What the Dev?

In this episode, Jenna interviews Adi Polak, director of advocacy and developer experience engineering at Confluent, about why developers need to embrace a head chef mindset when working with AI agents.They discuss:What it means to adopt a "head chef" mindsetThe mental shifts needed to work this wayWhat role data streaming plays in enabling this

In this episode, Jenna interviews Vic Chynoweth, CEO of Tempo Software, about how the company predicts that this year software development teams will begin challenging the rising complexity in their dev environments.They discuss:Why teams are shifting from executing work to questioning why it existsWhat's driving rising complexityHow SPM can help manage complexity

In this episode, Jenna interviews Jeff Malnick, GM of developer and AI at 1Password, about the open source agent platform OpenClaw and some of the security concerns that have been raised about it.They discuss:What OpenClaw isThe security issues that could result from using itSteps to take to reduce risk when experimenting with it Here are a few blog posts from 1Password mentioned in the episode:From magic to malware: How OpenClaw's agent skills become an attack surfaceIt's incredible. It's terrifying. It's OpenClaw.How to build secure agent swarms that power production-grade autonomous systems

In this episode, Dave interviews John Dickerson, CEO of Mozilla.ai, about the current state of open AI models.They discuss: The challenges of bringing open AI models to the communityHow government regulations could potentially impact open-source AIThe importance of transparency of models that are being deployed in production

In this episode, Dave interviews Sara Gutierrez, chief science officer at SHL, about the evolving skills needed in an AI-driven workforce.They discuss: Why in 2026 it's important to have foresight to notice things before disruption hitsAI as an enabler for talent decisionsUsing small experiments to guide larger decisions

In this episode, we share a webinar hosted by Progress about data and AI readiness. Here is the webinar description:In today's business landscape, data is your most powerful asset, but only if it's accessible, digestible and ready for implementation. Progress recently surveyed enterprise leaders to understand the state of data readiness, uncovering critical insights across four key areas.In this on-demand webinar, you'll hear David Loshin, Data and Information expert from Knowledge Integrity, Inc., dive deeper into the findings from Progress' latest report. The report results highlight that while many organizations recognize the potential of AI, data challenges are still a major barrier.   You'll leave the webinar with key takeaways around topics like these:Data Literacy & Accessibility: Are teams able to find and use the data they need?Business Initiative Support: How well does your data landscape enable innovation and growth?Data Readiness for AI: Is your data prepared to fuel AI and advanced analytics initiatives?Data Governance & Risk Management: Are proper controls in place to facilitate  compliant, trustworthy AI outcomes?You can download the full report here: https://www.progress.com/resources/papers/data-trends 

In this episode, Dave interviews Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder of Chainguard, about what happens when open source projects are abandoned.They discuss:How to figure out if a project has been abandonedThe role of companies in sponsoring open source projectsHow foundations play a role in maintaining projects

Dave Rubinstein was recently a guest on Torc's Guidance Counselor 2.0 live stream, and we're sharing that conversation with you here. Listen in to this special episode to learn about how community and mentorship are more important than ever as AI adoption continues. 

In this episode, Jenna interviews Woodson Martin, CEO of OutSystems, about how AI only really assists with a portion of the software development life cycle.They discuss:The areas that will still require a human touchThe evolution of the developer role and how success should be measured differentlyThe bottlenecks that still exist even with AI-assisted coding

This episode was originally broadcast in April 2024, and includes discussions that are still relevant to developers today, so we are publishing it again. ---In this episode, SD Times Editor-in-Chief David Rubinstein discusses how cognitive fatigue is compounding the software productivity problem. His guest is Hans Dockter, CEO at Gradle Inc. and lead at Gradle Open Source Project. 

