The Stack Overflow Podcast

Welcome to the Stack Overflow podcast recorded Thursday July 20 at Stack Overflow Headquearters in NYC. Your hosts today are podcast regulars Jay Hanlon, David Fullerton, and Ilana Yitzhaki, plus the quite irregular Matt Sherman (Stack Overflow Engineering Manager extraordinaire). This week's episode is brought to you by Game of Thrones Season 5 Spoilers as well as Stack Overflow Channels. Everything you love about Stack Overflow, in a private space just for your team. Sign up today at stackoverflow.com/channels to learn more or get your team in line for the beta.

Today's highlights:

For this week's Developer Story, we are proud to have Linux Academy Founder and CEO Anthony James chatting about his circuitous route from authoring the Pinehead tutorial blog as a teenager, then jumping to creativity-sapping accounting and finance roles (we all know how much Jay loves Finance) and then to his current passion "changing lives through interactive training" with Linux Academy.

Matt's Rant™ is about everything and nothing; basically "Computers shouldn't work..."

OMTR - David has a new phone with a *gasp* analog silence button.

We play Fake News: David Fullerton edition. Did we mention that he lives in Florida now?

Google Glass is... back?

New Constitution Question, this week from our very own Jason Punyon (@JasonPunyon): When reading code, would you pronounce the parentheses in a function call as "bananas"? PRO = Yes, I would call them bananas; CON = No, Jason Punyon is bananas. Post your answer to twitter using the Hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO or CON and your explanation, short but insightful. The best explanation, whether on the winning side or the losing side, will be read on next week's podcast and win a Stack Overflow Sticker, courtesy of us!

Last week's winner:

https://twitter.com/ariporad/status/887028564821909504

Thanks Ari for participating, and thank you all for listening. See you next week!

Clicky clicky:

Linux Academy's brand new platform cloudassessments.com

Follow Linux Academy on Twitter and Facebook (and check out our Linux job postings here!)

Sign up for Stack Overflow Channels! Reduce single-source-of-information bottlenecks by sharing any dev's knowledge with every dev on your team.

The OnePlus 5

In the News: Google Glass

Today's shenanigans include Sarah Clatterbuck, Director of Engineering at LinkedIn and all-around awesome person! Also, Jay and David introduce Channels while Jess and Jenn compete to see who knows less about Star Wars.

Welcome back to the Stack Overflow podcast episode #112 recorded Thursday, July 13th at Stack Overflow HQ in NYC. Today's hosting duties fall to Jay Hanlon as Joel is still busy alphabetizing his socks. Joining him is newly minted CTO David Fullerton, Fog Creek Community Engineer and Star Wars scholar Jenn Schiffer, and can-totally-tell-the-difference-between-Moff-and-Mon-Mothma podcast producer Jess Pardue.

Our sponsor today is CircleCI. Build Faster. Test More. Fail Less. CircleCI’s continuous integration and delivery platform helps engineering teams of all sizes do more. Help your development team work smarter, with features like SSH into builds, first-class Docker support, and super fast builds. All with support for Linux, Android, and macOS. Starting this week, CircleCI 2.0 is generally available and features Workflows, allowing teams to build faster and fully configure their build pipelines. To learn more, go to circleci.com/stackoverflow, sign up with GitHub or Bitbucket and start building for free!

Today's highlights::

We are honored to have special guest Sarah Clatterbuck share her Developer Story; from generating "random" numbers in middle school to studying applied design in college and then directing the Presentation Infrastructure teams at LinkedIn. She also works with high school CS classes and sits on the board of the Girl Scouts of Northern California in order to help develop girls' early interest in STEM fields.

Jay gets quite indignant about Jess and Jenn's lack of Star Wars recall.

Jenn rants about how bad voice recognition really is. Her Echo Dot is cowering in fear under her bed...

David 's new oven is weirdly specific:

Introducing Stack Overflow Channels! Everything you love about Stack Overflow, in a Private space just for your team. Be one of the first to try it.

In the News: Is it ethical to automate your job and not tell your company? Also, Jenn is definitely an anarchist...

This week's Constitution Question is brought to you by User Diederik Hattingh via Twitter where you can follow him as@Diederik_za: "In markdown, when adding to the middle of a numbered list, do you fix the subsequent numbers?" Answer with PRO if you must correct the numbers, or CON if you think "Why bother? The syntax will straighten itself out." Chime in using #stackoverflowpodcast on twitter. The answer that makes us chuckle, whether on the winning or losing side, will be read on next week's podcast and win a few SO stickers.

