Platform engineering “is the art of designing and binding all of the different tech and tools that you have inside of an organization into a golden path that enables self service for developers and reduces cognitive load,” said Kaspar Von Grünberg, founder and CEO of Humanitec, in this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast. This structure is important for individual contributors, Grünberg said, as well as backend engineers: “if you look at the operation teams, it reduces their burden to do rep...
Jan 03, 2024•24 min•Ep. 1453
Is the end of programming nigh? That's the big question posed in this episode recorded earlier in 2023. It was very popular among listeners, and with the topic being as relevant as ever, we wanted to wrap up the year by highlighting this conversation again. If you ask Matt Welsh, he'd say yes, the end of programming is upon us. As Richard McManus wrote on The New Stack , Welsh is a former professor of computer science at Harvard who spoke at a virtual meetup of the Chicago Association for Comput...
Dec 27, 2023•32 min•Ep. 1452
Kubevirt, a relatively new capability within Kubernetes, signifies a shift in the virtualization landscape, allowing operations teams to run KVM virtual machines nested in containers behind the Kubernetes API. This integration means that the Kubernetes API now encompasses the concept of virtual machines, enabling VM-based workloads to operate seamlessly within a cluster behind the API. This development addresses the challenge of transitioning traditional virtualized environments into cloud-nativ...
Dec 21, 2023•16 min•Ep. 1451
The Kubernetes landscape is evolving, shifting from the domain of visionaries and early adopters to a more mainstream audience. Tigera, represented by CEO Ratan Tipirneni at KubeCon North America in Chicago, recognizes the changing dynamics and the demand for simplified Kubernetes solutions. Tigera's open-source Calico security platform has been updated with a focus on mainstream users, presenting a cohesive and user-friendly solution. This update encompasses five key capabilities: vulnerability...
Dec 13, 2023•20 min•Ep. 1450
Boeing, with around 6,000 engineers, is emphasizing open source engagement by focusing on three main themes, according to Damani Corbin, who heads Boeing's Open Source office. He joined our host, Alex Williams, for a discussion at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon in Chicago. The first priority Corbin talks about is simplifying the consumption of open source software for developers. Second, Boeing aims to facilitate developer contributions to open source projects, fostering involvement in communities like ...
Dec 12, 2023•19 min•Ep. 1449
At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) revealed plans to mirror Kubernetes assets hosted on Google Cloud, addressing Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF) egress costs. A year later, the project, led by AWS's Davanum Srinivas, redirects image requests to the nearest cloud provider, reducing egress costs for users. AWS's Todd Neal and Jonathan Innis discussed this on The New Stack Makers podcast recorded at KubeCon North America 2023. Neal explained the reg...
Dec 07, 2023•18 min•Ep. 1448
In the past year, developers have faced both promise and uncertainty, particularly in the realm of generative AI. Heath Newburn, global field CTO for PagerDuty, joins TNS host Heather Joslyn to talk about the impact AI and other topics will have on developers in 2024. Newburn anticipates a growing emphasis on DevSecOps in response to high-profile cyber incidents, noting a shift in executive attitudes toward security spending. The rise of automation-centric tools like Backstage signals a changing...
Dec 06, 2023•22 min•Ep. 1447
In this episode of The New Stack Makers, Rob Skillington, co-founder and CTO of Chronosphere, discusses the challenges engineers face in building tools for their organizations. Skillington emphasizes that the "build or buy" decision oversimplifies the issue of tooling and suggests that understanding the abstractions of a project is crucial. Engineers should consider where to build and where to buy, creating solutions that address the entire problem. Skillington advises against short-term thinkin...
Dec 05, 2023•20 min•Ep. 1446
Jean Yang, founder of API observability company Akita Software, emphasizes that programming languages should be shaped by software development needs and data, rather than philosophical ideals. Yang, a former assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that programming tools and processes should be influenced by actual use and data, prioritizing the developer experience over the language creator's beliefs. With a background in programming languages, Yang advocates for a shift away...
Nov 30, 2023•26 min•Ep. 1445
Docker CTO Justin Cormack reveals that Docker has been a go-to tool for data scientists in AI and machine learning for years, primarily in specialized areas like image processing and prediction models. However, the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT last year sparked a significant surge in Docker's popularity within the AI community. The focus shifted to large language models (LLMs), with a growing interest in the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) stack. Docker's collaboration with Ollama enables de...
