The Stack Overflow Podcast - podcast cover

The Stack Overflow Podcast

The Stack Overflow Podcaststackoverflow.blog
For more than a dozen years, the Stack Overflow Podcast has been exploring what it means to be a software developer and how the art and practice of programming is changing our world. From Rails to React, from Java to Node.js, join the Stack home team for conversations with fascinating guests to help you understand how technology is made and where it’s headed.

Episodes

Is AI making your code worse?

GitClear is a developer-friendly code review tool that aims to deliver higher developer satisfaction and faster releases. Check out their blog or find them on GitHub . GitClear’s research focuses on how AI code-gen tools have impacted code quality (and not in a good way). Find Bill on LinkedIn . Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:30 Background of the Research 06:09 Business Model of GitClear 09:46 Copy Pasted Code 10:26 Churn Code 12:21 Code Readability 14:12 Code Suggestions and Auto-Completion 16:...

Mar 22, 202428 minEp. 683

Why the creator of Node.js® created a new JavaScript runtime

Node.js ® is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment. Deno is an open-source JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly runtime. Explore the quick start or check out Deno by example , a collection of annotated examples of how to use Deno. JSR is an open-source package registry for JavaScript and TypeScript. Keep up to date with Ryan on GitHub or his blog . Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Squadrons , who earned a Great Question badge by asking for a Pure javascript method to wrap content in a ...

Mar 19, 202432 minEp. 682

Your whole repo fits in the context window

AI shops are now releasing LLMs optimized for RAG . Turn a repo into a prompt for a long-context LLM . Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search and discovery tool. Good news for developers: Apple will not remove progressive web app support on iOS in the EU. Basil Bourque earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining How to get full name of month from date in Java 8 while formatting ....

Mar 15, 202419 minEp. 681

How Stack Overflow is partnering with Google to encourage socially responsible AI

Stack Overflow has teamed up with Google Cloud to develop an API—Overflow API—to give Gemini, Google’s AI model, access to Stack Overflow knowledge communities. Learn how Ryan’s team is working toward socially responsible AI . Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn . Stack Overflow user verygoodsoftwarenotvirus earned a Great Question badge by asking something at least 87,000 people have also wondered: How can I get all keys from a JSON column in Postgres? ....

Mar 12, 202425 minEp. 680

A leading ML educator on what you need to know about LLMs

Check out Maxime’s three-part LLM course . Part 1 “covers essential knowledge about mathematics, Python, and neural networks. Part 2 “focuses on building the best possible LLMs using the latest techniques." Part 3 “focuses on creating LLM-based applications and deploying them.” Read Maxime’s blog . Follow Maxime on GitHub or LinkedIn . Nikhil Wagh earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining how to Efficiently compare two sets in Python ....

Mar 08, 202431 minEp. 679

Building GenAI features in practice with Intuit Mailchimp

Intuit shares more about their generative AI operating system (GenOS) in this Medium blog . If you want to try out generative AI in MailChimp, sign up here . Learn more about Intuit technology here . Many thanks (and a Lifeboat badge) to Dherik for dropping an answer on cURL: how can I return 0 if status is 200? Connect with Shivang on LinkedIn ....

Mar 07, 202420 minEp. 678

Chunking express: An expert breaks down how to build your RAG system

Build GenAI applications faster and cheaper with a vector database like Pinecone . New to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and other GenAI topics? Our guide is a good place to start. Learn more about RAG and Pinecone . Connect with Roie on GitHub or LinkedIn ....

Mar 05, 202419 minEp. 677

It’s RAG time for LLMs that need a source of truth

Pinecone is a vector database that lets companies build GenAI applications faster for less cost. Read our primer on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or explore RAG and Pinecone . Follow Roie on GitHub or LinkedIn . If you need a handy guide to what’s what in the AI space, check out Stack Overflow’s Industry Guide to AI ....

Mar 01, 202419 minEp. 676

Optimizing both hardware and software for GenAI

SPONSORED BY INTEL Ryan and Ben chat with Raymond Lo, AI software evangelist at Intel, about the AI PC, the software that powers AI breakthroughs, and optimizing hardware and software in unison to improve generative AI performance. Bonus: what’s the difference between a GPU optimized for graphics and a VPU or NPU optimized for AI? Episode notes If you’re interested in trying any of the demos that Raymond talked about, check out Intel’s OpenVINO notebooks. Learn more about Intel’s Edge AI resourc...

Feb 28, 202426 minEp. 675

How to convince your CTO it's worth paying down tech debt

Sema ’s AI code monitor helps companies manage the risks and capture the benefits of AI in the software development lifecycle. Learn how it works here . Connect with Matt on LinkedIn . Erstwhile podcast cohost Cassidy Williams is the CTO of Contenda. Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Jim , who earned a Stellar Question badge with Docker cannot start on Windows , a question (well, more of a statement) that’s helped 1.1 million people and counting....