This week's winner, for the first time ever, is also the amendment proposer! It's not rigged, we promise.

https://twitter.com/SharshiB/status/874635844979699713

Thanks for listening! We'll be back next week.

Links and socials:

For Sarah's awesomeness: Glimmer, Ember, Women in Tech, GS of Northern California

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and twitter: @girodchatterbox

Follow Jenn Schiffer on Twitter @jennschiffer and stop by Glitch!

Thanks again CircleCI for sponsoring.

BTW, there are so many Mon Mothra's...

Special SRE takeover! David and Ilana are joined by Tom Limoncelli, Mark Henderson, and Jason Harvey from the SO site reliability team to discuss the infrastructure and maintenance of the Stack Overflow sites. Plus, we're hiring! https://stackoverflow.com/company/work-here

Welcome to a very special episode of The Stack Overflow Podcast recorded Thursday, June 8 at Stack Overflow HQ in NYC. Why is this a very special episode, you ask? It's all about Site Reliability Engineers (SRE). Joel and Jay are away (slackers) so David is running the show along with Ilana and 3 members of our very own SRE team. Tom Limoncelli, Mark Henderson, and Jason Harvey are here to discuss how we build and maintain Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network.

So much great stuff in this episode:

Tom's rants are much calmer than Joel's, but just as infuriating. Stop hiding buttons, Google!

Always tip your bartender and use a "USB condom".

Tom and David are fascinated by our Ping Pong Buddy, for some reason.

We're still waiting for Tom's protocol droid. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Differences between Stack Overflow and other SRE teams. *cough, we're NOT in the cloud, cough*

Special SRE edition of Failure is Not an Option. (Apparently Mark is a master criminal. We're not sure that he moved out of Australia voluntarily…)

In the News: How not to react when someone makes a mistake.

Oh, and btw, the SRE team is hiring!

As you know we are preparing a Constitution for Stack Overflow. This week's question comes from listener Kase (@kasey_orourke1): Is it okay to throw things in other people's trash cans when walking down a row of cubicles? Post to twitter #stackoverflowpodcast with PRO if you should be able to use the trash can with no stink-eyes from coworkers, and CON if you think you should keep your Doritos bags out of other people's bins. Wittiest answer will win Stack Podcast stickers!

Last week's winner, for the question "Pro or Con, If I say ‘June 1st at midnight,’ am I referring to the morning of June 1st or the evening?" is @ariporad.

https://twitter.com/ariporad/status/866756312536760321

Congrats Ari! You win things! Watch for a Twitter DM from Ilana.

Thanks for listening! We'll be back with new episodes in July. Until then you can catch up on our back catalog HERE.

Links for the lazy:

Joel on Software post referenced in Tom's rant. Short and to the point.

Web Pages That Suck is still a thing, albeit outdated (2015).

OMTR - Otterbox uniVERSE and Resurgence battery cases.

Did we mention that we're hiring!

Buy Tom's Book: The Practice of System and Network Administration: Vol 1 and Vol 2

From the News: via Reddit - First Day Database Destruction. Who's fault was it, really?

IBM, You're wrong, remote work matters.

In today's episode the gang chats about remote work with Zapier CEO Wade Foster and celebrates SO en Español with CM Juan Garza. Plus in the News Stack Overflow converted to HTTPS and IBM makes a huge mistake.

Welcome to The Stack Overflow Podcast recorded Thursday May 18, 2017 at the same place they are always recorded: Stack Overflow HQ in NYC! Today's episode is brought to you by Shabbos Goy, Maori face markings, and the brand new Stack Overflow App! (And no, Windows phone is still not supported…)

On today's show:

We learn that Vienna is really pretty! Thanks Joel, who knew? Here's the "St Paul's of Apple Streudel" as it is most certainly called, probably:

August door locks: "OMG no, just no." - Joel Spolsky

Special guest Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, joins us to chat about building a company that is fully remote, as well as some of the advantages and challenges of Zapier's remote-first philosophy. BTW, they're hiring and they'll pay you to "de-locate" from SF.

Speaking of remote work, IBM is dismantling its popular remote work policy, giving many workers the choice of relocating to the nearest office, or leave the company altogether. Not surprisingly, Joel and Jay have a few things to say about that…

Stack Overflow en Español just graduated! CM Juan Garza is here to tell us about the site, its amazing stats, and the SO community building process.

