Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

In this episode, Benjamin Brial, CEO and co-founder of Cycloid, speaks with host Sriram Panyam about internal developer platforms (IDPs) and internal developer portals. The conversation explores how these platforms address the growing challenges of DevOps scalability, multi-cloud complexity, and cloud waste, all of which organizations face as they grow. Benjamin begins by framing the core problems that IDPs solve: DevOps struggling to scale beyond small teams, the complexity of managing hybrid environments across on-premises, public cloud, and private cloud infrastructure, and the significant issue of cloud waste (averaging 35-45% according to major analysts). IDPs can serve as a bridge between DevOps teams and developers, providing access to tools, cloud resources, and automation for users who aren't DevOps or cloud experts. The technical discussion covers essential IDP components including service catalogs, versioning engines, platform orchestration, asset inventory, and FinOps/GreenOps modules. The episode concludes with Benjamin's practical advice: organizations should focus on understanding their specific pain points rather than following market trends, starting with simple use cases such as landing zones before building complex solutions, and adopt a GitOps-first approach as the foundation for any IDP implementation. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Srujana Merugu, an AI researcher with extensive experience at tech giants like Google and Amazon, dives into the intricacies of building LLM-based applications. She clarifies concepts such as generative vs. predictive AI and explains the importance of transformer architecture. The discussion covers practical use cases and where LLMs might not be optimal. Srujana also shares insights on model selection, safety guardrails, and emerging trends like multi-sensory AI. Plus, she offers tips on staying current in the fast-evolving AI landscape.

Philip Kiely, the software developer relations lead at BaseTen, dives into the realm of multi-agent AI. He advocates for building AI-native products through the composition of multiple models and agents that take action, moving beyond simple ChatGPT interfaces. Kiely highlights the shift to custom solutions driven by domain-specific needs and economic considerations. He emphasizes the importance of safety, trust, and iterative experimentation in AI engineering while discussing practical applications like a D&D assistant evolving into a multimodal agent.

Flavia Saldanha, a consulting data engineer and architect specializing in AI readiness, joins to discuss the evolution of data engineering. She highlights the shift from treating data as a service to a product, stressing the importance of ownership and context. Flavia explains modern lakehouse architectures and the integration of vector databases to manage unstructured data for AI. She emphasizes the need for data engineers to embrace product thinking, governance, and NLP skills, positioning AI as an augmenting co-pilot rather than a replacement.

Join veteran software developer Dave Thomas, co-founder of the Pragmatic Bookshelf and author of The Pragmatic Programmer, as he delves into the world of eBook infrastructure. He explores the evolution of formats like EPUB and Mobi, the importance of reflowable layouts, and how technology shapes the authoring process. Dave highlights the significance of human involvement in writing and how AI tools can assist post-creation. With insights on author workflows and the interplay of writing and technology, he shares a vision for the future of publishing.

Jennings Anderson, a Software Engineer with Meta Platforms, and Amy Rose, the Chief Technology Officer at Overture Maps Foundation, speak with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Overture Maps project, which creates reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data. After exploring the foundations of geospatial information systems, Gregory and his guests dive deep into the implementation of Overture Maps through features like the Global Entity Reference System (GERS). In addition to discussing the organizational structure of the Overture Maps Foundation and the need for a unified database of geospatial data, Jennings and Amy explain how to implement applications using data from Overture Maps. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Mark Williamson, CTO of Undo and an expert in AI-assisted debugging, dives into the transformative role of AI in debugging processes. He highlights AI's ability to analyze data, automate tedious tasks, and enhance debugging strategies. The discussion covers advanced tools like ChatDBG and time-travel debugging, which allow developers to rewind execution for deeper insights. Mark also emphasizes the benefits for developers of all experience levels and warns of potential risks, including hallucinations and security issues, stressing the importance of human oversight.

Sourabh Satish, CTO and co-founder of Pangea, speaks with SE Radio's Brijesh Ammanath about prompt injection. Sourabh begins with the basic concepts underlying prompt injection and the key risks it introduces. From there, they take a deep dive into the OWASP Top 10 security concerns for LLMs, and Sourabh explains why prompt injection is the top risk in this list. He describes the $10K Prompt Injection challenge that Pangea ran, and explains the key learnings from the challenge. The episode finishes with discussion of specific prompt-injection techniques and the security guardrails used to counter the risk. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Kacper Łukawski, a Senior Developer Advocate at Qdrant, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Qdrant vector database and similarity search engine. After introducing vector databases and the foundational concepts undergirding similarity search, they dive deep into the Rust-based implementation of Qdrant. Along with comparing and contrasting different vector databases, they also explore the best practices for the performance evaluation of systems like Qdrant. Kacper and Gregory also discuss topics such as the steps for using Python to build an AI-powered application that uses Qdrant. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Florian Gilcher, co-founder of Ferrous Systems and the Rust Foundation, speaks with host Giovanni Asproni about the application of Rust in mission- and safety-critical systems. The discussion starts with a brief overview of such systems, and an introduction to Rust, emphasizing aspects that make it well-suited for critical environments. Florian and Giovanni then discuss how Rust compares to C and C++ — two widely used languages in this sector. They proceed to outline important factors that companies should consider when assessing whether to move from C or other languages to Rust. The episode also touches on Ferrocene, an open-source Rust toolchain qualified for safety- and mission-critical systems, which was developed and supported by Ferrous Systems. The conversation ends with some reflections on the future of Rust for mission- and safety-critical applications. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.