AI agents are set to transform software development, but software itself isn’t going anywhere—despite the dramatic predictions. On this episode of The New Stack Makers, Mark Hinkle, CEO and Founder of Peripety Labs, discusses how AI agents relate to serverless technologies, infrastructure-as-code (IaC), and configuration management. Hinkle envisions AI agents as “dumb robots” handling tasks like querying APIs and exchanging data, while the real intelligence remains in large language models (LLMs...
Mar 20, 2025•29 min•Ep. 1514
The transition from SaaS to Services as Software with AI agents is underway, necessitating new orchestration methods similar to Kubernetes for containers. AI agents will require resource allocation, workflow management, and scalable infrastructure as they evolve. Two key trends are driving this shift: Data Evolution – From spreadsheets to AI agents, data has progressed through relational databases, big data, predictive analytics, and generative AI. Computing Evolution – Starting from mainframes,...
Mar 13, 2025•30 min•Ep. 1513
Amazon Q Developer is streamlining the software development lifecycle by integrating AI-powered tools into AWS. In an interview at AWS in Seattle, Srini Iragavarapu, director of generative AI Applications and Developer Experiences at AWS, discussed how Amazon Q Developer enhances the developer experience. Initially focused on inline code completions, Amazon Q Developer evolved by incorporating generative AI models like Amazon Nova and Anthropic models, improving recommendations and accelerating ...
Mar 06, 2025•22 min•Ep. 1512
Maya Kaczorowski noticed that AI identity and AI agent identity concerns were emerging from outside the security industry, rather than from CISOs and security leaders. She concluded that OAuth, the open standard for authentication, already serves the purpose of granting access without exposing passwords. Kaczorowski, a respected technologist and founder of Oblique, a startup focused on self-serve access controls, recently wrote about OAuth and AI agents and shared her insights on this episode of...
Feb 27, 2025•26 min•Ep. 1511
The rise of the World Wide Web enabled developers to build tools and platforms on top of it. Similarly, the advent of large language models (LLMs) allows for creating new AI-driven tools, such as autonomous agents that interact with LLMs, execute tasks, and make decisions. However, verifying these decisions is crucial, and critical reasoning may be a solution, according to Yam Marcovitz, tech lead at Parlant.io and CEO of emcie.co. Marcovitz likens LLM development to the evolution of programming...
Feb 20, 2025•28 min•Ep. 1510
Adam Jacob, CEO of System Initiative, discusses a shift in infrastructure automation—moving from writing code to building models that enable rapid simulations and collaboration. In The New Stack Makers, he compares this approach to Formula One racing, where teams use high-fidelity models to simulate race conditions, optimizing performance before hitting the track. System Initiative applies this concept to enterprise automation, creating a model that understands how infrastructure components inte...
Feb 13, 2025•31 min•Ep. 1509
Morgan McLean, co-founder of OpenTelemetry and senior director of product management at Splunk, has long tackled the challenges of observability in large-scale systems. In a conversation with Alex Williams on The New Stack Makers , McLean reflected on his early frustrations debugging high-scale services and the need for better observability tools. OpenTelemetry, formed in 2019 from OpenTracing and OpenCensus, has since become a key part of modern observability strategies. As a Cloud Native Compu...
Feb 06, 2025•30 min•Ep. 1508
Observability is expensive because traditional tools weren’t designed for the complexity and scale of modern cloud-native systems, explains Christine Yen, CEO of Honeycomb.io. Logging tools, while flexible, were optimized for manual, human-scale data reading. This approach struggles with the massive scale of today’s software, making logging slow and resource-intensive. Monitoring tools, with their dashboards and metrics, prioritized speed over flexibility, which doesn’t align with the dynamic na...
Jan 30, 2025•25 min•Ep. 1507
Generative AI is a data-driven story with significant infrastructure and operational implications, particularly around the rising demand for GPUs, which are better suited for AI workloads than CPUs. In an episode of The New Stack Makers recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Sudha Raghavan, SVP for Developer Platform at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, discussed how AI’s rapid adoption has reshaped infrastructure needs. The release of ChatGPT triggered a surge in GPU demand, with organi...
Jan 23, 2025•27 min•Ep. 1506
The hardware industry is surging, driven by AI's demanding workloads, with Arm—a 35-year-old pioneer in processor IP—playing a pivotal role. In an episode of The New Stack Makers recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Pranay Bakre, principal solutions engineer at Arm, discussed how Arm is helping organizations migrate and run applications on its technology. Bakre highlighted Arm’s partnership with hyperscalers like AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, showcasing processors such as AW...
