Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Software Engineering Daily
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Software Engineering Daily
Software Engineering Daily episodes
- Creating the Wiki with Ward Cunningham“I believe that there’s something deeply personal, natural, and human going on as we construct these abstract devices called computers.”
Wiki technology was invented decades ago to improve how software developers communicate. Today, Wikipedia has taken the ideas of the wiki to a new level, creating a free knowledge graph for the world to learn from.
Ward Cunningham developed WikiWikiWeb in 1994. He joins us today to discuss the first wiki, and how wikis have changed the way information propagates. Ward is not just an expert on how to write software–he is an expert on the software development experience, and we discuss how to build a community where software developers can overcome the fear of building something that has not been built before.
Questions- When you built the first wiki, what was your vision for the software?
- How did information move around communities before the web, and how has this improved?
- What are the canonical problems in developer communication?
- What are the successful properties of emergent systems relating to communities that share knowledge?
- Why aren’t more companies structured in a way to encourage experimentation?
- What are some ways to bootstrap and encourage a technical community?
- What were the things that Wikipedia did right that made it successful?
- What are you working on today, and what makes you excited?
Links- WikiWikiWeb
- PLoP conference
- Mosaic
- Kent Beck
- Imposter syndrome
- Smalltalk
- Xerox PARC
- New Relic
- Extreme Programming
- Federated Wiki
- Ward on Twitter
The post Creating the Wiki with Ward Cunningham appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
59 min - Robots in the Warehouse with Akash Gupta“Our major teams are lead by two people which include one person who’s very strong in their own field, and then there’s a person who has a very good understanding of the cross-functional nature of product development.”
GreyOrange Robotics builds robots for warehouse automation of logistics and ecommerce companies for quicker deliveries. Today’s episode features Akash Gupta, the CTO of GreyOrange.
Questions- Is sorting in the real world similar at all to sorting data on a computer?
- What are the common software features across your products?
- Why did you decide to use Erlang for your communication systems?
- What was the rationale behind using Riak?
- How often do you update the software on the machines that are running?
- Your vision for GreyOrange is to be a global company – how does starting your company in India affect this trajectory?
- What is unique about engineering culture in India?
Links- GreyOrange Robotics
- Video of the robots
- Erlang
- Riak
The post Robots in the Warehouse with Akash Gupta appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
52 min - CodeNewbie with Saron Yitbarek“There are advantages in the newness of coding.”
CodeNewbie is a community of programmers and people learning to code. There are so many people learning about software today, and CodeNewbie gives them a place to hang out, socialize, and become comfortable with the world of software. CodeNewbie has an excellent podcast, and if you like Software Engineering Daily you should check it out.
Saron Yitbarek is the guest today, she is the creator of CodeNewbie. In this episode of Software Engineering Daily, Saron sits down to talk about learning to code after she had already had several careers, spanning biology, public radio, and marketing.
Questions- When and why did you learn how to code?
- What were your first steps in learning once you decided that you wanted to be a programmer?
- What are the biggest barriers to people who are learning to code?
- What inspired you to start CodeNewbie?
- What does the CodeNewbie community look like, and what makes it tick?
- What are the advantages to learning to code later in life?
- What are the backgrounds of the students in the Tech Jobs Academy?
- Is it still worth it to get a computer science degree?
- What’s next for CodeNewbie?
Links- CodeNewbie
- Tell Me More : NPR
- Tech Jobs Academy
- Floodgates of Assholery
- The Lean Startup
- Saron’s page
The post CodeNewbie with Saron Yitbarek appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
53 min - Using Software to Discover Rare Diseases with Matt Might“In many ways, nature is still the fastest computer we have when it comes to studying disease.”
Software engineering is a deterministic field. We write lines of code, and feed data into that code, expecting to get a certain answer. Computing is deterministic because humans developed it–we understand computers from top to bottom. The same cannot be said about biology.
Matt Might is an associate professor with a PhD in computer science. When his son was diagnosed with an extremely rare illness, he was confronted with the uncertainties of human biology. In this episode, we discuss Matt’s quest to solve the puzzle of his son’s disease–computer science meets genetics, on this episode of Software Engineering Daily.
Questions- What do you mean when you say “science becomes the medicine”?
- What technical improvements are you seeing in the experimental process of searching for genetic clues?
- What are the different types of drug screening?
- Should people think of themselves more as a unique entity with sample size n=1?
- Are A/B tests over time on ourselves worthwhile?
- What are the similarities and differences between biologists, doctors, and computer scientists?
