What the Dev?

In this episode, SD Times editor-in-chief David Rubinstein speaks to Konrad Niemiec, founder and CEO of Lekko about: 

• What feature flags are
• "Stale flags" and why they're an issue
• Why dynamic feature flags helps cut down on stale flags

In this episode, we speak to Bec Rumbul, executive director and CEO of the Rust Foundation, about the new Safety-Critical Rust Consortium, a subgroup dedicated to advancing the use of the Rust language in safety-critical software, such as automotive, aerospace, healthcare, utilities, etc. 

She talks about:

• Why Rust is a good choice for these applications
• Why they're focusing on providing more support to developers using Rust in these safety-critical software
• The goals of the consortium. 

Learn more about the Safety-Critical Rust Consortium here: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/safety-critical-rust-consortium-forms-at-the-rust-foundation/
Transcript: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/qa-on-the-rust-foundations-new-safety-critical-rust-consortium/

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Madeleine Corneli, lead product manager of AI/ML at Exasol, about how companies can assess the actual ROI of their AI investments. 

Key talking points include:

• What metrics to track
• How to analyze metrics and adapt
• Figuring out the right questions to ask
• Advice for getting started tracking metrics related to AI

In this episode, SD Times News Editor Jenna Barron interviews Andrew Lau, CEO and co-founder of Jellyfish, about Jellyfish's 2024 State of Engineering report. Some of the main findings were that 65% of respondents experienced burnout in the last year and that engineers are now having more of a say in business strategy than they have in the past.

Key talking points:

• The factors contributing to burnout today
• What leaders can do to cut down on burnout
• Engineers are now informing business strategy

Referenced in this episode: 
Jellyfish's 2024 State of Engineering Management Report: https://jellyfish.co/resources/2024-state-of-engineering-management-report/
Our writeup of the report: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/report-software-engineers-increasingly-seen-as-strategic-business-partners/
Jellyfish's 5-9 podcast: https://jellyfish.co/5-to-9-podcast/ 

In this episode, SD Times editor-in-chief David Rubinstein interviews Brandon Jung, VP of ecosystem and business development for Tabnine about his concerns with Apple's partnership with OpenAI, which was announced alongside Apple Intelligence as a way to pull in real-world knowledge from ChatGPT for questions Apple's own model cannot answer. 

They discuss: 

• Why it's surprising that Apple decided to partner with OpenAI
• The lack of transparency into Apple's own model
• Why open source models are better for innovation

In this episode, David Rubinstein, editor-in-chief of SD Times, speaks with Michelle Avery, group VP of AI at WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, about a recent survey the company did on rude chatbots.

Key talking points include: 

• What we mean by "rude bot behavior"
• What goes into creating a chatbot that is polite
• How organizations can measure politeness of a chatbot
• On the flip side, humans can be rude to bots too

In this episode, Jenna Barron, news editor of SD Times, interviews Andrew Tunall, head of product at Embrace, a mobile observability company. 

They talk about:

• What it takes to get mobile observability right
• The challenges companies might face when trying to get observability into mobile apps
• OpenTelemetry's role in mobile observability 

Access Embrace's open source mobile observability SDKs here: https://github.com/embrace-io

In this episode, SD Times news editor Jenna Barron interviews Phillip Carter, principal product manager for Honeycomb's AI offerings. 

Key talking points:

• Experienced developers will derive greater value from these tools than newer devs
• Testing is one area where they're really helpful for devs regardless of experience level
• Getting past the hype of what the creators of these tools are promising and setting realistic expectations
• How tools will get better for developers over time

*This episode sponsored by Broadcom*

In this episode, SD Times Editor in Chief David Rubinstein talks to Laureen Knudsen, chief transformation officer at Broadcom. They recap Broadcom's 2024 VSM Summit and look forward to what's coming next year. 

To access the summit on-demand: https://enterprise-software.broadcom.com/vsm-virtual-summit-2024-on-demand 
To nominate a company for next year's Wavemaker: Broadcom.com/wavemaker

While we largely talk about AI's impact on software development here at SD Times, the reality is that AI will impact nearly every discipline, from business to finance to education to journalism. The University of Maryland recently launched Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM) as a collaborative hub for AI research across different departments and subjects.

Hal Daumé III, AIM's inaugural director and a Volpi-Cupal Family Endowed Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, joins us in this episode to talk about AIM's formation, goals, and the role educators have in teaching students how to use AI to properly prepare them for the future workforce.