In this episode, Dave interviews Justin Moon, vice president of Core Product Engineering at BlackBerry QNX, providers of a real-time OS for embedded systems. They discuss:How QNX is working to close the development skills gap for SDVsHow developers manage complexity in vehicle software designsThe commercial challenges for autonomous vehicle hardware

In this episode, Dave interviews Mitchell Johnson, chief product development officer at Sonatype, about the notion of a Hippocratic Oath for developers, where you do no harm to the codebase, and how AI is impacting that.They discuss:The responsibility a developer has to keeping their codebase healthy whenever they add a new featureHow being able to output code faster with AI makes it harder to have visibility into how changes impact downstream systemsHow AI assisted coding may actually slow things down

In this episode, Dave interviews Angie Jones, VP of engineering for AI Tools & Enablement at the financial services company Block.They discuss: How AI is empowering a new wave of developers from non-traditional rolesThe importance of feeding AI models and agents important business contextBlock's coding agent Goose 

In this episode, Dave interviews Dave Protasowski, a member of the steering committee for Knative, about the project's recent graduation from the CNCF. They discuss: An overview of what Knative doesThe history of the project at the CNCFWhat's in store for Knative in the future

In this episode, Jenna interviews Pia Nilsson, senior director of engineering at Spotify, about the company's decision to make its own AI tool to improve developer productivity.They discuss:Why they built their own tool instead of using something that already existsHow developers are using it day-to-dayHow AI is shaping developer culture at SpotifyWatch Spotify's webinar on October 22 to learn about the latest updates to Portal: https://info.backstage.spotify.com/webinar?utm_campaign=21639556-2025oct-webinar&utm_source=com-banner

In this episode, Jenna interviews Khachatur Virabyan, head of code quality at Aikido Security, about why code quality and security should be addressed together.They discuss:The differences in definitions for code quality and securityHow clean code could still have vulnerabilitiesThe impact AI coding will have on code quality and security

In this episode, Dave interviews Mark Lambert, chief product officer of ArmorCode, about how AI is influencing Application Security Posture Management (ASPM).They discuss:How AI-generated code has more vulnerabilities than human-generated codeThe risks of slowing down innovation while trying to govern AI-assisted developmentUsing AI agents for automated testing and security vulnerability detection

In this episode, Jenna interviews Dan Lorenc, CEO of Chainguard, about the Shai-Hulud worm that has made its way through the npm ecosystem.They discuss:What Shai-Hulud is and why it's so badSecurity measures GitHub plans to implement in npm Best practices to follow to mitigate risk

In this episode, Dave interviews Alan Manuel, group VP of product management for platform and AI at Planview.They discuss: Why AI requires a different mindset than other technology adoptionSetting realistic expectations for AIWhy it's important to focus on the outcome, not the features

In this episode, Dave interviews Neeraj Abhyankar, vice president and practice head of Data, Analytics, and Generative AI at R Systems.They discuss: The role of AI in modernizationThe evolution of AI throughout technology historyThe importance of "human in the loop" when working with AI

In this episode, Dave interviews Andi Gutmans, VP and general manager of Data Cloud at Google.They discuss:How AI can help with data managementHow AI tools have matured and are now more accessible for late adoptersThe work Google is doing with AI This episode originally aired 7/31/2025 on Get With IT.

In this episode, Dave interviews Judy Bossi, VP of product management at Sembi, about the importance of QA in AI integration.They discuss: Predictions for how QA will evolve alongside AIEnsuring executives see the business value in QAThe challenges in ensuring security and safety when integrating AI into the software development life cycle 

In this episode, Dave interviews Burley Kawasaki, global VP of product marketing and strategy at no-code CRM platform Creatio.They discuss: The cautious adoption of AI in the workplace due to trust issuesThe need for transparency and visibility into AI decision-making processesHow to balance innovation with security and compliance

In this episode, Jenna interviews Anant Bhardwaj, CEO and founder of Instabase, about what factors to consider before purchasing an AI tool.They discuss:Why it's important to start with the problem you have and work backwardsMaking sure agentic AI fits in with the rest of the existing systemsPlanning for long-term use

In this episode originally published on Get With IT, Dave interviews Idit Levine, founder and CEO of solo.io, about kagent, a framework for running agents in Kubernetes. They discuss:Why kagent was createdWhat led solo.io to open source the project and donate it to the CNCFDifficulties with deploying AI agents in large organizations

In this episode, Dave interviews Jenn Wei, senior vice president of product at LaunchDarkly.They discuss:The importance of creating a culture for AI experimentationNeeding to shift from building features to managing dynamic learning systemsThe role of leadership in driving innovation

In this episode, Dave interviews Brian Douglas, head of developer experience at Continue, about the importance of rules for AI tools.They discuss: How to implement rules for AI assistantsUsing rules to replace lengthy promptsPreventing technical debt when using AI-generated code

