
Changelog Interviews
Conversations with the hackers, leaders, and innovators of the software world. Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo face their imposter syndrome so you don’t have to. Expect in-depth interviews with the best and brightest in software engineering, open source & leadership. This is a polyglot podcast. All programming languages, platforms & communities are welcome.
Latest episodes

May 7, 2021 • 1h 2min
Elixir meets machine learning
This week Elixir creator José Valim joins Jerod and Practical AI’s Daniel Whitenack to discuss Numerical Elixir, his new project that’s bringing Elixir into the world of machine learning. We discuss why José chose this as his next direction, the team’s layered approach, influences and collaborators on this effort, and their awesome collaborative notebook project that’s built on Phoenix LiveView.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 1 minute at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:InfluxData – InfluxDays EMEA 2021 Virtual Experience (May 18-19) — InfluxDays is an event focused on the impact of time series data. Find out why time series databases are the fastest growing database segment providing real-time observability of your solutions. Get practical advice and insight from the engineers and developers behind InfluxDB, the leading time series database. Learn more and register for free at influxdays.com
LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
CloudZero – For software-driven companies focused on growing margins, CloudZero is the only cloud cost intelligence platform that puts engineering in control by connecting technical decisions to business results. Visit cloudzero.com/changelog to get started.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:José Valim – Website, GitHub, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:
Nx (Numerical Elixir) is now publicly available
Axon
Livebook
Jax
Livebook demo on YouTube
Erlang Ecosystem Foundation
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Apr 27, 2021 • 1h 21min
Let's mint some NFTs
This week we’re talking about NFTs — that’s right, non-fungible tokens and we’re joined by Mikeal Rogers, who’s leading all things InterPlanetary Linked Data at Protocol Labs. We go down the NFT rabbit hole on a very technical level and we come out the other side with clarity and a compelling use of NFTs.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 4 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Sourcegraph – Sourcegraph is universal code search for every developer and team. Easily search across all the code that matters to you and your organization: find example code, explore and read code, debug issues, and more. Head to info.sourcegraph.com/changelog and click the button “Try Sourcegraph now” to get started.
LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
CloudZero – For software-driven companies focused on growing margins, CloudZero is the only cloud cost intelligence platform that puts engineering in control by connecting technical decisions to business results. Visit cloudzero.com/changelog to get started.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
Non-fungible token
NFTs on SNL
NFTs, explained
Palm, A New NFT Ecosystem and Studio for Creators
Filecoin - A decentralized storage network for humanity’s most important information
Heart Shaped Me from Carly Chaikin
NFT.storage
Magic Link
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Apr 20, 2021 • 56min
Into the Nix ecosystem
This week we’re talking about Nix with Domen Kožar. The Nix ecosystem is a DevOps toolkit that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Nix helps you make reproducible, declarative, and reliable systems. Domen is writing the Nix ecosystem guide at nix.dev and today he takes us on a deep dive on all things Nix.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 4 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Sourcegraph – Sourcegraph is universal code search for every developer and team. Easily search across all the code that matters to you and your organization: find example code, explore and read code, debug issues, and more. Head to info.sourcegraph.com/changelog and click the button “Try Sourcegraph now” to get started.
O'Reilly Media – Learn by doing — Python, data, AI, machine learning, Kubernetes, Docker, and more. Just open your browser and dive in. Learn more and keep your teams’ skills sharp at oreilly.com/changelog
CloudZero – For software-driven companies focused on growing margins, CloudZero is the only cloud cost intelligence platform that puts engineering in control by connecting technical decisions to business results. Visit cloudzero.com/changelog to get started.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:Domen Kožar – GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
NixOS.org
Nix Manual
Nix Pills
Nix shorts - A collection of short notes about Nix, down to what is immediately needed for users.
nix.dev - The Nix ecosystem guide
NixOS Weekly newsletter
The Changelog #237: Reproducible builds and secure software with Chris Lamb
NixOS on ARM - for example, if you want to try it out on a Raspberry Pi
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Apr 12, 2021 • 1h 18min
Curl is a full-time job (and turns 23)
This week we’re talking with Daniel Stenberg about 23 years of curl. Daniel shares how curl came to be, what drives and motivates him, maintaining a good cadence of an open source product, what to expect from http3, how many billions of users curl has, and Daniel also shares some funny stories like the “Spotify and Instagram hacking ring.”
Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog
O'Reilly Media – Learn by doing — Python, data, AI, machine learning, Kubernetes, Docker, and more. Just open your browser and dive in. Learn more and keep your teams’ skills sharp at oreilly.com/changelog
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:Daniel Stenberg – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
The Changelog #153: 17 Years of curl with Daniel Stenberg
The Changelog: BONUS — Magic cURL Feature
The Changelog #299: Curl turns 20, HTTP/2, QUIC with Daniel Stenberg
HTTPie
Half of curl’s vulnerabilities are C mistakes
curl is C
Rust in curl with Hyper
“I will slaughter you”
curl Commercial Support
Everything curl: –libcurl
The Changelog #389: Securing the web with Let’s Encrypt featuring Josh Aas
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Apr 5, 2021 • 59min
The future of the web is HTML over the wire
This week we’re joined by long-time web developer Matt Patterson. Earlier this year Matt wrote an evocative article for A List Apart called The Future of Web Software Is HTML-over-WebSockets. In this episode Matt sits down with Jerod to discuss, in-detail, why he believes the future of the web is server-rendered (again) and how Ruby on Rails is well positioned to bring that future to us today.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog
O'Reilly Media – Learn by doing — Python, data, AI, machine learning, Kubernetes, Docker, and more. Just open your browser and dive in. Learn more and keep your teams’ skills sharp at oreilly.com/changelog
LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Featuring:Matt E. Patterson – Website, GitHub, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
The Future of Web Software Is HTML-over-WebSockets
StimulusReflex
Hotwire
ChaosMage
M.E. Patterson on Amazon
Matt works at SkillsEngine
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Apr 2, 2021 • 1h 7min
Restic has your backup
This week Alexander Neumann takes Jerod on a tour of Restic, the world-class backup solution that’s fast, secure, and cross-platform. We discuss why he created Restic in the first place, how (and why you should) you use it, some of its more interesting technical bits, lessons learned over the years building and maintaining a community, and more of course.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 1 minute at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
O'Reilly Media – Learn by doing — Python, data, AI, machine learning, Kubernetes, Docker, and more. Just open your browser and dive in. Learn more and keep your teams’ skills sharp at oreilly.com/changelog
Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
Featuring:Alexander Neumann – Website, GitHub, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
Go Time #48
Restic
Version 0.12 release announcement
Relica
Restic on GitHub
The famous Issue #21
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mar 26, 2021 • 1h 23min
Open source, not open contribution
This week we’re talking with Ben Johnson. Ben is known for his work on BoltDB, his work in open source, and as a freelance Go developer. Late January when Ben open sourced his newest project Litestream in the readme he shared how the project was open source, but not open for contribution. His reason was to protect his mental health and the long term viability of the project. On this episode we talk with Ben about what that means, his thoughts on mental health and burnout in open source, choosing a license, and the details behind Litestream - a standalone streaming replication tool for SQLite.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog
Render – Get $100 in free credit to give Render a try! Plus they’re going to assign a world-class engineer to your account to provide guidance and answer any questions. Render is built for modern applications and offers everything you need out-of-the-box — one-click scaling, zero-downtime deploys, built-in SSL, private networking, managed databases, secrets and config management, persistent block storage, and Infrastructure-as-Code. Send an email to changelog@render.com to get your free credits.
LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Featuring:Ben Johnson – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
Go Beyond
Open source, but closed to contributions
Litestream.io & benbjohnson/litestream
Litestream getting started
The Changelog #201: Why SQLite succeeded as a database with Richard Hipp, creator of SQLite
SQLite copyright
SQLite - Professional Support & Extension Products
boltdb/bolt
Kubernetes Failure Stories
The Changelog #170: BoltDB, InfluxDB, Key-Value Databases with Ben Johnson
Cockroach Labs
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mar 24, 2021 • 1h 21min
Big breaches (and how to avoid them)
This week we’re talking about big security breaches with Neil Daswani, renowned security expert, best-selling author, and Co-Director of Stanford University’s Advanced CyberSecurity Program. His book, Big Breaches: Cybersecurity Lessons for Everyone helped to guide this conversation. We cover the six common key causes (aka vectors) that lead to breaches, which of these causes are exploited most often, recent breaches such as the Equifax breach (2017), the Capital One breach (2019), and the more recent Solarwinds breach (2020).
Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog
Render – Get $100 in free credit to give Render a try! Plus they’re going to assign a world-class engineer to your account to provide guidance and answer any questions. Render is built for modern applications and offers everything you need out-of-the-box — one-click scaling, zero-downtime deploys, built-in SSL, private networking, managed databases, secrets and config management, persistent block storage, and Infrastructure-as-Code. Send an email to changelog@render.com to get your free credits.
Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
Featuring:Neil Daswani – Website, LinkedIn, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
Big Breaches: Cybersecurity Lessons for Everyone on Amazon
Equifax data breach FAQ: What happened, who was affected, what was the impact?
Capital One fined $80 million for 2019 hack of 100 million credit card applications
What you need to know about the biggest hack of the US government in years
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mar 16, 2021 • 1h 17min
Leading a non-profit unicorn
This week we’re talking about the future of freeCodeCamp with Quincy Larson and what it’s taken to build it into the non-profit unicorn that it is. They’re expanding their Python section into a full-blown data science curriculum and they’ve launched a $150,000 fundraiser to make it happen with 100% dollar-for-dollar matching up to the first $150,000 thanks to Darrell Silver.
As you may know, we’re big fans of Quincy and the work being done at freeCodeCamp, so if you want to back their efforts as well, learn more and donate.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 1 minute at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
LaunchDarkly – Test in production! Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Render – Get $100 in free credit to give Render a try! Plus they’re going to assign a world-class engineer to your account to provide guidance and answer any questions. Render is built for modern applications and offers everything you need out-of-the-box — one-click scaling, zero-downtime deploys, built-in SSL, private networking, managed databases, secrets and config management, persistent block storage, and Infrastructure-as-Code. Send an email to changelog@render.com to get your free credits.
Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
Featuring:Quincy Larson – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:
We’re Building a Data Science Curriculum with Advanced Mathematics and Machine Learning
Why I’m donating $150k to freeCodeCamp to help fund their advanced math & machine learning curriculum
freeCodeCamp in 2020 (and other year-end facts)
The Changelog #369: Five years of freeCodeCamp with Quincy Larson
The Best Tech Podcasts for Software Developers in 2021
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Feb 26, 2021 • 57min
Darklang Diaries
This week Jerod is joined by Paul Biggar the creator of Dark, a new way to build serverless backends. Paul shares all the details about this all-in-one language, editor, and infrastructure, why he decided to make Dark in the first place, his view on programming language design, the advantages Dark has as an integrated solution, and also why it’s source available, but NOT open source.
Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
LaunchDarkly – Test in production! Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Render – Get $100 in free credit to give Render a try! Plus they’re going to assign a world-class engineer to your account to provide guidance and answer any questions. Render is built for modern applications and offers everything you need out-of-the-box — one-click scaling, zero-downtime deploys, built-in SSL, private networking, managed databases, secrets and config management, persistent block storage, and Infrastructure-as-Code. Send an email to changelog@render.com to get your free credits.
Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
Featuring:Paul Biggar – GitHub, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:Special thanks to Jon Stodle for requesting this episode.
Dark’s website
Dark on GitHub
Structured Procrastination
Why Dark didn’t choose Rust
Leaving OCaml
Dark’s new backend will be in F#
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!