Jan 16, 2025•21 min•Ep. 1505
Heroku has open-sourced its Twelve-Factor App methodology, initially created in 2011 to help developers build portable, resilient cloud applications. Heroku CTO Gail Frederick announced this shift at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, explaining the move aims to involve the community in modernizing the framework. While the methodology inspired a generation of cloud developers, certain factors are now outdated, such as the focus on logs as event streams. Frederick highlighted the need for up...
Jan 02, 2025•23 min•Ep. 1504
Falco, an open-source runtime observability and security tool, was created by Sysdig founder Loris Degioanni to collect real-time system events directly from the kernel. Leveraging eBPF technology for improved safety and performance, Falco gathers data like pod names and namespaces, correlating them with customizable rules. Unlike static analysis tools, it operates in real-time, monitoring events as they occur. In this episode of The New Stack Makers, TNS Editor-in-Chief, Heather Joslyn spoke wi...
Dec 26, 2024•19 min•Ep. 1503
Jetstack’s cert-manager, a leading open-source project in Kubernetes certificate management, began as a job interview challenge. Co-founder Matt Barker recalls asking a prospective engineer to automate Let’s Encrypt within Kubernetes. By Monday, the candidate had created kube-lego, which evolved into cert-manager, now downloaded over 500 million times monthly. Cert-manager’s journey to CNCF graduation, achieved in September, began with its donation to the foundation four years ago. Relaunched as...
Dec 19, 2024•23 min•Ep. 1502
The tech industry faces a paradox: despite high demand for skills, many developers and engineers are unemployed. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Salt Lake City, Utah, Andela and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced an initiative to train 20,000 technologists in cloud native computing over the next decade. oss O'neill, Senior Program Manager at Andela and Chris Aniszczyk, CNCF’s CTO, highlighted the lack of Kubernetes-certified professionals in regions like Africa a...
Dec 12, 2024•21 min•Ep. 1501
When open source projects shift to proprietary licensing, forks and new communities often emerge. Such was the case with MapLibre, born from Mapbox’s 2020 decision to make its map rendering engine proprietary. In conjunction with All Things Open 2024, Seth Fitzsimmons, a principal engineer at AWS and Tarus Balog, principal technical strategist for open source at AWS shared that this engine, popular for its WebGL-powered vector maps and dynamic customization features, was essential for organizati...
Dec 05, 2024•26 min•Ep. 1500
At All Things Open in October, Anandhi Bumstead, AWS’s director of software engineering, highlighted OpenSearch's journey and the advantages of the Linux Foundation's stewardship. OpenSearch, an open source data ingestion and analytics engine, was transferred by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to the Linux Foundation in September 2024, seeking neutral governance and broader community collaboration. Originally forked from Elasticsearch after a licensing change in 2021, OpenSearch has evolved into a ver...
Nov 26, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1499
Is Apache Spark too costly? Amazon Principal Engineer Patrick Ames tackled this question during an interview with The New Stack Makers , sharing insights into transitioning from Spark to Ray for managing large-scale data. Ames, described as a "go-to" engineer for exabyte-scale projects, emphasized a goal-driven approach to solving complex engineering problems, from simplifying daily chores to optimizing software solutions. Initially, Spark was chosen at Amazon for its simplicity and open-source ...
Nov 21, 2024•25 min•Ep. 1498
In this New Stack Makers, Codiac aims to simplify app deployment on Kubernetes by offering a unified interface that minimizes complexity. Traditionally, Kubernetes is powerful but challenging for teams due to its intricate configurations and extensive manual coding. Co-founded by Ben Ghazi and Mark Freydl, Codiac provides engineers with infrastructure on demand, container management, and advanced software development life cycle (SDLC) tools, making Kubernetes more accessible. Codiac’s interface ...
Nov 14, 2024•29 min•Ep. 1497
Valkey, an open-source fork of Redis launched in March, introduced its multithreaded Version 8.0 in September, now available through AWS ElastiCache. At All Things Open 2024 in Raleigh, AWS's Kyle Davis explains that Valkey was developed after Redis changed to a restrictive license, drawing contributors from companies like AWS, Google, Alibaba, and Oracle. Notably, some contributors emerged independently, including a significant contributor from Vietnam. Version 8.0 differentiates itself from Re...
Nov 07, 2024•22 min•Ep. 1496
Deb Nicholson, executive director of the Python Software Foundation, attributes Python’s popularity to its minimal syntactical complexity, which appeals to beginners and seasoned developers alike. Python allows flexibility for those exploring coding without a specific focus, unlike purpose-built languages. Since her leadership began in 2022, Nicholson has overseen the foundation’s role in managing Python’s fiscal and operational needs, including the package index that hosts over half a million a...