In this episode, Jenna interviews Wade Wegner, chief ecosystem and growth officer at DigitalOcean, about the importance of developer advocacy.They discuss:The relationship among developer advocacy, developer relations, and technology evangelismEffective strategies for engaging with developersMetrics to track to know that advocacy is contributing to product growth

In this episode, Jenna interviews Dr. Manny Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of OpenOrigins, the company behind Human-Oriented Proof System (HOPrS), which can be used to determine if an image or video has been altered or is AI-generated.They discuss:How it works and how it differs from other tools that try to do thisHow it can be used to address concerns around AI-generated contentIts recent acceptance into the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust Lab

In this episode, Dave interviews Justin Cantrall, AI engineer and architect at OpenText, about specialized language models.They discuss:The difference between specialized language models and large language modelsThe benefits and disadvantages of choosing specialized language modelsOpen weight models 

In this episode, Jenna interviews Maya Palfreyman, product marketing director at Quickbase, who leads the company's research on gray work.They discuss:What gray work is and what sort of tasks qualify How it affects software developersThe impact of unaccounted gray work in planning cycles

In this episode, Dave interviews Jack Pertschuk, principal engineer for Algorithms and Platform at Pinecone. They discuss:What semantic search is and where it falls shortThe difference between sparse and dense vectorsHow search technology powers AI

In this episode, Jenna interviews Julianna Lamb, co-founder and CTO of Stytch, about MCP and how it handles authorization. They discuss:Where MCP gets it right and where more work is neededIssues with traditional auth in agentic workflowsDesigning auth flows for agents vs humans

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Tammuz Dubnov, founder and CTO of AutonomyAI, a company that makes AI agents for software development. They discuss:What vibe coding isThe risks associated with itWhere it can be used and where it should be avoided

In this episode, Jenna welcomes back Simon Ritter, CTO of Azul, to talk about the history and evolution of Java, which is celebrating its 30 year anniversary this year.They discuss: The software development landscape at the time Java was createdKey moments in Java's historyWhat has made it such a resilient and long-lasting language

In this episode, Dave interviews Dan Ciruli, senior director of product management at Nutanix (and ex-Googler), about the history of Kubernetes. They discuss:What was going on at Google that led to the creation of KubernetesThe importance of getting the industry to agree on a non-vendor-specific way of deploying workloadsInitial concerns from VM vendors about being replaced by containersThe story behind Kubernetes' name and logoThis episode originally aired on 5/8/25 on our sister podcast, Get With IT, where we discuss topics related to ITOps. 

In this episode, Dave interviews Priti Naik, vice president of architecture at Chase, about the company's Expert Engineering (E2) program.They discuss:What the program involves What prompted its creationHow graduates stay updated on new technologies and trends

In this episode, Jenna interviews Zohar Einy, CEO of Port, about engineering feedback loops.They discuss:The purpose of engineering feedback loopsWhere most organizations go wrongWhat makes feedback actually actionable

Thank you to Broadcom for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about their VSM offerings here: https://www.broadcom.com/products/software/value-stream-managementIn this episode, Dave interviews Jean-Louis Vignaud, head of ValueOps at Broadcom, about how VSM and AI are coming together.They discuss:The business implications of using AI in VSMConcerns around data privacy and proprietary information in AIRecapping Broadcom's recent VSM Summit

In this episode, Jenna interviews Dean Coclin, senior director of Industry Strategy at DigiCert, about the recent vote by the CA/Browser Forum to shorten the lifespan of TLS certificates to 47 days by 2029. They discuss:The schedule for the changes and the gradual increments lifespans will shorten byThe rationale behind shortening certificate lifetimesHow to start preparing for changesDigiCert will be hosting a webinar on this topic on May 6 called "Unpacking Certificate Changes: Live Expert Q&A." Register here: https://digicert.registration.goldcast.io/events/2c6c723b-5725-4406-9289-6df8ddd20f93?referrer=https://www.digicert.com/&referrer=https://www.digicert.com/&referrer=https://www.digicert.com/&referrer_page=a28f9ca5-7abf-4ce2-9b6b-571e50e49239

In this episode, Dave Rubinstein interviews Heikki Linnakangas, co-founder of Neon, a company that provides Postgres solutions. They discuss: The factors that have contributed to adoption of PostgreSQLWhy PostgreSQL has leapfrogged over MySQL in popularityWhat to expect in PostgreSQL 18

