James Cowling

Yoko Li, a partner at a16z and key player in the Convex AI Town project, joins Martin Casado, also from a16z, and James Cowling, CTO at Convex. They delve into the origins of AI Town, a virtual space where AI agents interact, stemming from Yoko's companion app idea. The trio discusses the unpredictability of AI behaviors and how they chose JavaScript and Convex for development. Their conversation highlights the evolving nature of AI interactions and the significance of community-driven projects in shaping the future of technology.

James Cowling, co-founder of Convex, discusses designing infrastructure for product engineers. Topics include edge computing challenges, user state importance, AI in modern development, Firebase comparison, server rendering, data storage, and cost efficiency in cloud platforms.

James Cowling, expert in building and maintaining popular apps and backends, discusses how Convex offers a simpler full-stack developer experience. They cover topics such as serverless backends, reactive UI frameworks, developer experience vs. user experience, the role of abstraction in language learning, the power of abstractions in database design, the challenges of implementing algorithms, and the dominance of JavaScript in the software industry.