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Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

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se-radio@computer.org

Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. SE Radio covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content — we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode comprises two speakers to ensure a lively listening experience. SE Radio is brought to you by the IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

#588

SE Radio 583: Lukas Fittle on Postgres Performance

Lukas Fittl of pganalyze discusses the performance of Postgres, one of the world’s most popular database systems. SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/philip-winston/">Philip Winston</a> speaks with Fittl about database indexing, queries, maintenance, scaling, and stored procedures. They also discuss some features of pganalyze, such as the index and vacuum advisors. ... Read more

27 Sep 2023

1 HR 11 MINS

1:11:24

27 Sep 2023

#587

SE Radio 582: Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro on Learning to Program with LLMs

Dr. Daniel Zingaro and Dr. Leo Porter, co-authors of the book Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming, speak with host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/jeremy-jung/" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">Jeremy Jung</a> about teaching programming with the aid of large language models (LLMs). They discuss writing a book to use in Leo's introductory CS class and explore how GitHub Copilot de-emphasizes syntax errors, reduces the need to memorize APIs, and why they want students to write manual test cases. They also discuss possible ethical concerns of relying on commercial tools, their impact on coursework, and why they aren't worried about students cheating with LLMs. ... Read more

20 Sep 2023

1 HR 02 MINS

1:02:22

20 Sep 2023

#586

SE Radio 581: Zach Lloyd on Terminal Emulators

Zach Lloyd, CEO of Warp.dev, discusses how to implement and effectively use command-line terminals. Host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/gregory-kapfhammer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gregory Kapfhammer</a> speaks with Lloyd about how command-line terminals work and how the Warp terminal uses the GPU and AI to enhance a software developer’s productivity. They also discuss the trade-offs associated with using the Rust programming language to implement a command-line terminal. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. ... Read more

14 Sep 2023

1 HR 04 MINS

1:04:44

14 Sep 2023

#585

SE Radio 580: Josh Doody on Mastering Business Communication for Software Engineers

Josh Doody, author of Mastering Business Email, speaks with host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/brijesh-ammanath/">Brijesh Ammanath</a> about how software engineers can master business communication. They begin with an exploration of various communication modes, including Slack, virtual meetings, emails, and presentations. Josh shares several strategies to improve communication skills and cross-cultural communication, but if there's one key take away from this episode, it might be: “use positive language for any medium of communication; be kind and use positive words.” Brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society. ... Read more

07 Sep 2023

1 HR 08 MINS

1:08:29

07 Sep 2023

#584

SE Radio 579: Arun Gupta on Open Source Strategy and Community

Arun Gupta, Vice President and General Manager of Open Ecosystem Initiatives at Intel Corporation, discusses open-source strategy and community with SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/kanchan-shringi/">Kanchan Shringi</a>. They explore the business case and business model for why and how big tech participates in the open-source ecosystem. Arun describes ways to foster a culture of engagement with open source within companies such as Intel, Amazon, and Apple. They then consider how the principles can be applied to closed-source software within a company. Finally, they discuss some of the benefits that Intel has gained from more than 20 years of open source contributions and look at the company’s plan for the year ahead. SE Radio is rought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society. ... Read more

01 Sep 2023

48 MINS

48:21

01 Sep 2023

#583

SE Radio 578: Ori Mankali on Secrets Management using Distributed Fragments Cryptography

In this episode, Ori Mankali, senior VP of engineering at cloud security startup Akeyless, speaks with SE Radio’s <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/nikhil-krishna/">Nikhil Krishna</a> about secrets management and the innovative use of distributed fragment cryptography (DFC). In the context of enterprise IT, 'secrets’ are crucial for authentication in providing access to internal applications and services. Ori describes the unique challenges of managing these sensitive data, particularly given the complexities of doing so on a large scale in substantial organizations. They discuss the necessity for a secure system for managing secrets, highlighting key features such as access policies, audit capabilities, and visualization tools. Ori introduces the concept of distributed fragment cryptography, which boosts security by ensuring that the entire secret is never known to any single entity. The episode explores encryption and decryption and the importance of key rotation, as they consider the challenges and potential solutions in secrets management. ... Read more

22 Aug 2023

42 MINS

42:41

22 Aug 2023

#582

SE Radio 577: Casey Muratori on Clean Code, Horrible Performance?