Nov 28, 2023•12 min•Ep. 1444
In this episode, Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, discusses the need for a new definition as AI differs significantly from open source software. The complexity arises from the unique nature of AI, particularly large language models and transformers, which challenge traditional copyright frameworks. Maffulli emphasizes the urgency of establishing a definition for open source AI and discusses an ongoing effort to release a set of principles by the year's end. The...
Nov 22, 2023•23 min•Ep. 1443
DockerCon showcased a commitment to enhancing the developer experience, with a particular focus on addressing the challenge of debugging containers in Kubernetes. The newly launched Docker Debug offers a language-independent toolbox for debugging both local and remote containerized applications. By abstracting Kubernetes concepts like pods and namespaces, Docker aims to simplify debugging processes and shift the focus from container layers to the application itself. Our guest, Docker Principal E...
Nov 21, 2023•16 min•Ep. 1442
TNS host Alex Williams is joined by Florian Valeye, a data engineer at Back Market, to shed light on the evolving landscape of data engineering, particularly focusing on Delta Lake and his contributions to open source communities. As a member of the Delta Lake community, Valeye discusses the intersection of data warehouses and data lakes, emphasizing the need for a unified platform that breaks down traditional barriers. Delta Lake, initially created by Databricks and now under the Linux Foundati...
Nov 16, 2023•21 min•Ep. 1441
Liam Crilly, Senior Director of Product Management at NGINX, discussed the potential of WebAssembly (Wasm) during this recording at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao, Spain. With over three decades of experience, Crilly highlighted WebAssembly's promise of universal portability, allowing developers to build once and run anywhere across a network of devices. While Wasm is more mature on the client side in browsers, its deployment on the server side is less developed, lacking sufficient runtimes an...
Nov 14, 2023•24 min•Ep. 1440
Jonathan Katz, a principal product manager at Amazon Web Services, discusses the evolution of PostgreSQL in an episode of The New Stack Makers. He notes that PostgreSQL's uses have expanded significantly since its inception and now cover a wide range of applications and workloads. Initially considered niche, it faced competition from both open-source and commercial relational database systems. Katz's involvement in the PostgreSQL community began as an app developer, and he later contributed by o...
Nov 08, 2023•21 min•Ep. 1439
The practice of "shift left," which involves moving security concerns to the code level and increasing developers' responsibility for security, is facing a backlash, with both developers and security professionals expressing concerns. Peter Klimek, director of technology at Imperva, discusses the reasons behind this backlash in this episode. Some organizations may have exhausted the benefits of shift left, while the main challenge for many isn't finding vulnerabilities but finding time to addres...
Nov 07, 2023•23 min•Ep. 1438
Operational resiliency, as explained by Dormain Drewitz of PagerDuty, involves the ability to bounce back and recover from setbacks, not only technically but also in terms of organizational recovery. True resiliency means maintaining the willingness to take risks even after facing challenges. In a conversation with Heather Joslyn on the New Stack Makers podcast, Drewitz discussed the role of AI and automation in achieving operational resiliency, especially in a context where teams are under pres...
Nov 03, 2023•21 min•Ep. 1437
In this episode, Scott Johnston, CEO of Docker, highlights the evolving role of developers, emphasizing their increasing importance in architectural decision-making and tool development for applications. This shift in prioritizing a great developer experience and rapid tool development has led to substantial spending in the industry. Johnston expressed confidence that integrating generative AI into the developer experience will drive business growth and expand the customer base. He downplayed co...
Nov 02, 2023•21 min•Ep. 1436
This episode of The New Stack Makers was recorded on the road at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit Europe in Bilbao, Spain. A pair of technologists from Amazon Web Services (AWS) join us to discuss the development of Powertools for AWS Lambda. Andrea Amorosi, a senior solutions architect at AWS, and Leandro Damascena, a specialist solutions architect, share insights into how Powertools evolved from an observability tool to support more advanced use cases like ensuring workload safety, ba...
Nov 01, 2023•18 min•Ep. 1435
KubeCon 2023 is set to feature three hot topics, according to Taylor Dolezal from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Firstly, GenAI and Large Language Models (LLMs) are taking the spotlight, particularly regarding their security and integration with legacy infrastructure. Platform engineering is also on the rise, with over 25 sessions at KubeCon Chicago focusing on its definition and how it benefits internal product teams by fostering a culture of product proliferation. Lastly, WebAssembly i...
