Ryan sits down with Michael Parker, VP of Engineering at TurinTech to discuss the newest kind of tech debt—AI-generated tech debt. They dive into the uneven productivity results of AI tools, how tech teams are evolving their roles and work in response to these massive technological shifts, and what the nervous developer can do to maintain joy in their work. Episode notes: Founded by computer and data scientists from the University College London, TurinTech automates your code optimization so you...
Jan 23, 2026•30 min•Ep. 910
Ryan welcomes Prakash Chandran, CEO and co-founder of Xano, to the show to discuss the intricate relationship between frontend and backend development, the potential challenges that universal frontend interfaces pose for developers, and the importance of understanding both your frontend and your backend when using AI code. Episode notes: Xano is a no-code backend platform that lets you build systems with visual logic, APIs, and modular AI components. Check out their tutorials on YouTube . Connec...
Jan 20, 2026•31 min•Ep. 909
From the floor at AWS re:Invent, Ryan is joined by AWS Senior Principal Engineer David Yanacek to chat about all things AWS, from the truth behind AWS’s Black Friday origin mythos to the development of essential cloud tools like SQS and DynamoDB. Plus, how David envisions autonomous agents will ease developers' operational burdens. Episode notes: This episode was recorded live at AWS re:Invent . Listen to our other episodes from the floor with the Stack Overflow team and Corey Quinn . Keep up wi...
Jan 16, 2026•29 min•Ep. 908
In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow Chief of Product and Technology Jody Bailey chats with Matt Lyteson, CIO of Technology Platform Transformation at IBM, about the processes and challenges of adopting AI within an enterprise environment. They explore IBM's strategic approach to integrating AI into workflows and emphasise the importance of fostering the right behaviours among employees, particularly regarding automation and AI assistance. The discussion also: Explores what it mean...
Jan 15, 2026•41 min•Ep. 906
Ryan welcomes back the mighty Scott Hanselman, VP of Developer Community at Microsoft, for a crossover episode about all things vibe coding. They cover the ways it can really improve the software development lifecycle, the importance of keeping human judgement in software so developers can truly understand their code, and how AI can be leveraged as a learning tool…like when Scott vibe coded a simple app over lunch. Episode notes: Scott last sat down with us in 2017 to discuss his journey into te...
Jan 13, 2026•35 min•Ep. 907
Ryan is joined by Vanessa Lee, VP of Product at Shopify, to discuss how AI is a tech renaissance and how these new technologies are affecting the ecommerce world. They cover the development of Sidekick, their new tool, along with the general challenges of building AI tools, the importance of maintaining human oversight in AI, and what the future holds for personalized user experiences in ecommerce. Episode notes: We spoke with Shopify about how they’re building developer-focused AI products last...
Jan 09, 2026•30 min•Ep. 905
SPONSORED BY MONGODB Pete Johnson, Field CTO, Artificial Intelligence at MongoDB, joins the podcast to talk about a recent OpenAI paper on the impact that AI will have on jobs and overall GDP. Pete, who reads the papers (and datasets) so you don’t have to, says that looking at AI’s impact as a job killer is a flawed metric. Instead, he and Ryan talk about how AI will be a collaborator for actual human workers, how embeddings and vectorization will move the productivity needle, and the five decis...
Jan 07, 2026•29 min•Ep. 904
Ryan hosts Akamai data scientist Robert Lester on the show to discuss how the growth of AI bots affects internet traffic, the ways these AI bots differ from the original search engine optimization ones, and why you might not want to mitigate AI bots on your websites. Episode notes: Akamai is a CDN, full-stack cloud computing, and cybersecurity company that keeps experiences closer to users and threats further away using the world’s most distributed compute platform. Connect with Robert on Linked...
Jan 06, 2026•23 min•Ep. 903
Ryan sits down with Tom Totenberg, head of release automation at LaunchDarkly, to discuss the perils of taking too many shortcuts in software development, how business pressures and AI code tools have contributed to dangerous corner cutting, and the importance of balancing speed with sustainability to maintain system integrity. Episode notes: LaunchDarkly is a feature management and experimentation platform that allows you to decouple software feature rollouts from code deployment so you can man...
Jan 02, 2026•29 min•Ep. 902
MIT and Stanford professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland joins the show to explore the power of communities for shared knowledge and how AI could hurt or help the growth of these communities. Ryan and Sandy dive into the findings from Sandy’s new book Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI , the ethical implications of rapidly advancing technology, and AI’s potential to foster community dialogue and decision-making. Episode notes: Sandy’s new book Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age...