Casey Muratori caused some strong reactions with a blog post and an associated video in which he went through an example from the “Clean Code” book by Robert Martin to demonstrate the negative impact that clean code practices can have on performance. In this episode, he joins SE Radio’s <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/giovanni-asproni/">Giovanni Asproni</a> to talk about the potential trade-offs between performance and the qualities that make for maintainable code, these qualities being the main focus of Clean Code. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. ... Read more

18 Aug 2023

1 HR 10 MINS

1:10:41

18 Aug 2023

#581

SE Radio 576: Jens Neuse on Back Ends for Front Ends

Jens Neuse, founder of Wundergraph, joins SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/jeff-doolittle/">Jeff Doolittle</a> for a conversation about back ends for front ends, or BFF. Jens begins by explaining how a heavy integration burden is often placed on front-end development teams. When multiple APIs must be integrated, it can be challenging for client development in web, mobile, and desktop environments. Explaining how APIs should be treated as dependencies, just like packages, the episode explores BFF patterns and use cases, as well as the future potential emergence of a “git for APIs” standard. This episode is sponsored by <a href= "https://try.clicksend.com/en/seradio/?utm_source=seradio&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=newsletter" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">ClickSend</a>. ... Read more

09 Aug 2023

59 MINS

59:42

09 Aug 2023

#580

SE Radio 575: Nir Valtman on Pipelineless Security

Nir Valtman, co-Founder and CEO at Arnica, discusses pipelineless security with SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/priyanka-raghavan/">Priyanka Raghavan</a>. They start by defining pipelines and then consider how to add security. Nir lays out the key challenges in getting good code coverage with the pipeline-based approach, and then describes how to implement a pipelineless approach and the advantages it offers. Priyanka quizzes him on the concept of "zero new hardcoded secrets," as well as some ways to protect GitHub repositories, and Nir shares examples of how a pipelineless approach could help in these scenarios. They then discuss false positives and handling developer fatigue in dealing with alerts. The show ends with some discussion around the product that Arnica offers and how it implements the pipelineless methodology. ... Read more

01 Aug 2023

56 MINS

56:49

01 Aug 2023

#579

SE Radio 574: Chad Michel on Software as an Engineering Discipline

Chad Michel, Senior Software Architect at Don’t Panic Labs and co-author of Lean Software Systems Engineering for Developers, joins host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/jeff-doolittle/">Jeff Doolittle</a> for a conversation about treating software development as an engineering discipline. They begin by discussing the need for engineering rigor in the software industry. Chad points out that many developers lack awareness of good engineering practice and are often unaware of resources such as the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). Among the many topics explored in this episode are design methodologies such as volatility-based decomposition and the work of David Parnas, as well as important topics such as quality, how to address complexity, designing for change, and the role of the chief engineer. This episode is sponsored by <a href= "https://try.clicksend.com/en/seradio/?utm_source=seradio&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=newsletter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ClickSend</a>. SE Radio listeners can get a $50 credit by following the link. ... Read more

27 Jul 2023

1 HR 07 MINS

1:07:13

27 Jul 2023

#578

SE Radio 573: Varun Singh on Evolution of Internet Protocols

In this episode, Varun Singh, Chief Products and Technology Officer at [Daily.co] (http://Daily.co) , speaks with host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/nikhil-krishna/">Nikhil Krishna</a> about the 30-year evolution of web protocols. In particular, they explore the impact of protocol ossification, which has supported the Internet’s success but also limits the flexibility of evolving protocol suites such as TCP/IP and UDP by constraining future development. Varun points out how the end-to-end principle emphasizes full flexibility for end hosts, but the TCP implementation in the OS kernel as well as in “middle boxes” such as ISPs contributes to the constraints of ossification by blocking certain types of traffic. Further, the development of new protocols is challenging due to the need for backward compatibility with existing protocols. They discuss Google’s efforts – and the challenges it has faced – in working to move the HTTP protocol forward. The role of standards bodies such as the IETF and collaboration between industry stakeholders is crucial for the evolution of internet protocols, requiring a balance between maintaining backward compatibility and introducing new protocols such as QUIC and HTTP/3 to address existing constraints and improve internet performance and security. indeed, QUIC includes features that seek to actively avoid ossification and encourage evolution. ... Read more

19 Jul 2023

57 MINS

57:33

19 Jul 2023

#577

SE Radio 572: Gregory Kapfhammer on Flaky Tests

Gregory Kapfhammer, associate professor at Allegheny College, discusses the common problem of ‘flaky tests’ with SE Radio’s <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/nikhil-krishna/">Nikhil Krishna</a>. Flaky tests are test cases that unreliably pass or fail even when no changes are made to the source code under test or to the test suite itself, which means that developers can’t tell whether the failures indicate bugs that needs to be resolved. Flaky tests can hinder continuous integration and continuous development by undermining trust in the CI/CD environment. This episode examines sources of flaky tests, including physical factors such as CPU or memory changes, as well as program-related factors such as performance issues. Gregory also describes some common areas that are prone to flaky tests and ways to detect them. They discuss tooling to detect and automatically mark flaky tests, as well as how to tackle these issues to make tests more reliable and even ways to write code so that it's less susceptible to flaky tests. ... Read more

