The Stack Overflow Podcast

Forget AGI. Let’s built ADI: Augmented Developer Intelligence

If you missed the first part of this conversation, listen to it here . Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). Check out their blog or start coding . ICYMI: Stack Overflow recently implemented semantic search , allowing users to search using natural language. Explore Stack Overflow Labs to learn more about OverflowAI and other projects. Amjad Masad is on LinkedIn , Twitter , and GitHub . Congratulations to Stack Overflow user macxpat , whose answer to How to install L...

Multiplayer programming on mobile: a chat with Replit CEO Amjad Masad

Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). See what they’re up to on their blog or just start coding . RIP Google Wave , one of the greats. Find Amjad on LinkedIn , Twitter , GitHub , or via his website ....

Founder vs Investor: What VCs are really looking for

After founding two companies, including StrongDM , a dynamic management access platform (explore their docs here ), Elizabeth took a “break” by co-authoring a book. Founder vs Investor: The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO is about what she learned as a founder and executive about the founder-investor relationship. Order it on Bookshop or Amazon . Elizabeth’s co-author is investor and advisor Jerry Neumann , managing director of Neu Venture Capital. One option for your next...

Computers are learning to read our minds

Gašper ’s work combines machine learning, statistical modeling, neuroimaging, and behavioral experiments “to better understand how neural networks learn internal representations in speech and how humans learn to speak.” One thing that surprised him about generative adversarial networks (GANs) ? How innovative they are, capable of generating English words they’ve never heard before based on words they have. Read about how AI is restoring a stroke survivor’s ability to speak . Universal grammar pr...

You can’t spell Zapier without API

Zapier is a no-code automation platform that allows users to create custom workflows for their critical work apps. Learn how it works , peruse the blog , or sign up to try beta AI features. Check out Reid’s article about how to write more effective AI prompts . Zapier built a natural language actions (NLA) API to enable AI models to independently use natural language to complete Zapier actions. You know the doge , but do you know the dog ? RIP Balltze. Find Reid on LinkedIn and the social networ...

Job description: professional workplace bestie

Stack Overflow’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) focus on aspects of employees’ personhood, “who you are outside of your role, who you bring to every single room that you enter,” Joey explains. Among our ERGs are Black and Brown, LGBTQ+, MIND (mental illness and neurodiversity), and a group for caregivers and parents. Interested in learning more about our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, plus more about what it’s like to work at Stack Overflow? Start here . Members of Stack’s MIND...

Fighting comment spam at Facebook scale

Rockset is a real-time search and analytics database. Explore their docs and developer tools here . We here at Stack Overflow recently implemented our own vector search. Here’s a technical deep dive into how we did it. Louis is on LinkedIn . Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner user7610 , who rescued C++ application terminates with 143 exit code. What does it mean? with a solid answer....

Medical research made understandable with AI

Sorcero uses a mix of natural language processing, generative AI, and even more old school symbolic AI, where they craft their own ontologies, to try and ingest that river of new medical data and make it easier to search and comprehend. Less than 0.2% of the global population can read a medical paper! AI can help make these dense works up to 700x more readable. Medical Affairs Teams are the groups inside big pharmaceutical companies that helps surface the right information to health providers. I...

Semantic search without the napalm grandma exploit

Last month, we announced the launch of OverflowAI from the stage of WeAreDevelopers. To learn more about AI-driven products and features in the works, check out Stack Overflow Labs . Among the projects Alex works on is a semantic search API and the new search experience on Stack Overflow for Teams . LLMs can be vulnerable to jailbreak attacks like the napalm grandma exploit . Kyle is on GitHub , Linked , and text-based social media . Michael is on LinkedIn . Alex is on LinkedIn . Shoutout to Lif...

Making event-driven development predictable with Discover

SPONSORED BY DISCOVER FINANCIAL SERVICES Go deeper into Technology at Discover . If your interested in working on an event-driven architecture that uses domain-driven design within a financial organization, check out jobs.discover.com . Connect with Paul on LinkedIn . .