Stack Overflow is now fully converted to HTTPS and Nick Craver has a new blog post chronicling the process:  HTTPS on Stack Overflow: The End of a Long Road (12,000 words? Well he did say it was a loooong road.)

This week's Constitution question comes from a listener. The Shaylon Moquett Amendment: If I say "June 1st at midnight," am I referring to the morning of June 1st or the evening? Vote PRO if you are referring to the morning, and CON if you are referring to the evening. Post your answer to twitter using the Hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO or CON and your explanation, short but deep. The best explanation, whether on the winning side or the losing side, will be read on next week's podcast and win a STACK OVERFLOW STICKER, courtesy of us! But really courtesy of Ilana because she is the one who sends them...

Last week's winner, answering the question "If you live in a touristy city, like NYC, is it rude to say 'no' if someone asks you to take a picture of them?" is

https://twitter.com/drtimwright/status/864414033318789121

Thanks Tim! Watch your DM's for sticker info.

Show notes:

The Third Man is a cool movie.

The St Paul's of Apple Struedel is actually called "Kunst Historisches Museum"

Joel's words of wisdom: "When faced with a problem, ask yourself, 'Is there anything that I can throw away that will fix the problem?'"

Los invitamos a las celebraciones de nuestra graduación en Madrid y en la Cuidad de México.  Para el evento en Madrid, favor de visitar este enlace: http://bit.ly/2racIT4 . La celebración tomará lugar el 25 de mayo. Para el event en la Ciudad de México, [vean esta publicación en Meta](https://es.meta.stackoverflow.com/q/1843/4) donde habrá más información.  La celebración tomará lugar el 16 de junio. ¡Espero verlos en vivo y en persona!

Jay's blog post from 2014 "Can't we all be reasonable and speak English?"

News items: "IBM orders its remote workers back into the office" and "HTTPS on Stack Overflow: The End of a Long Road"

Today we chat with SO developer Nick Larsen about dev interview tips, the new Stack Overflow Trends Tool, and tourist photography etiquette. Follow @stackpodcast on twitter for news and updates!

Welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast recorded Thursday, May 11, 2017 at Stack Overflow HQ in NYC. Joel is in Vienna this week at the WeAreDevs conference, so Jay is taking the reigns along with David "Rexalicious" Fullerton, Ilana Yitzaki, and me, your friendly neighborhood podcast producer! This episode is brought to you by Stack Overflow Jobs. Join the thousand other developers who have created Developer Story profiles, and see what it’s like to use a Jobs platform that actually puts developers needs first.

Today you will learn the secret of life, as well as:

Everyone except David remembers the Tomy family of 80's robots.

Jay can't unsubscribe from MailChimp properly, and is quite cross about it.

Today's Developer Story features our very own data team rocketeur Nick Larsen, who started his career by memorizing code snippets from 3-2-1 Contact (you know, like you do).

We discuss Nick's latest blog post, "How to Talk About Yourself in an Interview" where he lays out exactly how to prepare for questions. TLDR: Practice and be prepared to talk! You can also take programs like Nick's interview boot camp at Digital Crafts, where they may make you cry, but that's ok.

Should cover letters be ridiculous? No, but quirky can be a plus depending on the company. Please don't ever EVER send glitter.

Stack Overflow Trends launched last week and is already charting a lot of really fun stats based on the number of question tags on Stack Overflow per month. Take a look and chart your favorite language!

This week's constitution question comes from me! It's the Jess Amendment: If you live in a touristy city, like NYC, is it rude to say "no" if someone asks you to take a picture of them? Post your answer to Twitter using #stackoverflowpodcast along with PRO if you think that you are obligated to say yes, and CON if you think that it is perfectly ok to say "no" and get on with your day. The funniest answer from either the winning or losing side will be read on the podcast and the winner will get awesome SO and SO Podcast stickers.

Here is last week's winner, answering the question: Should you leave the useless subliner on yogurt or hummus containers?

https://twitter.com/ru_altom/status/862337064079118336

Congrats Ru! You get a sticker or two.

Links:

Make your own lattes with Delonghi, just like David!

How to Talk About Yourself in Interviews by Nick Larsen

Stack Overflow Trends blog post by Dave Robinson and the Trends Tool

Follow us on Twitter @stackpodcast for updates and special segment questions!