13 Jul 2023

42 MINS

42:36

13 Jul 2023

#576

SE Radio 571: Jeroen Mulder on Multi-Cloud Governance

Jeroen Mulder, author of <a href= "https://www.packtpub.com/product/multi-cloud-strategy-for-cloud-architects-second-edition/9781804616734" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Multi-Cloud Strategy for Cloud Architects</a>, joins host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/robert-blumen/">Robert Blumen</a> for a discussion of public cloud, private cloud, and multi-cloud computing architectures and trends. They start by considering what defines cloud computing and what differentiates the major cloud providers, including whether they are more alike or different in the services they offer. Jeroen discusses governance, regulatory compliance, and data locality as drivers of where enterprises want to run their workload. They explore use cases for multi-cloud, and discuss architectural challenges in migrating to kubernetes, as well as issues with networking, security, and identity management with multi-cloud architectures. Finally, they discuss running public cloud compute on on-prem resources with Anthos, Outback, and related technologies. ... Read more

05 Jul 2023

59 MINS

59:38

05 Jul 2023

#575

SE Radio 570: Stanisław Barzowski on the jsonnet Language

Stanisław Barzowski of XTX Markets and a committer on the jsonnet project joins SE Radio's <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/robert-blumen/">Robert Blumen</a> for a conversation about the jsonnet programming language. A superset of JSON, jsonnet adds programming language capabilities, particularly to address the need to handle large but mostly repetitive JSON configurations. They discuss the project’s history, use cases for Grafana and Kubernetes config, and interoperability with YAML. They examine jsonnet details, including the command line, constrained capabilities of the language, and objects and inheritance, and then consider the toolchain: compiler, formatter, and linter, as well as test frameworks and testing, package management, and the language’s performance. Barzowski describes four implementations -- go, C++, Rust, and Scala -- as well as popular libraries and the standard library. ... Read more

27 Jun 2023

39 MINS

39:07

27 Jun 2023

#574

SE Radio 569: Vladyslav Ukis on Rolling out SRE in an Enterprise

Vladyslav Ukis, author of the book Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations, discusses how to roll out SRE in an enterprise. SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/brijesh-ammanath/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brijesh Ammanath</a> speaks with Vlad about the origins of SRE and how it complements ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). They examine how firms can establish foundations for rolling out SRE, as well as how to overcome challenges they might face in adopting. Vlad also recommends steps that organizations can take to sustain and advance their SRE transformation beyond the foundations. ... Read more

22 Jun 2023

53 MINS

53:31

22 Jun 2023

#573

SE Radio 568: Simon Bennetts on OWASP Dynamic Application Security Testing Tool ZAP

Simon Bennetts, a distinguished engineer at Jit, discusses one of the flagship projects of OWASP: the Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) open source security testing tool. As ZAP’s primary maintainer, Simon traces the tool's origins and shares some anecdotes with SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/priyanka-raghavan/">Priyanka Raghavan</a> on why there was a need for it. They take a deep dive into ZAP’s features and its ability to integrate with CI/CD, as well as shift security left. Bennetts also considers what it takes to build a successful open source project before spending time on ZAP’s ability to script to provide richer results. Finally, the conversation ends with some questions on ZAP’s future in this AI-powered world of bots. ... Read more

14 Jun 2023

50 MINS

50:36

14 Jun 2023

#572

SE Radio 567: Dave Cross on GitHub Actions

Dave Cross, owner of Magnum Solutions and author of GitHub Actions Essentials (Clapham Technical Press), speaks with SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/gavin-henry/" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">Gavin Henry</a> about GitHub actions, the value they provide, and the best practices for using them in your projects. Cross describes the vast range of things that developers can do with GitHub Actions, including some use cases you might never have thought about. They start with some general discussion of CI/CD and then consider the three main types of events that drive GitHub actions before digging in to details about fine-grained action events, Action Marketplace, contexts, yaml, docker base images, self-hosted runners, and more. They further explore identity management, permissions, dependency management, saving money, and how to keep your secrets secret. ... Read more