- Do you have a unique piece of wisdom from your experience with your son’s diagnosis?
Links- HOWTO: Get tenure
- Rare diseases
- The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN)
- CRISPR
- Matt’s page
The post Using Software to Discover Rare Diseases with Matt Might appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
44 min - Software Journalism at GeekWire with Todd Bishop“Our justice system in general – even if you look at things like our regulatory system, our patent system – I think it has a very hard time keeping up with the current pace of technology.”
Microsoft and Amazon are the tech giants of the Pacific Northwest. These two companies shape Seattle technology, and Todd Bishop has been writing about them for over a decade. Todd is the co-founder of GeekWire, an online media company focused on technology in the Pacific Northwest. We talk about the past and present of Microsoft and Amazon, what it means for an engineering company to be good or evil, and what it’s like to be a software journalist.
Questions- Was there ever a point where there was a big engineering drain from Microsoft to Amazon?
- How do the cultures of the two companies compare and contrast?
- Do traditional media outlets have a bias against big tech companies?
- What do you think about Facebook’s Free Basics controversy?
- Do people take too hardline of an approach when it comes to Net Neutrality?
- Will Uber have to face a regulatory court battle in the future?
- Is it difficult to balance growing Geekwire while also maintaining journalistic integrity?
Links- Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
- Washington Post closes sale to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
- Free Basics by Facebook
- Net neutrality
- GeekWire
- Todd on Twitter
The post Software Journalism at GeekWire with Todd Bishop appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
52 min - Bridge Foundry with Sarah Allen“If we don’t have all of the people represented in the creation activities, I don’t believe we’re going to end up with the solutions that we need for our society.”
Technology careers are not as accessible to certain demographics, such as women. Sarah Allen is working to change that through education and outreach. Sarah Allen created RailsBridge and Bridge Foundry, a pair of organizations working to make technology more accessible to people who are underrepresented in tech.
RailsBridge workshops are a fun and free way to get started with Ruby, Rails or other technologies. RailsBridge was so successful that Sarah created Bridge Foundry, which has an even wider variety of free workshops, from Clojure to Go to Mobile. This is an inspirational episode of Software Engineering Daily, and is a great learning opportunity for anyone interested in building a community.
Questions- Why is it important to make tech more diverse?
- What are the first principles of education that we need to start baking into our educational processes?
- Why are women so underrepresented in tech?
- How did you go about scaling Bridge Foundry?
- How have you encouraged more engineers to take on leadership roles when there is an assumption that you can’t be technical and lead at the same time?
- Should every child learn to code?
- How can software change our culture for a brighter more diverse future?
Links- RailsBridge
- Bridge Foundry
- If Men Could Menstruate
- Sarah’s page
The post Bridge Foundry with Sarah Allen appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
59 min - Applying Software Research to Industry with Amy Ko“It’s not just about tools, it’s also a lot about how you structure a team, how you structure the communication between engineers, how you facilitate decision making – all of those things.”
University research produces numerous papers about software engineering. Unfortunately, many of the problems explored by these software engineering researchers have no actual application. These papers fall into The Black Hole of Software Engineering Research.
Amy Ko is an associate professor at the University of Washington. When she worked as a CTO of AnswerDash, she experimented with some of the software engineering research coming out of academia and industry. Today on Software Engineering Daily, we discuss Amy’s results. Our conversation spans the topics of education, big companies, and startups. Since this interview, Amy came out as a transgender. Per her request, we’ve changed the name and pronouns above, but did not modify the audio recording.
Questions- What kinds of research were you trying to bring to AnswerDash?
- What were the challenges of actually implementing something that you read about in a research paper?
- What is the black hole of software engineering research?
- Do you think there is a strong distinction between theory and practice?
- What is the right form for disseminating software engineering knowledge?
- Why did you transition back to academia from your full-time role as CTO?
- What do you wish you could change about the university education system?
Links- The black hole of software engineering research
- Answerdash
- Human–computer interaction
- Amy’s professor page
The post Applying Software Research to Industry with Amy Ko appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
58 min - Design for Non-designers with Tracy Osborn“Just paying attention to clutter in general, makes things a lot better.”
Design is more important than ever. There are so many websites being created every day, that it is not enough to differentiate your product with rock solid engineering. Your product has to be beautiful, intuitive, and tested for usability. You don’t want all of the hard work of the product and engineering teams to go to waste, so on this episode, the focus is design.
