Software Engineering Daily

Relational databases are used by most applications. MySQL, Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server, and other products implement the core features of a relational database in different ways. A developer who has never studied this space in detail may not know the differences between these databases, and in this episode we describe some tradeoffs that relational databases can make. Craig Kerstiens is an engineer at Citus Data, a company that makes scalableContinue reading...

Learning to program is about self-driven exploration. Universities help guide you, coding boot camps provide a rigorous environment to work in, and online coding courses provide content for you to study. But none of this will turn you into a great programmer unless you have the drive to improve and the curiosity to explore.   The Recurse Center is a place where people can come to become better programmers. NickContinue reading...

Facebook users provide lots of information about the structure of their relationship graph. Facebook uses that information to provide content and services that are expected to be important to users. If Facebook knows who the most important people in my life are, Facebook can use that knowledge to serve me content that is more relevant to me.   Jon Kleinberg studied Facebook network structures together with Lars Backstrom, creating aContinue reading...

Drones will become a central part of our lives. Drones are delivering packages, surveying cell phone towers, providing wi-fi, or fertilizing crops. Drones are assisting humans in dangerous work, and serving as an entirely new computing platform, providing services that were previously nonexistent.   Airware is a company that is building a full-stack drone platform. In this episode, Buddy Michini takes us through the software architecture of a drone. Airware’sContinue reading...

Machine learning can be used to generate music. In the case of Feynman Liang’s research project BachBot, the machine learning model is seeded with the music of famous composer Bach. The music that BachBot creates sounds remarkably similar to Bach, although it has been generated by an algorithm, not by a human.   BachBot is a research project on computational creativity. Feynman Liang created BachBot using Python machine learning toolsContinue reading...

You have probably read a news article that was written by a machine. When earnings reports come out, or a series of sports events like the Olympics occurs, there are so many small stories that need to be written that a news organization like the Associated Press would have to use all of its resources to write enough content to cover it all.   Wordsmith is a tool for automatedContinue reading...

The Haskell programming language is often thought of as an academic tool, useful for teaching students about monads and functors, but not much else. But there are advantages to using Haskell as a production backend language.   Better is a company built with Haskell on the backend, and Carl Baatz wrote a blog post detailing his experiences using Haskell. He joins the show to give a detailed explanation of whyContinue reading...

Research in artificial intelligence takes place mostly at universities and large corporations, but both of these types of institutions have constraints that cause the research to proceed a certain way. In a university, basic research might be hindered by lack of funding. At a big corporation, the researcher might be encouraged to study a domain that is not squarely in the interest of public good–such as targeted advertising.   OrenContinue reading...

Uber has a software architecture with unique requirements. Uber does not have the firehose of user engagement data that Twitter or Facebook has, but each transaction on Uber is both high value and time-sensitive. Users are paying for transportation that they expect to be available and reasonably close by. When Uber’s system is trying to match a rider with a driver, availability is favored over consistency. It is important thatContinue reading...

Kubernetes is a cluster management tool open sourced by Google. On Software Engineering Daily, we’ve done numerous shows on how Kubernetes works in theory. Today’s episode is a case study in how to deploy Kubernetes to production at a company with existing infrastructure.   GolfNow is a fifteen year-old application written in C# .NET. It is a successful, growing business that is a division of NBC Sports. As GolfNow hasContinue reading...