Want better answers from your data? Ask better questions

The mission of Night Shift Development is to democratize data analytics to help organizations and users of all skill levels understand their data. Their flagship product, ClearQuery , is a data intelligence and analytics platform designed for nontechnical users. ClearQuery has a free version that lets you try out the full array of features. Learn how it works and register here to get started, gratis. Learn how Stack Overflow implemented semantic search to allow users to search using natural lang...

Why everyone should be an AppSec specialist

Understanding SRE

Vlad is Head of Research and Development at Siemens Healthineers , the healthcare arm of tech conglomerate Siemens . He wrote about SRE on our blog here . His book, Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations , is available now. Site reliability engineering (SRE) applies a software engineering approach to IT operations and infrastructure, with the goal of building scalable, reliable systems capable of handling ...

The fine line between product and engineering

Twilio is a customer engagement platform whose communication APIs for voice, text, chat, email, and video are used by millions of developers. See what’s happening on their blog , dig into their docs , or check out their Stack Overflow Collective . This summer, Twilio announced CustomerAI, which applies the power of LLMs to the rich troves of customer data that flows through Twilio’s platform. Learn more here . ICYMI: From the stage of WeAreDevelopers , Stack Overflow announced a roadmap for inte...

How engineering teams at a large org can move at startup speed

Find out why others have joined Shell . If you want to experience being a developer at one of the world’s largest energy companies, they’re hiring . Amber Webb is on LinkedIn . Naresh Kumar is on LinkedIn . Congrats to Tomasz Kula , today’s Lifeboat badge winner, for dropping some knowledge on Multiple components binding with the same reactive form control update issue and saving it from ruin....

From startup to Google and back again

Sean hosts Partially Redacted , a podcast about data privacy, security, and compliance. He also hosts the podcast Software Engineering Daily , which features technical interviews on everything from the ethics of GPTs to cloud-native search and WebAssembly. Start with the recent episode Surviving ChatGPT with Christian Hubicki (of Survivor fame). You can also read about how he crowdsourced a behavioral model for Survivor . Sean spent four years working in developer relations (DevRel) at Google. H...

Behind the scenes with the folks building OverflowAI

You can learn more about OverflowAI and sign up to be an alpha tester here . You can check out Ellen and Jody on Linkedin. Congrats to Ben Lindsay , who was awarded a Lifeboat badge for his answer to: How can I divide each element in a tuple by a single integer?...

How the Python team is adapting the language for an AI future

Pablo is a Python core developer, Steering Council member, and release manager of Python 3.10 and 3.11. He’s currently a senior software engineer at Bloomberg. Looking for a comprehensive guide to contributing to Python? The Python Developer’s Guide is the place to start. The Zen of Python is a list of the language’s guiding principles, including, “There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.” Find Pablo on LinkedIn , Twitter , and GitHub . Find Kyle, a senior software engin...

What it's like to be on the Python Steering Council

Pablo is a Python core developer, Steering Council member, and release manager of Python 3.10 and 3.11. He splits this work 50/50 with his day job as a senior software engineer at Bloomberg. An astrophysicist by training, he did his PhD on rotating black holes . Whether you’re a new contributor or a seasoned veteran, the Python Developer’s Guide is a comprehensive guide to contributing to Python. Pablo is on LinkedIn , Twitter , and GitHub . Kyle is also on Linked , Twitter , and GitHub . Shouto...

How AI can help your business, without the hallucinations

DoIT ’s sales pitch is simple: they provide technology and expertise to clients who want to use the cloud, free of charge, with the big cloud providers paying the bills. You can check out Sascha’s writing on machine learning on his Medium blog . Connect with him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his YouTube channel ....

How ICs can get recognition for their work on big projects

Cat’s research centers on the socio-cognitive factors and processes that help people learn and succeed. In her role as director of Pluralsight Flow’s Developer Success Lab , she studies what makes software teams thrive and shares that research with the community so teams can learn from her findings. In a recent report , the Dev Success Lab explored how visibility can encourage higher-performing teams and better business outcomes. Pluralsight is an education platform for software developers. Plur...