Dec 30, 2025•34 min•Ep. 901
Ryan sits down with Dan Ciruli, VP and General Manager of Cloud Native at Nutanix, to talk about getting your virtual machines and Kubernetes to play nice in cloud-native environments, why VMs are still relevant in enterprise applications, and how AI can help modernize legacy systems. Episode notes: Nutanix combines compute, storage, virtualization, and networking so you can run applications and manage data across on-premises datacenters, public clouds, and edge locations all on one platform. Co...
Dec 26, 2025•32 min•Ep. 900
Ryan welcomes Anil Dash, writer and former Stack Overflow board member, back to the show to discuss how AI is not a magical technology, but rather the normal next step in computing’s evolution. They explore the importance of democratizing access to technology, the unique challenges that LLMs’ non-determinism poses, and how developers can keep Stack Overflow’s ethos of community alive in a world of AI. Episode notes : Anil is a tech entrepreneur (former CEO at our sister company Fog Creek Softwar...
Dec 23, 2025•38 min•Ep. 899
Ryan sits down with Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist at Duckbill, at AWS re:Invent to get Corey’s patented snarky take on all the happenings from the conference. They discuss whether the AI agent hype is supported by actual buyers, how startups are faring as AWS focuses on large enterprises, and how many of the new technologies coming out this year will actually be transformative. Episode notes: This episode was recorded at AWS re:Invent 2025 ! Check out Ryan’s recap of events on our blog. Duc...
Dec 19, 2025•23 min•Ep. 898
Ryan is joined by Stack Overflow’s CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar and Director of Data Science Michael Foree on the floor at re:Invent to discuss all they’ve seen and heard at the event, from the future of AI agents to the trust issues the enterprise has around AI and the impact of AI and robotics on the job market. Episode Notes: This episode was recorded at AWS re:Invent 2025 ! Check out Ryan’s recap of events from the floor on our blog. Connect with Prashanth on LinkedIn . Connect with Michael on...
Dec 16, 2025•32 min•Ep. 897
Ryan talks with Wesley Yu, head of engineering at Metalab, about the evolution of interfaces in technology, the pressure that UI generated on the fly would put on your backend systems, and why AI is just the latest and fanciest in a long line of CRUD apps. Episode notes: Metalab designs interfaces for top brands around the world, helping them design, build, and ship their products. Connect with Wesley on Twitter and LinkedIn . Congrats to Populist badge winner SiddAjmera , who won the badge for ...
Dec 12, 2025•24 min•Ep. 896
Ryan is joined by Kayvon Beykpour, CEO and founder of Microscope, to dive into AI-powered code review’s potential for managing large codebases, the need for humans-in-the-loop for reviewing PRs so AI tools can efficiently and effectively debug, and how AI can increase visibility through summarization at the abstract syntax tree level and high signal-to-noise ratio code reviews. Episode notes: Macroscope helps you understand your code through AI-powered code review, automated PR descriptions, and...
Dec 09, 2025•35 min•Ep. 895
Ryan is joined by Outshift by Cisco’s VP of Engineering Guillaume De Saint Marc to discuss the future of multi-agent architectures as microservices, the challenges and limitations of the infrastructure for these multi-agent systems, and the importance of communication protocols and interoperability in order to build decentralized and scalable architectures. Episode notes: Outshift is Cisco’s tech incubator that pursues emerging technologies like agentic AI, quantum computing, and next-gen infras...
Dec 05, 2025•36 min•Ep. 894
Ryan welcomes Simone Kalmakis, VP of Engineering at Viam, to dive into how her team is bridging the gap between software and robotics, the importance of abstraction layers in making robotics more accessible, and the real-world applications of robotics from lobster traps to industrial sanding robots. Episode notes: Viam is a robotics platform that brings modern software development tools into hardware applications. Connect with Simone on Linkedin . This week’s shoutout goes to Lifejacket winner S...
Dec 02, 2025•25 min•Ep. 893
Darryl Lyons, co-founder and Chief Rainmaker at Rainstick, joins the show to dive into advancements in AgTech and how Rainstick is using bioelectricity to enhance agricultural productivity. They discuss how Rainstick mimics natural thunderstorms to create electric fields and frequencies that promote plant growth, challenges and breakthroughs in their research, and their participation in the AWS Compute for Climate Fellowship. Episode notes: Rainstick uses electricity to mimic the natural effects...
Nov 28, 2025•22 min•Ep. 892
Ryan is joined by Jared Quincy Davis, CEO and co-founder of Mithril, to explore the importance of efficient resource allocation and GPU utilization in AI, the myth and misconceptions of the GPU shortage, and how the economics of GPU will change with new scheduling and utilization strategies. Episode notes: Mithril ’s omnicloud platform aggregates and orchestrates multi-cloud GPUs, CPUs, and storage so you can access your infrastructure through a single platform. Connect with Jared on Twitter and...