06 Jun 2023

58 MINS

58:27

06 Jun 2023

#571

SE Radio 566: Ashley Peacock on Diagramming in Software Engineering

Ashley Peacock, author of the book Creating Software with Modern Diagramming Techniques, speaks with SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/akshay-manchale/">Akshay Manchale</a> about diagrams in software engineering. They discuss the power of diagramming and some reasons we don’t fully use it as often as we should. Ashley contrasts historical use of UML diagrams versus modern diagrams, which don't have hard rules about representations. The episode examines different types of diagrams through an example application and how it could be built with modern tools such as Streamy to simplify the building, versioning, and maintenance of diagrams. ... Read more

31 May 2023

54 MINS

54:26

31 May 2023

#570

SE Radio 565: Luca Galante on Platform Engineering

Luca Galante, head of product at Humanitec, joins host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/jeff-doolittle/">Jeff Doolittle</a> for a conversation about platform engineering. They begin by defining platform engineering and its relationship to, and distinction from, DevOps. Tracing platform engineering's history, Luca describes how internal developer platforms are fundamental, and then explores the goals of addressing complexity and reducing the cognitive load on developers by creating golden paths. ... Read more

23 May 2023

1 HR 00 MINS

1:00:06

23 May 2023

#569

SE Radio 564: Paul Hammant on Trunk-Based Development

Paul Hammant, independent consultant, joins host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/giovanni-asproni/">Giovanni Asproni</a> to speak about trunk-based development—a version control management practice in which developers merge small, frequent updates to a core “trunk” or main branch. The episode explores the technique in some detail, including its pros and cons and some examples from real projects, and offers suggestions on how to get started. The conversation touches on a set of related topics, including code reviews, feature flags, continuous integration, and testing. ... Read more

17 May 2023

1 HR 00 MINS

1:00:23

17 May 2023

#568

SE Radio 563: David Cramer on Error Tracking

In this episode, David Cramer, co-founder and CTO of Sentry, joins host Jeremy Jung for a conversation about error tracking. The discussion starts with treating performance problems as errors, why you might not need logs, and how most applications share the same problems. From there they consider other topics including capturing information by hooking into runtimes and frameworks, issues with the quality of Open Telemetry data, how front-end applications are constantly changing and why that makes them hard to instrument. Finally, they discuss how Sentry's architecture has evolved, and why they switched from a permissive license to the Business Source License. ... Read more

10 May 2023

1 HR 13 MINS

1:13:41

10 May 2023

#567

SE Radio 562: Bastian Gruber on Rust Web Development

Bastian Gruber, author of the book Rust Web Development, speaks with host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/philip-winston/">Philip Winston</a> about creating server-based web applications with Rust. They explore Rust language features, tooling, and web frameworks such as Warp and Tokio. From there, they examine the steps to build a simple web server and a RESTful API, as well as modules, logging and tracing, and other aspects of web development with Rust. ... Read more

03 May 2023

1 HR 08 MINS

1:08:24

03 May 2023

#566

SE Radio 561: Dan DeMers on Dataware

Dan DeMers of Cinchy.com joins host [Jeff Doolittle] (https://www.se-radio.net/team/jeff-doolittle/) for a conversation about data collaboration and dataware. Dataware platforms leverage an operational data fabric to liberate data from apps and other silos and connect it together in real-time data networks. They explore a range of key topics, including zero-copy integration, encapsulation and information hiding, handling changes to data models over time, and latency and access issues. The discussion also explores dataware management and security concerns, as well as the concept of 'data plasticity' as an analogy to neuroplasticity, which is where the nervous system can respond to stimuli such as injuries by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections. ... Read more

27 Apr 2023

1 HR 09 MINS

1:09:34

27 Apr 2023

#565

SE Radio 560: Sugu Sougoumarane on Distributed SQL with Vitess

Sugu Sougoumarane discusses how to face the challenges of horizontally scaling MySQL databases through the Vitess distribution engine and Planetscale, a service built on top of Vitess. The journey began with the growing pains of scale at YouTube around the time of Google’s acquisition of the video service. This episode explores ideas about topology management, sharding, Paxos, connection pooling, and how Vitess handles large transactions while abstracting complexity from the application layer. ... Read more

19 Apr 2023

48 MINS

48:53

19 Apr 2023

#564

SE Radio 559: Ross Anderson on Software Obsolescence

Ross John Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at University of Cambridge, discusses software obsolescence with host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/priyanka-raghavan/">Priyanka Raghavan</a>. They examine risks associated with software going obsolete and consider several examples of software obsolescence, including how it can affect cars. Prof. Anderson discusses policy and research in the area of obsolescence and suggests some ways to mitigate the risks, with special emphasis on software bills of materials. He describes future directions, including software policy and laws in the EU, and offers advice for software maintainers to hedge against risks of obsolescence. ... Read more