Feb 27, 202434 minEp. 674

Down the rabbit hole in the Stack Exchange network

Discussions are now taking place across all tags on Stack Overflow. Check out this one about why people keep proclaiming the death of PHP or this one on whether Jenkins is still the dominant player in the CI/CD space . What would happen if you suddenly lost consciousness ? The Philosophy Stack Exchange has thoughts. Did knights wear glasses ? Historical records don’t really answer this question, but the History Stack Exchange does. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has deemed AI-gen...

Feb 23, 202418 minEp. 673

Who owns this tool? A software component catalog to help devs find answers

Andrew has worked in many roles, including as Executive Manager at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, where he established and grew a platform engineering function that supported 7,000 engineers. You can find him on LinkedIn here . You can learn more about Compass, a developer experience platform, here . Shout to Amelio for earning a stellar question badge and helping over six hundred thousand people with this gem: Getting the name of a variable as a string...

Feb 20, 202423 minEp. 672

Would you trust an AI bot to find the fix for vulnerabilities in your code?

Mobb offers AI-powered technology that automates vulnerability remediations with a goal of helping development teams significantly reduce their security backlogs and free up more time for innovation. Check out their blog or dive into their docs . Connect with Eitan on LinkedIn . Shoutout to Konrad , who won a Stellar Question badge for What is the difference between private and protected members of C++ classes? ....

Feb 16, 202426 minEp. 671

Exploring the inclusive tech revolution

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 hiring . Great question, Alexander Myshov ! This badge was awarded for Are arrow functions faster (more performant, lighter) than ordinary standalone function declaration in v8? Reach out to Maya on LinkedIn ....

Feb 14, 202421 minEp. 670

The creator of PyTorch Lightning on the AI hype cycle

William is the CEO of Lightning AI and the creator of PyTorch Lightning, the lightweight PyTorch wrapper for high-performance AI research. Dive into their docs or explore the developer community . ICYMI: Across tech, layoffs are boosting share prices . Follow William on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn . Shoutout to Brian61354270 , who earned a Lifeboat badge by answering ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils' in Python 3.12 ....

Feb 13, 202432 minEp. 669

Building a PDF larger than the known universe

Is it possible to make a PDF bigger than Germany ? Here’s one larger than the known universe. As its creator says, “it’s mostly empty space, but so is the universe.” Massachusetts is leading the way in the skills-based hiring revolution by eliminating degree requirements for state jobs. Did you miss these deeply uncanny AI-generated food images, from the conjoined chickens to the macaroni and cheese rendered in shapes formerly unknown to geometry? Never fear; you can still see some here . You ma...

Feb 09, 202419 minEp. 668

AI isn't putting tech workers out of jobs, the stock price is

AI-generated code is “not equivalent to reliable and robust code, especially in the context of real-world software development,” according to a new study whose title got our attention. Tech layoffs continue in the wake of the pandemic hiring boom, sending some share prices into the sky. Take a look at how AI coding assistants are already changing the way code is made. Shoutout to Stack Overflow user nonopolarity , who earned a Great Question badge by asking Can someone explain SSH tunnel in a si...

Feb 06, 202414 minEp. 667

How to beat Doom in just 600 years

A theory explores how to play DOOM inside a human cell . Fair warning, you'll need about 600 years to complete the game. Looking for a good prompt builder to help you get the most out of your LLM? Try this one or explore this huge collection of prompts. Startup Twin Labs wants to build a product that automates repetitive tasks by letting AI take over your cursor. Harvard Medical School researchers published a study showing that the CRISPR system can encode information in living cells “as complex...

Feb 02, 202415 minEp. 666

Inside Intuit's generative AI system, GenOS

Intuit shares more about their generative AI operating system (GenOS) in this Medium blog . Learn more about Intuit technology here . Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Mohsin Naeem for answering the question How can I extract metadata from an MP3 file? Connect with Merrin on LinkedIn or X . Connect with Shivang on LinkedIn ....

Jan 31, 202431 minEp. 665

Agile works great...to a certain size

The estate of the late comedian George Carlin is suing the creators of an hour-long AI-generated comedy special that mimics Carlin’s distinctive delivery and material. [ Ed. note: not actually AI , still lawsuit .] Prefer your AI more Freudo-Marxist? Here’s a never-ending, AI-generated conversation between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. You’re welcome. Google’s Bard surpassed GPT-4 to claim the second spot on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena Leaderboard . Agile development is faltering at big companies,...

