Have you ever wondered what astrophysics has in common with the software running in your car, your coffee machine, and NASA's internal tools?

In this episode, I sit down with Cristian Maureira-Fredes, a PhD in Astrophysics who decided to leave academia to join the software industry. Today, he is a Research and Development Principal Manager at The Qt Company, where he leads the team behind Qt for Python (PySide6) and the Qt Core team.

Outline:

00:00 The persistence of C++ in industry

00:14 Introducing Kristian: From Astrophysics to Qt

01:13 The history and Open Source roots of Qt

02:58 Why we can’t just "rewrite" C++ in Rust

03:52 How PySide (Qt for Python) bindings work

05:07 The challenge of finding new C++ contributors

06:17 Impact of LLMs on understanding complex code

07:34 Qt in the real world: NASA, cars, and coffee machines

08:50 Why Qt uses Gerrit instead of GitHub

10:36 Where does the name "Qt" come from?

11:15 Conclusion