, and tracing. The two discuss detection and refinement as the real problem when it comes to diagnosing and troubleshooting incidents with data. The podcast is full of useful tips on building and implementing an effective observability strategy. Why listen to t...
May 05, 2019•42 min
- Web Assembly (wasm) is a set of instructions or a low-level byte code that is a target for higher level languages. It was added to the browser because it was a portion of the web platform that many felt was just missing. - Wasm is still a young technology. It performs really well for computationally intensive applications and also offers performance consistency (because it lacks a garbage collector). - Bootstrapping an application using the Rust toolchain looks like: pull down a template, expo...
Apr 26, 2019•41 min
Bryan Cantrill is the CTO of Joyent and well known for the development of DTrace at Sun Microsystems. Today on the podcast, Bryan discusses with Wes Reisz a bit about the origins of DTrace and then spends the rest of the time discussing why he feels Rust is the “biggest development in systems development in his career.” The podcast wraps with a bit about why Bryan feels we should be rewriting parts of the operating system in Rust. Why listen to the podcast: • DTrace came down to a desire to use ...
Apr 12, 2019•39 min
Duncan Macgregor speaks with Wes Reisz about the work being done on the experimental Graal Compiler. He talks about the use cases and where the new JIT compiler excels really well (compared to C2). In addition, Duncan talks about the relationship of Graal to Truffle. The two then discuss a language Duncan works on at OracleLabs (TruffleRuby) that is being implemented on the stack. Finally, the podcast wraps with a discussion of Project Loom and its relationship to TruffleRuby and Graal. Why list...
Apr 05, 2019•30 min
Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes talks with Rod Johnson. Rod is famously responsible for the creation of the Spring Framework. The two talk about the early years of the framework and provides some of the history of its creation. After discussing Spring, Wes and Rod discuss languages he’s been involved with since Java (these include Scala and TypeScript). He talks a bit about what he liked (and didn’t like) about each. Finally, the two wrap by discussing Atomist and how they’re trying to change th...
Mar 23, 2019•34 min
Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes talks with Katharine Jarmul about privacy and fairness in machine learning algorithms. Katharine discusses what’s meant by Ethical Machine Learning and some things to consider when working towards achieving fairness. Katharine is the Co-Founder at KIProtect a machine learning security and privacy firm based in Germany and is one of the three keynotes at QCon.ai. Why listen to this podcast: - Ethical machine learning is about practices and strategies for creating m...
Mar 16, 2019•32 min
Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes Reisz speaks with Grady Booch. Grady is well known as the co-creator of UML, an original member of the design patterns movement, and now work he’s doing around Artificial Intelligence. On the podcast today, the two discuss what today’s reality is for AI. Grady answers questions like what does an AI mean to the practice of writing software and around how he seems it impact delivering software. In addition, Grady talks about AI surges (and winters) of over the years...
Feb 22, 2019•33 min
Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes talks with Joe Beda. Joe is one of the co-creators of Kubernetes. What started in the fall of 2013 with Craig McLuckie, Joe Beda, and Brendan Burns working on cloud infrastructure has become the default orchestrator for cloud native architectures. Today on the show, the two discuss the recent purchase of Heptio by VMWare, the Kubernetes Privilege Escalation Flaw (and the response to it), Kubernetes Enhancement Proposals, the CNCF/organization of Kubernetes, and so...
Feb 12, 2019•30 min
Today on the InfoQ Podcast, Wes speaks with ThirdLove’s Megan Cartwright. Megan is the Director of Data Science for the personalized bra company. In the podcast, Megan first discusses why their customers need a more personal experience and how their using technology to help. She focuses quite a bit of time in the podcast discussing how the team got to an early MVP and then how they did the same for getting to an early machine learning MVP for product recommendations. In this later part, she disc...
Jan 28, 2019•32 min
Lynn Langit is a consulting cloud architect who holds recognitions from all three major cloud vendors on her contributions to their respective communities. On today’s podcast, Wes talks with Lynn about a concept she calls 25% time and a project it led her to become involved within genomic research. 25% time is her own method of learning while collaborating with someone else for a greater good. A recent project leads her to become involved with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research ...
Jan 18, 2019•27 min
In this podcast Charles Humble and Wes Reisz talk about autonomous vehicles, GDPR, quantum computing, microservices, AR/VR and more. * Waymo vehicles are now allowed to be on the road in California running fully autonomous; they seem to be a long way ahead in terms of the number of autonomous miles they’ve driven, but there are something like 60 other companies in California approved to test autonomous vehicles. * It seems reasonable to assume that considerably more regulation around privacy wil...
Dec 28, 2018•35 min
On this week’s podcast, Wes Reisz talks with Brian Goetz. Brian is the Java Language Architect at Oracle. The two start with a discussion on what the six-month cadence has meant to the teams developing Java. Then move to a review of the features in Java 9 through 12. Finally, the two discuss the longer-term side projects (such as Amber, Loom, and Valhalla) and their role in the larger release process for the JDK. * The JVM’s sixth-month cadence changed the way the JDK is delivered and planned. W...
Dec 23, 2018•41 min
This week on the InfoQ Podcast, Wes Reisz talks to Tanya Reilly (Principal Engineer at Squarespace and previously a staff SRE at Google). Tanya discusses her research into how the fire code evolved in New York and draws on some of the parallels she sees in software. Along the way, she discusses what it means to be an SRE, what effective aspects of the role might look like, and her opinions on what we as an industry should be doing to prevent disasters. This podcast features discussion on paved r...
Dec 17, 2018•32 min
On today’s podcast, Wes Reisz talks with Jason Maude of Starling Bank. Starling Bank is a relatively new startup in the United Kingdom working in the banking sector. The two discuss the architecture, technology choices, and design processes used at Starling. In addition, Maude goes into some of the realities of building in the cloud, working with regulators, and proven robustness with practices like chaos testing. Why listen to this podcast: - Starling Bank was created because the government low...
Nov 30, 2018•36 min
Martin Fowler chats about the work he’s done over the last couple of years on the rewrite of the original Refactorings book. He discusses how this thought process has changed and how that’s affected the new edition of the book. In addition to discussing Refactors, Martin and Wes discuss his thoughts on evolutionary architecture, team structures, and how the idea of refactors can be applied in larger architecture contexts. Why listen to this podcast: - Refactoring is the idea of trying to identif...
Nov 02, 2018•33 min
In June of this year, Consul 1.2 was released. The release expanded Consul’s capability around service segmentation (controlling who and how services connect East and West). On this week’s podcast, Wes and Mitchell discuss Consul in detail. The two discuss Consul’s design decisions around focusing on user space networking, layer 4 routing, Go, Windows’ performance characteristics, the roadmap for eBPF on Linux, and an interesting feature that Consul implements called Network Tomography. The show...
Oct 21, 2018•34 min