Tracy Osborn is the creator of WeddingLovely, a beautifully designed two sided marketplace website, where people who are getting married connect with wedding vendors. Today, Tracy discusses “design for nondesigners”. Whether you are an engineer, a marketer, or a business analyst, just learning a few simple tactics about design can take you far.
Questions- Why is design important for engineers?
- What were the design mistakes you saw other wedding websites make when you founded Wedding lovely?
- How does mobile factor into your design strategy?
- What were the challenges designing to accommodate both sides in a two-sided marketplace?
- What are some “design hacks” that non-designers can implement easily?
- How can engineers and designers work more harmoniously together?
Links- Tracy’s talk at Fluent
- Tracy’s personal page
- WeddingLovely
- Google Material Design
- Bootstrap
- Foundation
- Hello Web App
- Dwarf Fortress with Tarn Adams
- ColourLovers
The post Design for Non-designers with Tracy Osborn appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
47 min - JavaScript and the Internet of Things with Andrew Chalkley“The lessons that we’re learning on the front-end and on the server side are applicable to hardware. I don’t think that anything’s gonna arise out of hardware that we haven’t thought of yet.”
JavaScript is everywhere, on the browser, the server, and now on hardware. Finally–the Internet of Things is upon us — and it is powered by JavaScript. Even if you consider yourself a web developer, and you have no interest in “maker” culture, keep your eye on this space. Factories in Shenzhen are making better, more modular parts, and the same supply chain economics that are driving down the cost of smart phones and smart cars, will give hobbyist engineers all the simple hardware components they could ever need. This will power a future of proliferated devices that have internet connectivity and “talk” to each other to enable user experiences we wouldn’t dream of today. And naturally, with this will come problems that we cannot anticipate as well.
On today’s episode, Andrew discusses how JavaScript can be used on hardware. Jeff and Andrew talk about the players in the hardware space, as well as how the big cloud players like AWS and Azure are positioning themselves to be the data lakes for the internet of things. Andrew is giving a talk about this at the 2016 O’Reilly Fluent Conference. If you want to win a free ticket to Fluent, tweet about your favorite episode of Software Engineering Daily and tag @fluentconf and @software_daily.
Andrew Chalkley is a hardware hobbyist, software engineer and a full-time teacher at Treehouse.
Questions- Why are we writing JavaScript on hardware nowadays?
- Is JavaScript actually a good language for hardware, or is it more of an evolutionary outcome?
- Does the JS written for hardware look significantly different from JS on other platforms?
- Why is IoT coming to fruition now – what technology is enabling it?
- Why are embedded linux devices for IoT appealing?
- What are the software libraries used to program JavaScript hardware?
- How do you decide which cloud hosting platforms to invest in when building IoT devices?
Links- Andrew’s talk at Fluent
- http://www.marvell.com/kinoma/
- Arduino
- Raspberry Pi Foundation
- Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer
- Espruino Pico
- JavaScript on Hardware with Kelsey Breseman
- Johnny-Five
- Adafruit
- Intel Edison
- Andrew on Twitter
The post JavaScript and the Internet of Things with Andrew Chalkley appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
1 hr 1 min - Designing for Drunk Users with Austin Knight“Your product or your website should be so simple and so well designed that even a drunk person could use it.”
In today’s episode of SEDaily, Jeff and Austin discuss why designing for a drunk user is a competitive advantage. Austin also explains why engineers need to think about UX and how they can incorporate UX considerations into development workflows.
Austin Knight is a designer and UX engineer at Hubspot.
Austin will be speaking at the upcoming Fluent Conference, and Software Engineering Daily is giving away a ticket to Fluent, which will be held March 8-10 in San Francisco. To be entered in a random drawing for this free ticket, tweet about your favorite episode of Software Engineering Daily between now and February 22nd. Make sure to tag us @software_daily and Fluent @fluentconf so we see your tweet.
Questions- Why is UX design so important in 2016?
- How does UX testing drive modern UX design?
- Why should we consider the average internet user to be drunk when we design web products?
- What insights did you get from watching a drunk guy navigate your website?
- Why is there a conflict between what a user does and what a user says?
- How can you institutionalize harsh feedback into your tests?
- Is there any benefit in treating design like art, and intuiting how a product should be defined?
- Why should software engineers care about design?
Links- Austin’s personal page
- Austin’s talk at Fluent
- Hubspot
- The User is Drunk
- UX & Growth Podcast
The post Designing for Drunk Users with Austin Knight appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
48 min
About Software Engineering Daily
From the publisher's feed
Technical interviews about software topics.