12 Apr 2023

58 MINS

58:07

12 Apr 2023

#563

SE Radio 558: Michael Fazio on Modern Android Development

Michael Fazio, Engineering Manager (Android) at Albert and author of Kotlin and Android Development featuring Jetpack from the Pragmatic Programmers, speaks with SE Radio's [Gavin Henry] (https://www.se-radio.net/team/gavin-henry/) about how the Android ecosystem looks today, and why it's an excellent time to write native Android apps. They explore a wide range of topics about modern Android development, including when to go native, how to keep a lot of decisions in your back-end API, Kotlin co-routines, Jetpack and Jetpack Compose, the MVVM design pattern, and threads, as well as activities, fragments, Dagger, room, navigation, Flutter, and improvements in simulators. They also examine details such as IDEs, API selection, how to choose a list of support devices, Java vs Kotlin, handset manufacturers, XML layouts, and why Jetpack is a safe bet for all your future Android development. ... Read more

05 Apr 2023

1 HR 10 MINS

1:10:53

05 Apr 2023

#562

SE Radio 557: Timothy Beamish on React and Next.js

Timothy Beamish of BenchSci discusses React and Next.js, two of today's most popular front-end frameworks. Host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/philip-winston/">Philip Winston</a> speaks with Beamish about components, routing, JSX, client-side and server-side rendering, single-page applications, automatic code-splitting, image optimization, and more. Beamish also details his experience moving a real-world application to Next.js. ... Read more

28 Mar 2023

1 HR 03 MINS

1:03:56

28 Mar 2023

#561

SE Radio 556: Alex Boten on Open Telemetry

Software engineer Alex Boten, author of Cloud Native Observability with Open Telemetry, joins SE Radio host <a href= "https://www.se-radio.net/team/robert-blumen/">Robert Blumen</a> for a conversation about software telemetry and the OpenTelemetry project. After a brief review of the topic and the OpenTelemetry project's origins rooted in the need for interoperability between telemetry sources and back ends, they discuss the open telemetry server and its features, including transforms, filtering, sampling, and rate limiting. They consider a range of topics, starting with alternative topologies with and without the telemetry server, server pipelines, and scaling out the server, as well as a detailed look at extension points and extensions; authentication; adoption; and migration. ... Read more

23 Mar 2023

42 MINS

42:49

23 Mar 2023

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#588

SE Radio 583: Lukas Fittle on Postgres Performance

#587

SE Radio 582: Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro on Learning to Program with LLMs

#586

SE Radio 581: Zach Lloyd on Terminal Emulators

#585

SE Radio 580: Josh Doody on Mastering Business Communication for Software Engineers

#584

SE Radio 579: Arun Gupta on Open Source Strategy and Community

#583

SE Radio 578: Ori Mankali on Secrets Management using Distributed Fragments Cryptography

#582

SE Radio 577: Casey Muratori on Clean Code, Horrible Performance?

#581

SE Radio 576: Jens Neuse on Back Ends for Front Ends

#580

SE Radio 575: Nir Valtman on Pipelineless Security

#579

SE Radio 574: Chad Michel on Software as an Engineering Discipline

#578

SE Radio 573: Varun Singh on Evolution of Internet Protocols

#577

SE Radio 572: Gregory Kapfhammer on Flaky Tests

#576

SE Radio 571: Jeroen Mulder on Multi-Cloud Governance

#575

SE Radio 570: Stanisław Barzowski on the jsonnet Language

#574

SE Radio 569: Vladyslav Ukis on Rolling out SRE in an Enterprise

#573

SE Radio 568: Simon Bennetts on OWASP Dynamic Application Security Testing Tool ZAP

#572

SE Radio 567: Dave Cross on GitHub Actions

#571

SE Radio 566: Ashley Peacock on Diagramming in Software Engineering

#570

SE Radio 565: Luca Galante on Platform Engineering

#569

SE Radio 564: Paul Hammant on Trunk-Based Development

#568

SE Radio 563: David Cramer on Error Tracking

#567

SE Radio 562: Bastian Gruber on Rust Web Development

#566

SE Radio 561: Dan DeMers on Dataware

#565

SE Radio 560: Sugu Sougoumarane on Distributed SQL with Vitess

#564

SE Radio 559: Ross Anderson on Software Obsolescence

#563

SE Radio 558: Michael Fazio on Modern Android Development

#562

SE Radio 557: Timothy Beamish on React and Next.js

#561

SE Radio 556: Alex Boten on Open Telemetry