Jan 30, 202415 minEp. 664

Compression is understanding

Find out what’s new with ML in production . Machine learning models must learn to unlearn . Open-source game engine Godot now has a free Nintendo Switch port for game developers . We’ve previously hosted Godot cofounder and lead developer Juan Linietsky on the podcast . Stack Overflow user areller earned a Lifeboat badge with their answer to How to call a destructor ....

Jan 26, 202417 minEp. 663

Hacking the hamburger: How a pentester exposed holes in hundreds of fast-food chains

A white-hat hacker uncovered security vulnerabilities in an AI-powered hiring system used by fast-food chains and hourly employees around the world. Read the blog post or watch this explainer. Mariposa is a programming language with time travel. Want to be an individual contributor (IC) who still amplifies the performance of everyone around you? Be a radiating programmer . Congratulations to onmyway133 , winner of a Stellar Question badge for What does the suspend function mean in a Kotlin Corou...

Jan 23, 202417 minEp. 662

Sending bugs back in time

Mariposa is a toy programming language that has time travel as a primary feature. Bugs are a thing of the past (literally)! Miss having a physical keyboard when thumb-typing on your phone? Well, you’re in luck . Over at CES, LG Electronics wants your devices to have “ affectionate intelligence .” Whatever it takes to make AI more human-centric and empathetic. Omar used to work on the Backstage project at Spotify, so we quoted him in our article on it. Now he works on personalization, including D...

Jan 19, 202427 minEp. 661

Letting algorithms guide our path to the next great invention

Rabbit R1 is an AI-powered assistant you can keep in your pocket (but it’s not a phone). How will AI impact scientific research? A new collaboration between Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is focused on energy storage solutions. A US Senate hearing questions whether tech companies should be allowed to train their AI models on content produced by journalists without paying licensing fees. Learn how to build a mechanical computer from Legos ....

Jan 16, 202418 minEp. 660

How to build a role-playing video game in 24 hours

Now you know: The human body can serve as a resonance chamber for remote car keys , effectively extending their range. A hackathon team used GenAI can create a fully playable D&D-style game in just one day . Skybox AI from Blockade Labs allows users to generate 360° skybox experiences from text prompts. A significant advancement in the brain-computer interfaces (BCI) space: a novel framework called DeWave integrates “discrete encoding sequences into open-vocabulary EEG-to-text translation tasks”...

Jan 12, 202414 minEp. 659

Maximum Glitch: How to break Tetris

Willis Gibson, 13, closed out 2023 by becoming the first person to officially beat the original Nintendo version of Tetris. Here’s how he did it . Want to understand the code that caused the ultimate killscreen? Watch this great explainer from HydrantDude. The 2023 film Tetris is based on the true story of the legal battle to license the game. Is the era of the robot butler upon us? Mobile ALOHA is a low-cost and whole-body teleoperation system for data collection. Check out some of what it can ...

Jan 09, 202418 minEp. 658

How long till we run out of fresh data to train the AI?

Will AI fundamentally change software development or just add some efficiencies around the edges? Surveys from Stack Overflow and Github find north of 70% have probably already tried using it and many incorporate it into their daily work through a helper in the IDE. It's also worth reflecting a bit on the technology sectors that didn't have as great a 2023: crypto, VR, and quantum computing still seem far from mainstream adoption. We dive a little into the half-life of skills, which seem to be s...

Jan 05, 202422 minEp. 657

He created Stanford's Deep Learning class. Programmers will need to learn faster

Along with his work at Stanford, Katanforoosh is a founding member of deeplearning.ai and co-created the Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera. He believes the rapidly expanding capabilities of AI will mean that humans, and especially programmers, will need to learn new skills faster than ever. This doesn't mean machines are going to take our jobs. Rather, with the assistance of AI, humans will become far more capable, learning faster and mastering more domains. Not surprisingly, Katanforoosh...

Jan 03, 202423 minEp. 656

Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann explains what we'll see with UI 2.0

Biilmann says we can't ignore the impact GenAI is having on developer productivity. One of their engineers created a GPT that automatically generates stories for React + TypeScript components, and after seeing how successful it was internally, Netlify made it open source for the public . We also chat over the results of their recent State of Web Development survey. The key takeaway is below: The 80% of developers that have integrated AI into their workflow are quickly reaping the benefits. Seven...

Dec 22, 202324 minEp. 655

From prompt attacks to data leaks, LLMs offer new capabilities and new threats

SPONSORED BY DOIT The broken nose in jail scam is on the rise. With AI improvements, it’ll get harder to spot. OWASP, a non-profit dedicated to software security, tracks the top ten security risks for LLMs . We’ve spoken with DoiT on the podcast before about LLM 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....

Dec 20, 202324 minEp. 654