Oct 31, 2023•22 min•Ep. 1434
Digital.ai, an AI-powered DevSecOps platform, serves large enterprises such as financial institutions, insurance companies, and gaming firms. The primary challenge faced by these clients is scaling their DevOps practices across vast organizations. They aim to combine modern development methodologies like agile DevOps with the need for speed and intimacy with end-users on a large scale. This episode features a discussion between Wing To of Digital.ai and TNS host Heather Joslyn about platform eng...
Oct 27, 2023•20 min•Ep. 1433
Moving workloads to the cloud presents cost prediction challenges. Traditional setups with on-premises hardware offer predictability, but cloud costs are usage-based and granular. In this podcast episode, Matt Stellpflug, a senior FinOps specialist at ProsperOps, discusses the complexities of forecasting cloud expenses with TNS host Heather Joslyn. Cloud users face fluctuating costs due to continuous deployments and changing workloads. There are additional expenses for data access and transfer. ...
Oct 26, 2023•14 min•Ep. 1432
In her keynote address at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit Europe, Fatima Sarah Khalid emphasized that being an ally is more than just superficial gestures like wearing pronouns on badges or correctly pronouncing coworkers' names. True allyship involves taking meaningful actions to support and uplift individuals from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds. This support is essential, not only in obvious ways but also in everyday interactions, which collectively create a more inclus...
Oct 25, 2023•17 min•Ep. 1431
In a recent conversation at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao, Spain, Gabriel Colombo, the General Manager of the Linux Foundation Europe and the Executive Director of the Fintech Open Source Foundation, discussed the potential impact of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) on the open source community. The conversation shed light on the challenges and opportunities that the CRA presents to open source and how individuals and organizations can respond. The conversation began by addressing the Cyber Res...
Oct 19, 2023•20 min•Ep. 1430
In this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, Uma Daniel, a product manager at UST, discusses the current complexities in the global economy, marked by low unemployment except in the tech industry, high inflation, high interest rates, a volatile stock market, and the looming threat of recession. Amid these challenges, organizations are seeking ways to enhance their operational efficiency. Daniel introduces the concept of FinOps, which goes beyond just managing cloud costs. Instead, it focuses...
Oct 18, 2023•23 min•Ep. 1429
Since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT-3 in late 2022, various industries have been actively exploring its applications. Madhukar Kumar, CMO of SingleStore, discussed his experiments with large language models (LLMs) in this podcast episode with TNS host Heather Joslyn. He mentioned a specific LLM called Gorilla, which is trained on APIs and can generate APIs based on specific tasks. Kumar also talked about SingleStore Now, an AI conference, where they plan to teach attendees how to build generat...
Oct 12, 2023•12 min•Ep. 1428
Observability in multi-cloud environments is becoming increasingly complex, as highlighted by Martin Mao, CEO and co-founder of Chronosphere. This challenge has two main components: a rise in customer-facing incidents, which demand significant engineering time for debugging, and the ineffectiveness and high cost of existing tools. These issues are creating a problematic return on investment for the industry. Mao discussed these observability challenges on The New Stack Makers podcast with host H...
Oct 11, 2023•22 min•Ep. 1427
Platform engineering is gaining prominence due to the need for faster application deployment, which directly impacts business velocity. Valentina Alaria, Senior Director of Product at VMware, emphasizes that not all organizations pursuing platform engineering have the same goals, context, or pain points. They tailor solutions to each organization's specific needs. Some focus on rapid onboarding for junior developers, while others aim to reduce complexity, friction, and support larger development...
Oct 05, 2023•30 min•Ep. 1426
ByConity is an open source project that emerged from ByteDance's use of Clickhouse, an open-source database system, to address their growing data volume. ByConity focuses on enhancing the separation of compute and storage, improving multitenancy support, and optimizing query performance in cloud-native environments. ByteDance's Vini Jaiswal, a principle developer advocate at the parent company of TikTok, highlights the power of open source in fostering innovation and collaboration. She shares he...
Oct 04, 2023•29 min•Ep. 1425
Along with discussing the emergence and ascension of platform engineering in this episode, we also discuss the role that Humanitec plays in helping organizations establish platforms for developers, as well as Backstage, a popular open source internal developer platform that was developed by Spotify for its own developers. An IDP, our guest Kaspar Von Grünberg explained, is a standardized interface for developers to build applications using a golden path of vetted tools and libraries, allowing fo...
Sep 27, 2023•15 min•Ep. 1424