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Antje Barth, principal developer advocate for generative AI at AWS.They discuss:The skills that are becoming more important as AI adoption increasesThe emergence of the AI engineering roleThe trend of "vibe coding"Resources:Amazon Q DeveloperEpisode transcript

In this episode, Jenna Barron speaks with Emilio Salvador, vice president of strategy and developer relations at GitLab, about AI agents in software development. Key talking points include: How AI agents compare to traditional forms of automation in the software development processChallenges teams may face when implementing agentsThe impact AI agents will have on the role of software developers

In this episode, David Rubinstein interviews Jeremy Edberg, CEO of DBOS, about the current state of serverless.They discuss:Why serverless adoption has stagnatedThe complexity of serverless architectureWhat needs to change to increase adoption

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Simon Ritter, deputy CTO of Azul, about the six features in Java 24 he thinks are most exciting, including faster startup times for Java apps, improvements to the Stream Gatherers API, and more. Learn more about Java 24 here: https://sdtimes.com/java/java-24-is-now-available-with-release-of-stream-gatherers-class-file-apis/

In this episode, David Rubinstein interviews, Stephen Watt, VP of the Office of the CTO at Red Hat, about open source AI.They discuss: Differences between open source software and open source AIThe difficulty in applying open source principals to AIEfforts made to define open source AI

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Martin Reynolds, field CTO of Harness, about the misalignment between developers and FinOps. The company recently did a report that backed up the claims that developers and FinOps aren't properly aligned, and they talk about some of the findings of that report. Some key points of discussion include:The fact that over half of developers say their cloud purchasing commitments are based on guessworkThe lack of data on idle cloud resources, unused resource, and over or underprovisioned workloadsProcesses and tools that can help with alignmentHow the adoption of AI has contributed to the problemRead Harness' report here: https://www.harness.io/finops-in-focus Read the transcript of this episode here: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/qa-the-growing-divide-between-developers-and-finops/ 

In this episode, Jenna Barron interviews Lukasz Karolewski, senior staff software engineer at LinkedIn, and Ajay Prakash, staff software engineer at LinkedIn, to talk about how they built a prompt engineering playground at LinkedIn to improve cross-team collaboration with non-technical teams.They discuss:Why they built the playgroundThe choice to use Jupyter notebooksThe work they did to make sure it was accessible to non-technical usersHow it's facilitated faster innovation at the companyThey detailed their work in this blog post here: https://www.linkedin.com/blog/engineering/product-design/building-collaborative-prompt-engineering-playgrounds-using-jupyter-notebook 

In this episode David Rubinstein interviews Eran Yahav, co-founder and CTO of Tabnine, about why its important to provide AI assistants with clean code.They discuss: The importance of defining organizational rules and best practices to guide the AIHow to use AI-assisted refactoring to improve legacy codebasesIf organizations should apply KonMari principles to their codebases

Join SD Times news editor Jenna Barron for a panel discussion on DeepSeek and what developers need to know about this model that has been in the spotlight for the past few weeks. The conversation covers why DeepSeek has gained so much attention, what makes it different from other models, proper data security and hygiene practices for using DeepSeek, and predictions for the future of AI innovation. The speakers include:Melissa Ruzzi, director of AI at AppOmniBratin Saha, chief product and technology officer at DigitalOceanKate O'Neill, author, speaker, and executive consultant on technology's impact on the human experienceRelated resources from our speakers:Kate's new book, What Matters Next: A Guide to Making Human-Friendly Tech Decisions - https://www.koinsights.com/books/what-matters-next-book/AppOmni's webinar on AI security and balancing the risks and benefits of AI - https://appomni.com/webinars/ai-security-balancing-business-and-saas-risks/ AskOmni, a chatbot for SaaS security - https://appomni.com/askomni/ How to Run DeepSeek R1 Large Language Models on DigitalOcean GPU Droplets - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/deepseek-r1-gpu-droplets DigitalOcean Deploy 2025 Keynote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phxuIai5cD8 The video for this conversation was also posted to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdtkj2YN4Nw 

In this episode, David Rubinstein interviews Damien Garros, co-founder and CEO of OpsMill, about middle code, a concept that sits somewhere between programming and low-code/no-code.They discuss:What middle code isThe influence generative AI has had on this technologyHow middle code can be used to accomplish things not possible with low-code or no-code