Oct 31, 2024•29 min•Ep. 1495
Platform engineering will be a key focus at KubeCon this year, with a special emphasis on AI platforms. Priyanka Sharma, executive director of the Linux Foundation, highlighted the convergence of platform engineering and AI during an interview on The New Stack Makers with Adobe’s Joseph Sandoval. KubeCon will feature talks from experts like Chen Goldberg of CoreWeave and Aparna Sinha of CapitalOne, showcasing how AI workloads will transform platform operations. Sandoval emphasized the growing ma...
Oct 24, 2024•26 min•Ep. 1494
Rohit Choudhary, co-founder and CEO of Acceldata, placed an early bet on data observability, which has proven prescient. In a New Stack Makers podcast episode, Choudhary discussed three key insights that shaped his vision: First, the exponential growth of data in enterprises, further amplified by generative AI and large language models. Second, the rise of a multicloud and multitechnology environment, with a majority of companies adopting hybrid or multiple cloud strategies. Third, a shortage of...
Oct 17, 2024•23 min•Ep. 1493
Rust has maintained its place among the top 15 programming languages and has been the most admired language for nine consecutive years. In a New Stack Makers podcast, Joel Marcey, director of technology at the Rust Foundation, discussed the language's growing importance, including initiatives to improve its security, performance, and adoption in various domains. While Rust is widely used in systems and backend programming, it’s also gaining traction in embedded systems, safety-critical applicati...
Oct 10, 2024•24 min•Ep. 1492
In a New Stack Makers episode, Ashley Williams, founder and CEO of axo, highlights how the software world depends on open-source code, which is largely maintained by unpaid volunteers. She likens this to a CVS relying on volunteer-run shipping companies, pointing out how unsettling that might be for customers. The conversation focuses on open-source maintainers’ reluctance to be seen as "suppliers" of software, an idea explored in a 2022 blog post by Thomas Depierre. Many maintainers reject the ...
Oct 03, 2024•44 min•Ep. 1491
In this New Stack Makers podcast, Xun Wang, CTO of Bloomreach, brings insights from his time at Nvidia, particularly lessons from its founder, Jensen Huang, to his current role in e-commerce personalization. Wang emphasizes structuring organizations to reflect the architecture of the products they build, applying a hands-on, detail-oriented approach that encourages deep understanding of engineering challenges. He credits Huang for teaching him the importance of focusing on fundamental architectu...
Sep 26, 2024•46 min•Ep. 1490
Code reviews can be highly beneficial but tricky to execute well due to the human factors involved, says Adrienne Braganza Tacke, author of *Looks Good to Me: Actionable Advice for Constructive Code Review.* In a recent conversation with *The New Stack*, Tacke identified three challenges teams must address for successful code reviews: ambiguity, subjectivity, and ego. Ambiguity arises when the goals or expectations for the code are unclear, leading to miscommunication and rework. Tacke emphasize...
Sep 19, 2024•34 min•Ep. 1489
In the New Stack Makers episode, Adi Polak, Director, Advocacy and Developer Experience Engineering at Confluent discusses the operational and analytical estates in data infrastructure. The operational estate focuses on fast, low-latency event-driven applications, while the analytical estate handles long-running data crunching tasks. Challenges arise due to the "schema evolution" from upstream operational changes impacting downstream analytics, creating complexity for developers. Apache Iceberg ...
Sep 12, 2024•47 min•Ep. 1488
Bob Wise, CEO of Heroku, discussed the impact of generative AI (GenAI) coding tools on software development in a recent episode of The New Stack Makers. He compared the rise of these tools to adding an "infinite number of interns" to development teams, noting that while they accelerate code writing, they don't yet simplify testing, deployment, or production operations. Wise likened this to the early days of Kubernetes, which focused on improving operations rather than the frontend experience. He...
Sep 05, 2024•42 min•Ep. 1487
After the XZ Utils backdoor vulnerability was uncovered in March, the OpenJS Foundation saw a surge in inquiries from potential open source JavaScript contributors. Robin Ginn, executive director of the foundation, noted that volunteer-led JavaScript communities often face challenges in managing these contributions. The discovery that a single contributor, "Jia Tan," planted the backdoor heightened vigilance, especially when new contributors requested admin privileges. Ginn emphasized that trust...
Aug 29, 2024•28 min•Ep. 1486
Paige Bailey, who began coding at age 9 in rural Texas, now leads the GenAI developer experience at Google. In a conversation with Chris Pirillo on The New Stack Makers, Bailey reflected on the evolving role of software development in the era of generative AI. While she once urged her nieces and nephews to pursue computer science degrees, Bailey now believes that critical thinking and problem-solving may be more crucial for future tech careers. She emphasized that generative AI is democratizing ...
Aug 22, 2024•32 min•Ep. 1485
