Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

In this episode of Software Engineering Radio, Abhinav Kimothi sits down with host Priyanka Raghavan to explore retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), drawing insights from Abhinav's book, A Simple Guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The conversation begins with an introduction to key concepts, including large language models (LLMs), context windows, RAG, hallucinations, and real-world use cases. They then delve into the essential components and design considerations for building a RAG-enabled system, covering topics such as retrievers, prompt augmentation, indexing pipelines, retrieval strategies, and the generation process. The discussion also touches on critical aspects like data chunking and the distinctions between open-source and pre-trained models. The episode concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the future of RAG and its evolving role in the industry. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Luca Palmieri, author of Zero to Production in Rust and Principal Engineering Consultant at MainMatter, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about Rust in production. They discuss what production Rust means, how to get Rust code into production, specific Rust issues to think about when getting an application into production, what Rust profiles are, expected performance, telemetry options, error handling and what parts of Rust to use and avoid. Palmieri discusses docker containers, tracing, robust Rust error handling, how performant Rust is in the real world, p50, p99, docker build techniques, project layouts, crates, speeding up Rust build times, unwrap(), panics, budgeting resources, inner development loops, the Facade Pattern, structured logging, and how to always use clippy. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

In this episode, SE Radio host Sriram Panyam explores HTMX with its creator, Carson Gross, who is also creator of Hyperscript, the mind behind the Grug Brained Developer, a professor of software engineering at Montana State University, and co-author of Hypermedia Systems. HTMX is a modern JavaScript library that allows developers to access AJAX, WebSockets, CSS Transitions, and Server-Sent Events directly in HTML using attributes. It represents a return to hypermedia-driven application architecture while supporting modern user experiences. The episode starts with a look at the current complexity in web development and how HTMX offers an alternative approach. Carson explains the core philosophy of "HTML as the interface" and how hypermedia principles influenced HTMX's design. From there, they dive into HTMX's technical concepts, including its attribute system, server-side integration, event handling, and state management approach. Carson shares some real-world implementation strategies, including migration paths from JavaScript frameworks, architectural patterns, and performance considerations -- as well as a few scenarios in which HTMX might not be the best fit. Finally, they look at the growing HTMX ecosystem, community contributions, and future development roadmap. Throughout the episode, Carson provides concrete examples and case studies of HTMX in production environments. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Matthias Endler, Rust developer, open-source maintainer, and consultant through his company Corrode, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about prototyping in Rust. They discuss prototyping and why Rust is excellent for prototyping, and Matthias recommends a workflow for it, including what parts of Rust to use, and what parts to avoid at this stage. He describes the key components that Rust provides to help us validate ideas via prototypes, as well as tips and tricks to reach for. In addition, the conversation explores type inference, unwrap(), expect(), anyhow crate, bacon crate, cargo-script, Rust macros to use, generics, lifetimes, best practices, project layout styles, and how to design through types. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Will McGugan, the CEO and founder of Textualize, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about how to use packages such as Rich and Textual to build text-based user interfaces (TUIs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs) in Python. Along with discussing the design idioms that enable developers to create TUIs in Python, they consider practical strategies for efficiently rendering the components of a TUI. They also explore the subtle idiosyncrasies of implementing performant TUI frameworks like Textual and Rich and introduce the steps that developers would take to create their own CLI or TUI. This episode is sponsored by Fly.io.

Steve Summers speaks with SE Radio host Sam Taggart about securing test and measurement equipment. They start by differentiating between IT and OT (Operational Technology) and then discuss the threat model and how security has evolved in the OT space, including a look some of the key drivers. They then examine security challenges associated with a specific device called a CompactRIO, which combines a Linux real-time CPU with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and some analog hardware for capturing signals and interacting with real-world devices. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Ashley Peacock, the author of Serverless Apps on Cloudflare, speaks with host Jeremy Jung about content delivery networks (CDNs). Along the way, they examine dependency injection with bindings, local development, serverless, cold starts, the V8 runtime, AWS Lambda vs Cloudflare workers, WebAssembly limitations, and core services such as R2, D1, KV, and Pages. Ashley suggests why most users use an external database and discusses eventually consistent data stores, S3-to-R2 migration strategies, queues and workflows, inter-service communication, durable objects, and describes some example projects. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Eran Yahav, Professor of Computer Science at Technion, Israel, and CTO of Tabnine, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Tabnine AI coding assistant. They discuss how the design and implementation allows software engineers to use code completion and perform tasks such as automated code review while still maintaining developer privacy. Eran and Gregory also explore how research in the field of natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) has informed the features in Tabnine. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Malcolm Matalka, founder of Terrateam, joins host Giovanni Asproni to talk about the reasoning behind choosing a not-so-widespread language (OCaml) and (almost) totally avoiding frameworks for the development of Terrateam. While discussing the reasons for choosing this specific programming language and the advantages and disadvantages of using external frameworks, they also consider a range of related topics, including static vs. dynamic typing, the use of monorepos, and the advantages of choosing a single language that can be used both for web front ends and server back ends. The episode ends with lessons learned that can be applied to other contexts and projects. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Emre Baran, CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, and Alex Olivier, CPO and co-founder, join SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan to explore "stateless decoupled authorization frameworks. The discussion begins with an introduction to key terms, including authorization, authorization models, and decoupled frameworks. They dive into the challenges of building decoupled authorization, as well as the benefits of this approach and the operational hurdles. The conversation shifts to Cerbos, an open-source policy-based access control framework, comparing it with OPA (Open Policy Agent). They also delve into Cerbos's technical workings, including specification definitions, GitOps integration, examples of usage, and deployment strategies. The episode concludes with insights into potential trends in the authorization space. This episode is sponsored by Penn Carey Law school