Semaphore Uncut

Today we have Eric Bowman, CTO at TomTom, former VP Engineering at Zalando, and a developer behind the game "The Sims". In this episode, we discuss how mapping technology has changed the world and how CI/CD practices have made real-time mapping possible. 

🎧 Key Takeaways

• How long before self-driving cars are a reality?
• How satellite and map technology changed the world?
• The challenges of building and testing real-time maps.
• How feedback loops add value to developers and customers.
• Using DevOps and CI/CD to improve your products.

Listen to our entire conversation above, and check out my favorite parts in the episode highlights!

Brandon Bayer talks about his creation, Blitz.js, a Next.js fork and a fullstack, batteries-included framework for React. In this episode, we talk about the inspiration for the project, the challenges along the way and what's planned for this great framework's future. Listen to the episode now.

🎧 Key Takeaways 

• What is Blitz.js and how it relates to React.
• JavaScript or TypeScript, which is best?
• When is Blitz 1.0 coming out.
• What features are planned for the future.

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

Welcome to Semaphore Uncut, a podcast about developers building great products. In this episode, I talk with Peter Cooper, tech publisher, author, software engineer, and of the most successful newsletter curators. Press the play button and listen to us talking about content creation, the cycles in the tech business, and how developers learn.

Key Takeaways

• Using a email as the core driver for a business
• Getting older in the technology industry
• Why developers should be involved in content creation also
• Is it fun to be the chair of a conference?

This episode features John Clingan, product manager at Red Hat, founder of MicroProfile, and co-author of "Kubernetes Native Microservices with Quarkus, and MicroProfile". We'll talk about the challenges of developing microservices on Java, using Quarkus and MicroProfile to speed up start times and reduce memory footprints, and how to transition into a Kubernetes-native experience.

Key takeaways:

• How to bring Java applications into a cloud-native environment.
• What are Quarkus and MicroProfile. And how it helps developers deploy on serverless and Kubernetes.
• Speeding up development cycle on Java applications.
• Making Java the preferred language for the cloud.

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

Today's episode features Khash Sajadi, founder of Cloud 66 and hardy DevOps veteran. Listen to us talking about how DevOps evolved and shaped the industry, the importance of getting past the hype, and what to look for when deciding on a technology stack.

Key takeaways:

• How DevOps technologies evolved over the last 30 years.
• What made Kubernetes win the container wars.
• How to sell DevOps services to companies.
• How technology choices impact business success.

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

In this episode of Semaphore Uncut, Jeff Smith, DevOps advocate, director of Ops at Centro, and author of the book Operations Anti-patterns, DevOps Solutions, talks about adapting DevOps patterns and avoiding pitfalls as companies grow out from startup to full size. We talk about the types of engineers companies need as they evolve and how to achieve the right balance between letting your engineers experiment and keeping things sane.

Key takeaways:

• The usual way companies implement change management doesn't work.
• There are three types of engineers. Companies need the right mix as they scale.
• Self-contained teams make better decisions about DevOps patterns they adopt.
• Engineers need the freedom to experiment and fail.
• At the same time, adding new technologies has a cost. Companies need to balance innovation with standardization.

In this episode of Semaphore Uncut, I talk with Dave Thomas, author of The Pragmatic Programmer, and many other well-known software engineering books. We discuss how software engineering has changed over many decades and how Dave's experiences have informed his attitudes to testing.

Key takeaways:

• Software is both abstract and changes the real world
• Computer science undergrads need more industrial experience
• Treat software testing as a tool, not a religion
• Use experience and judgement to choose when not to write tests
• Test maintenance is part of the ebb and flow of development
• Modern software is loosely coupled and ephemeral
• The Internet of Things is transforming software architecture
• The IoT opens a new frontier for integration testing

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

This episode of Semaphore Uncut features Jonathan Creamer, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft. We hear his monorepo experiences and about his work in the field of 'DivOps' - the term he coined to describe the engineering of front-end tooling.

Key takeaways:

• DivOps is DevOps for the front-end
• Monorepo's power is having all dependencies at your fingertips
• Make and test sweeping changes across the whole monorepo in seconds
• Embrace monorepo early to keep options open
• Monorepo tooling enables micro-frontend architectures
• Workspaces and Webpack module federation are ones to watch in future

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

In this Semaphore Uncut episode, I meet Eric Seidel, co-creator of Flutter and Director of Engineering for the Flutter team at Google. We chat about the Flutter developer experience, the Dart language that powers it, and the transition Flutter is making from mobile to desktop.

Key takeaways:

• Flutter allows one codebase for mobile, web and desktop
• Dart is designed for developer experience
• AOT or JIT compile for performance or .js transpile for iterating
• An active Dart community fuels growth
• Flutter integration can start with a single button
• Flutter architecture supports many test styles
• For mobile developers, Flutter is a must-try

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.

In this episode of Semaphore Uncut, we meet Nader Dabit, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS. He gives us his perspective on managed services in cloud development, tells us about AWS Amplify, and gives his predictions on the future of cloud computing. 

Key takeaways:

• As the front-end ecosystem matures, more challenging products are possible
• Managed services give power to builders
• Prepackaged managed service collections help startups get going
• The 80-20 rule of cloud apps: 80% managed services, 20% differentiating value
• AWS Amplify users test apps on a local backend
• Infrastructure as Code allows incremental design of your production environment
• Startup costs reducing as serverless, pay-per-compute model takes over
• Nader's future in decentralized finance

About Semaphore Uncut
In each episode of Semaphore Uncut, we invite software industry professionals to discuss the impact they are making and what excites them about the emerging technologies.