Into the Hopper

Into the Hopper

By Tim HopperTechnology
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Into the Hopper episodes

  • AI-Assisted SQL Generation with Till Döhmen

    I sit down with Till Döhmen, AI Lead at MotherDuck, to explore the evolving landscape of AI-assisted SQL generation. Till brings a unique perspective from his PhD research in databases and his work building AI features at MotherDuck, the serverless data warehouse built on DuckDB.

    We discuss how text-to-SQL has matured from academic benchmarks to practical tools, the importance of documentation and schema context for agents, and the emerging role of MCP servers and skills in customizing agent behavior. Till shares insights on building trust in agent-generated queries, why thinking about what a new hire would need to know helps you build better AI workflows, and how agents are reshaping the analyst's role from SQL writing to question refinement.


    40 min
  • The Evolution of AI Agents with Ben Labaschin
    Links
    • Ben's Twitter
    • [Ben’s Website]https://econoben.dev/)
    • WorkHelix
    • What Are AI Agents - O'Reilly Book
    • Managing Memory for AI Agents - O'Reilly Book
    • Bead Development Tool
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        • In this episode of Into the Hopper, Tim talks with Ben Labishin from WorkHelix about AI agents and their impact on software development. Ben discusses AI memory management, practical strategies for using large language models, and the evolving role of developers in the age of AI. The conversation also addresses the balance between automation and foundational skills for junior engineers, offering valuable insights for professionals navigating this transformative landscape.

        39 min
      • Apache Pulsar with Jowanza Joseph

        I talk with Jowanza Joseph about his new book Mastering Apache Pulsar: Cloud Native Event Streaming at Scale.

        Links:
        • Jowanza's Pulsar talks
        • Jowanza's Twitter
        • Jowanza's website
        • Pulsar homepage
        • The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction by Jay Kreps
        • StreamNative - Hosted Pulsar
        • Datastax Astra Streaming - Hosted Pulsar
        • Cloud Native Computing Foundation
        • Pulsar Functions
        • Pulsar IO
        • Pulsar SQL
        • Apache ZooKeeper
        • Apache BookKeeper
          • 51 min
        • Hiring Data Scientists with Roy Keyes

          I talk with Roy Keyes about his imporant new book Hiring Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers.

          Links:
          • Roy's Twitter
          • Roy's Book
          • Data Scientists at Work
          • Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century by Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil
          • Building Data Science Teams by DJ Patil

            • Find out more about Into the Hopper at podcast.tdhopper.com

            Music is Una Mañana Dorada by Silva de Alegria is licensed under a Attribution License.

            tdhopper.com — @tdhopper

            45 min
          • Feature Stores with Willem Pienaar

            Adam Laiacano and I talk with Willem Pienaar, software engineer at Tecton, about feature stores and his work on the Feast open source feature store library.

            Links:
            • Willem's Twitter
            • Adam's Twitter
            • Feast: feature store for Machine Learning (2020 talk)
            • Feast
            • Tecton
            • GoJek on Wikipedia
            • featurestore.org

              • Find out more about Into the Hopper at podcast.tdhopper.com

              Music is Una Mañana Dorada by Silva de Alegria is licensed under a Attribution License.

              tdhopper.com — @tdhopper

              45 min

            About Into the Hopper

            From the publisher's feed

            An occasional podcast about machine learning, data science, software engineering, and more.