How terrifying is giving a conference talk?

ICYMI, listen to our episode with Agile pioneer Jim Highsmith: The meeting that changed how we build software (Ep. 579) . Explore Connell’s website or his talks . Connell will be speaking at DDD East Midlands again this year: October 7, 2023 (with apologies to our British listeners for the date format). He’s also on GitHub , Twitter , and Stack Overflow (naturally). Thanks to Connell for answering his own question: Why does this SelectMany perform several SQL queries instead of a single join? ....

Jamstack is evolving toward a composable web

Netlify ’s all-in-one development platform gives devs access to build, deploy, and backend services for websites and web apps. Get started with their docs . Jamstack is a web development architecture based on JavaScript, APIs, and Markup (the JAM in Jamstack). Learn what Jamstack is and what benefits it offers. Composable architecture has been called “ the next big thing ” in web development. Netlify defines it as “a development approach [that] provides the ability to more rapidly build technolo...

From Sims to supercycle?

VerseProp is a digital real estate platform where users can buy, sell, and rent virtual properties. New to the concept of digital real estate? The Motley Fool has a useful primer for you. If you need to brush up on your investment terms, a supercycle is “a sustained period of expansion, usually driven by robust growth in demand for products and services.” Joel is on LinkedIn . Will is on LinkedIn . Follow VerseProp on Twitter , where the team welcomes questions. Today’s Lifeboat badge is awarded...

Developers use AI tools, they just don’t trust them

Our 2023 Developer Survey explored AI’s benefits for developers. Read about the results here . For more WWDC talk, listen to our episode from last month: Chatting with Apple at WWDC: Macros in Swift and the new visionOS (Ep. 578) . Squarespace is acquiring Google Domains. Congratulations to Bruno Brant , who won a Lifeboat badge for answering Where can I view LINQ source code? ....

Making computer science more humane at Carnegie Mellon

While he’s been the dean of the School of Computer Science since 2019, Martial started his career at Carnegie Mellon University way back in 1984. Ben covered LIDAR inventor Velodyne while at the Verge , while Martial has LIDAR’s ancestor, the laser rangefinder , which was state of the art in 1986. Martial’s area of research is in computer vision and perception for autonomous systems. Since 1985, he’s been a part of 388 publications . Congrats to Lifeboat winner mx0 for their answer to the questi...

Improving the developer experience in the energy sector

Software might not be top of mind when you think of an energy company like Shell, but software engineering powers a lot of what they do. The tech stack includes React, Golang, Python, GraphQL, MongoDB, Kafka, and the list goes on. The experience their developers have at work is a priority for the organization and its leaders. Episode notes: Find out why others have joined Shell . If you want to experience what being a developer at one of the world’s largest energy companies looks like, they’re h...

The cofounder of Chef is cooking up a less painful DevOps

Adam is the cofounder and former CTO of Chef , which provides DevOps automation tools that help configure, deploy, and manage application infrastructure, including security and compliance. Adam’s new venture, System Initiative , reimagines infrastructure-as-code as collaborative, open-source software. See what they’re up to on their blog , starting with Adam’s article DevOps without papercuts . If you’re interested in playing with a developer build of System Initiative, submit your information h...

Throwing away the script on testing

Sofy is a no-code test automation platform for mobile apps. SofySense is their OpenAI-powered AI assistant. See what they’re up to on their blog or check out their open roles . One of the biggest challenges in testing is deciding whether to use mock or live data . Interested in reading about how Stack Overflow is building up our test coverage ? Syed is on LinkedIn . Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Todd A. Jacobs for interceding between the question How can I check whether a string is an intege...

Stress test your code as you write it

CodiumAI plugs into your IDE and suggests meaningful test suites as you code. See what they’re up to on their blog or scope out their open roles . You can also follow them on Twitter . Connect with Kyle on Linked , Twitter , or GitHub . Connect with Itamar on LinkedIn . Today’s Lifeboat badge is awarded to Héctor M. for answering Convert a string to a Boolean in C# . Thanks for spreading some knowledge....