Nov 25, 2025•26 min•Ep. 891
Ryan is joined by David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool, to explore how AI is transforming the role of a software developer into a software architect, the increasing accessibility of coding for non-engineers, and the importance of placing guardrails and higher-level programming primitives on AI coding assistants. Episode notes: Retool is an enterprise AI AppGen platform for internal software development, allowing you to create apps, agents, and workflows with any LLM, datasource, or API. David Hs...
Nov 21, 2025•32 min•Ep. 890
Ryan welcomes Assaf Elovic, head of AI at monday.com, to discuss creating AI tools that users will actually adopt, how they created their Monday Sidekick agent with the user experience in mind, and the opportunities that AI creates for better productivity and more efficiency. Episode notes: monday.com is a work management platform that allows you to plan and execute work across departments with a unified, AI-first product suite . Connect with Assaf on LinkedIn and Twitter . Congrats to Populist ...
Nov 18, 2025•27 min•Ep. 889
Ryan welcomes Benjamin Klieger, lead engineer at Groq, to explore the infrastructure behind AI agents, how you can turn a one-minute agent into a ten-second agent, and how they used fast inference and effective evals to build their efficient and reliable Compound agent. Episode notes: Groq delivers fast, low-cost inference using their custom-designed LPU, the first chip built for inference. Check out their agent, Compound , which can search the web and run code. Connect with Benjamin on LinkedIn...
Nov 14, 2025•33 min•Ep. 888
In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar chats with Ramprasad Rai, VP of Platform Engineering at JPMorgan Chase & Co., about the unique challenges of implementing AI in an enterprise environment. They discuss how organizations can balance AI-driven productivity with strict compliance and security requirements by leveraging a community-driven knowledge system that grounds probabilistic AI tools in internal, trusted expertise. The discussion also: Explores ...
Nov 13, 2025•24 min•Ep. 887
Ryan is joined by Secure Code Warrior’s co-founder and CTO Matias Madou to discuss the implications of LLMs’ variability on code security, the future of developer training as AI coding assistants become more popular, and the importance of critical thinking—especially for junior developers—in the age of AI. Episode notes: Secure Code Warrior upskills development teams to help companies stay protected against potential cybersecurity threats. Connect with Matias on Linkedin . Shoutout to Lifejacket...
Nov 11, 2025•33 min•Ep. 886
Ryan welcomes Nic Benders to discuss the complexity and abstraction crisis in software development, the importance of going beyond observability into understandability, and demystifying AI's opacity for understanding and control. Episode notes: New Relic is a full-stack observability platform that helps engineers plan, build, deploy, and run software. Read their 2025 observability forecast. Connect with Nic on Linkedin or email him at nic@newrelic.com. Congratulations to user Yochai Timmer for w...
Nov 07, 2025•32 min•Ep. 885
Ryan is joined by Greg Foster, CTO of Graphite, to explore how much we should trust AI-generated code to be secure, the importance of tooling in ensuring code security whether it’s AI-assisted or not, and the need for context and readability for humans in AI code. Episode notes: Graphite is an AI code review platform that helps you get context on code changes, fix CI failures, and improve your PRs right from your PR page. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn and keep up with Graphite on their Twitter ....
Nov 04, 2025•28 min•Ep. 884
Ryan talks with Deepak Singh, VP of Developer Agents and Experiences at AWS and lead at Kiro, about spec-driven development in a vibe coding world. They explore how AI tools have evolved from autocomplete to sophisticated agents that can write code based off of just specs, and how AWS has pioneered spec-driven development through their Kiro agent. Episode notes: Kiro is AWS’ AI IDE that brings structure to AI coding with spec-driven development. Connect with Deepak on the Kiro Discord server and...
Oct 31, 2025•27 min•Ep. 883
Ryan welcomes Tom Moor, head of engineering at Linear, to discuss AI agents’ mixed results for productivity in the development lifecycle, the importance of context for maximizing agents’ effectiveness, and the role that junior developers need to take in a world increasingly driven by AI. Episode notes: Linear is a tool for planning and building products that streamline issues, projects, and product roadmaps. Connect with Tom on Twitter . This episode’s shoutout goes to user ozz , who won a Popul...
Oct 28, 2025•28 min•Ep. 882
Ryan is joined by Spiros Xanthos, CEO and founder of Resolve AI, to talk about the future of AI agents in incident management and troubleshooting, the challenges of maintaining complex software systems with traditional runbooks, and the changing role of developers in an AI-driven world. Episode notes: Resolve AI is building agents to help you troubleshoot alerts, manage incidents, and run your production systems. Connect with Spiros on Linkedin or email him at spiros@resolve.ai. Congrats to user...
Oct 24, 2025•25 min•Ep. 881
