Semaphore Uncut

In this episode of Semaphore Uncut, I talk to Benjy Weinberger, co-founder of Toolchain. We discuss the open-source build tool, 'Pants', and hear Benjy's views on the monorepo strategy for managing your codebase.

Key takeaways:

• Pants: a fast, scalable build system
• Explicit modelling of dependencies is key to Pants performance
• Monorepo gives visibility and ownership of the effects of your changes
• Monorepo helps avoid dependency hell
• How Pants works: a concrete example
• Tools to make adopting Pants easy
• How to contribute to Pants V2

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, I talk to Michael Grinich, founder and CEO for WorkOS. We chat about how software companies fall foul of the 'Enterprise Chasm', and how WorkOS helps them cross it. We also learn about the engineering approach that the WorkOS team takes to maintain the reliability of their service, which is critical to their users.

Key takeaways:

• How to cross the 'Enterprise Chasm'
• WorkOS enables focus on core product experience
• WorkOS unifies a fragmented space
• Building an infrastructure SaaS takes rigour
• Dependency on 'black box' APIs requires constant health monitoring
• Build personal connections as well as data connections
• CI/CD enables a fast bug response loop
• Maintenance of critical infrastructure needs a special approach
• What's next for WorkOS

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, I chat with Emile Vauge, founder and CEO of Traefik Labs. We talk about the origins of Traefik and the Traefik Labs products that have stemmed from it. We also discuss getting started in the complex Kubernetes world and look into the future of cloud-native.

Key takeaways:

• Automated microservice container networking with Traefik
• Like Istio, but simplified: Traefik Mesh
• Traefik Pilot is a unified dashboard for your infrastructure
• Traefik Enterprise brings everything together for companies
• Keep things simple when starting your Kubernetes journey
• Simplicity will win in the cloud-native ecosystem

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, I chat with Alex Ellis, creator of OpenFaaS, Inlets, and Arkade. He shares his experience of following his open-source passion while also making his work pay.

Key takeaways:

• When an open-source project has traction and community, but no business model
• The sponsored app business model
• The Freemium business model
• Entrepreneurs have to take blows and get up again
• Your own open source path is possible

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 talk to Guillermo Rauch. Guillermo is CEO and co-founder of Vercel. We talk about how React has emerged as a de-facto standard for the front-end. Guillermo describes Vercel's Next.js framework that is built around React. And we also discuss front-end testing and microservices engineering trends.

Key takeaways:

• Next.js improves React development and deployment
• Next.js is a powerful framework around de-facto standard React
• Front-ends are globally distributed - Next.js supports CDN from the start
• Front-end engineers need short feedback loops
• Fast feedback drives front-end quality
• Adopt new front-end tech one page at a time
• Test in production-like preview builds
• Use headless, visual regression tests for GUI components
• Testing benefits from React being functional and declarative
• The risks and rewards of microservices
• Emerging patterns and systems mitigate microservices risk

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 talk to Vuk Gojnic. Vuk is Squad Lead for container and cloud-native engine at Deutsche Telekom Technik. Vuk describes how his internal engineering team is bringing Cloud Native infrastructure to the 200,000 person telecom giant. We discuss a number of technical challenges. We also address the issue of measuring the success of an internal engineering team. And we discuss the difficulty of hiring and training cloud-native specialists. 

Key takeaways:

• Cloud-native in telcos - not straightforward
• Key principles for cluster management: declarative, immutable
• Leveraging existing IaaS using Cluster API
• Using Flux/GitOps Toolkit
• How to succeed with internal engineering
• Large scale, small team using GitOps
• Partnerships and education to access cloud-native talent
• The road ahead

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 talk to Gojko Adzic, specialist in agile and lean quality improvement. We talk about how to make truly valuable software products: addressing real needs rather than all requests and establishing quick feedback loops by observing behavior change. Gojko also shares how he has kept his passion for software alive. We hear how he made space to learn and experiment and how he guards his autonomy.

Gojko is a frequent speaker at software development conferences. He is also the author of Specification by Example and other books.

Key takeaways:

• A developer-customer communication anti-pattern
• Solve for needs, not features
• Behavior change: a rapid feedback loop
• Data over opinion
• Books for budding product designers
• Keeping the passion alive
• The joy of autonomy
• Even 'failed' experiments produce learning

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, Jon Reid, leading expert in unit testing and test-driven development (TDD) for iOS, talks about the importance of shaping production code in response to tests.

Jon is a Technical Agile Coach and the author of iOS Unit Testing by Example, XCTest Tips and Techniques Using Swift book.

Key takeaways:

• From Objective C to Swift
• Rapid test-driven development in iOS
• Fewer end-to-end, more unit-tests in iOS
• The real meaning behind the Testing Pyramid
• F-I-R-E: Understanding unit testing dependencies
• Test-Driven Development as a practice
• Bringing yourself to your code

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, José Valim, the creator of the Elixir programming language shares with us insights on developing Elixir, from its inception to the road ahead.

José is the Chief Adoption Officer at Dashbit, speaker, and the author of three technical books.

We talked about:

• How Elixir was born
• Elixir's functional roots
• The role of Erlang VM
• Modeling concurrency in Elixir
• The milestones of creating a new programming language
• Extensibility as a must
• Elixir macros enable the ecosystem
• Tips to stay focused

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, John-Daniel Trask, the co-founder, and CEO of Raygun explains how a short feedback loop enables teams to rapidly develop high-quality products.

JD Trask is a technology leader with almost 30 years of software development experience.

Key takeaways:

• The shorter the loops are, the happier the customer gets
• Putting the customers at the heart of what you do
• Understanding the landscape of error tracking and crash reporting tools
• Taking the mission to the next level
• A good tool is like an extra team member

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.