What the Dev? is a podcast by the SD Times editorial team. We cover the biggest and newest topics in software and technology.
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
In this episode, we interview Dylan Thomas, senior director of product engineering at OpenText Cybersecurity, about the evolution from shift left to shift everywhere.At the end of 2024, he predicted: "In 2025, DevSecOps will continue evolving beyond the ‘shift-left' paradigm, embracing a more mature ‘shift everywhere' approach. This shift calls on organizations to apply the right tools at the right stages of the DevSecOps cycle, improving efficiency and effectiveness in security practices. Lightweight analysis in IDEs will help developers catch issues early, while automation integrated into pull requests and CI/CD pipelines will ensure a cohesive ‘integrate once' approach for core functions such as SAST, SCA, and increasingly DAST, particularly for API security testing."We interviewed him about his predictions, and talked about: What shift everywhere isWhy people are wanting to transition to this new approachHow to get started with shift everywhere
In this episode, we spoke with Trisha Gee, lead developer advocate at Gradle, about flaky tests and the challenges of dealing with them.Key talking points:What is a flaky test?How can they be identified?How can they be prevented in the future? Other useful resources on flaky tests: Develocity's Flaky Test DetectionTrisha's recent Flaky Test webinar Trisha's Blog - How Top Banks Handle Flaky TestsDesirable Unit Tests By Kent BeckMartin Fowler's Definition of a Contract Test Your Tests are Failing You! (video) 5 Reasons Your Automated Tests Fail (video)
In this episode, we spoke with Derek Holt, CEO of Digital.ai, about the emerging practice of software engineering intelligence (SEI). At the end of last year, he predicted that "SEI will have a breakout year in 2025 as more and more businesses realize they need to measure the end-to-end business process of software development and delivery in order to drive continuous improvement, truly deliver improved developer experiences and ultimately realize the potential gains for an AI-powered Software Development and Delivery capabilities."We invited him on the podcast to dive into that prediction further, and we discussed:What SEI isWhy it's gaining traction this yearHow it differs from value stream management, and why it will be more successfulRead all 2025 predictions here: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/predictions-for-software-development-in-2025/
In this episode, we interview Scott McCarty, senior principal product manager of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, about what we can look forward to in 2025 when it comes to containers. Key talking points include:Cross-platform use cases for containersBending containers to do more for usAn overview of bootc and how it fits into the future of containers
In this episode, David Rubinstein interviews Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype. They discuss the company's 10th annual State of the Software Supply Chain report. Key talking points include: The rapid growth of malicious open-source componentsThe increasing length of time needed to remediate vulnerabilitiesHow regulations impact supply chain securityNote: This will be the final episode of What The Dev released in 2024. We'll be back in early January 2025!
In this episode, David Rubinstein interviews Mohamed Lazzouni, CTO of Aware, a company that offers identity verification services. They discuss the current state of biometric authentication, including its challenges, user experience, and ethical considerations. They also talk about concerns regarding deepfakes and the countermeasures to protect against them.
In this episode, editor-in-chief David Rubinstein interviews Tanner Burson, vice president of engineering at Prismatic, about how AI might be destabilizing development pipelines. They discuss:The lack of long-term thinking around AI in developmentWhy AI-generated code is hard to understand and maintainIssues with using AI to verify code
In this episode, editor-in-chief David Rubinstein interviews Tobi Knaup, VP and general manager of cloud native at Nutanix. They discuss how AI is driving innovation in Kubernetes, and also how AI adoption is driving people to Kubernetes.
In this episode, news editor Jenna Barron interviews Julianna Lamb, co-founder and CTO of Stytch, about how to evolve your engineering processes.They discuss:How the dynamic of a team contributes to engineering efficiencyHow to play to the strengths of everyone on the teamThe benefits of engineers having ownership over the work they're doing
In this episode, SD Times news editor Jenna Barron interviews Christophe Sauthier, head of CNCF certifications and trainings, about the benefits of getting a certification. They discuss:CNCF's recently created Kubestronaut achievement, which developers can get for completing all five of the organization's Kubernetes certificationsHow certifications can improve a developer's careerWhat to look for when thinking about getting a certifications
This episode was sponsored by Lucid, a provider of a visual collaboration suite for developers. Learn more here: https://lucid.co/ In this episode, David Rubinstein, editor-in-chief of SD Times, interviews Jessica Guistolise, evangelist at Lucid, about how visual collaboration can improve developer experience.They discuss:Challenges with gaining visibility in software developmentThe value of visualizationsHow visual collaboration streamlines Agile developmentResources: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/accelerating-innovation-how-the-lucid-visual-collaboration-suite-boosts-agile-team-efficiency/
In this episode, SD Times editor-in-chief David Rubinstein interviews Ayah Bdeir, senior strategic advisor at Mozilla, about the Open Source Initiative's (OSI) effort to define Open Source AI.Key talking points include:Why there's a need to have a definition for open source AIThe controversy over how to classify training dataMozilla's collaboration with OSI on this work Open Source AI definition: https://opensource.org/osd
In this episode, SD Times editor-in-chief David Rubinstein interviews Stacey Kruczek, director of developer relations at Aerospike and steering committee member of the Developer Relations Foundation.They talk about why developer relations is important, including why the Developer Relations Foundation was formed.Key talking points:What a DevRel doesHow developer relations elevates the role of developersThe future of developer relationsTranscript: https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/qa-why-the-developer-relations-foundation-is-forming/
In this episode, we are joined by Thabang Mashologu, VP of community at the Eclipse Foundation, who dives into the findings of the organization's recent study on the State of Open Source in the Global South.Key talking points include: The positive impact that open source is having in the Global SouthHow developers are using it to drive career growthUsing open source to solve gender inequality issues Download the Report: https://outreach.eclipse.foundation/open-source-global-south-developers
In this episode we speak to Tom Kincaid, senior vice president of database servers and tools at EDB and Jozef de Vreis, chief product engineering officer at EDB. both are contributors to PostgreSQL, so they came on to talk about the new features in Postgres 17, which is now available (Note: episode was recorded prior to the release, which is why you'll hear it being referred to as an "upcoming" release).Key talking points include:Why Postgres remains so popularExpanded JSON support in this releaseThe addition of incremental backup
This episode was sponsored by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. In this episode, we interview Ram Iyengar, chief evangelist of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, about the role of buildpacks in software development today.Key talking points include:The importance of the buildpacks community Korifi, Cloud Foundry's platform for creating and deploying applications on KubernetesWhere Cloud Foundry fits in a Kubernetes worldThe importance of giving developers better tooling Further resources:Article: Transition application code to images with Cloud Native BuildpacksWebinar: From Source to Container – Gaining Productivity with Open Source Paketo Buildpacks
In this episode, we interview Matt Johnston, CEO of GitKraken, about developer experience. Some key points we discussed during our conversation include:Platform engineering as a component of developer experienceHow DevEx attracts top talentWhat "developer joy" is
In this episode, we spoke with Tushar Katarki, senior director of product for Red Hat's GenAI Foundation Model Platforms Portfolio, about some of the issues companies may run into when trying to implement generative AI. Key talking points include: The rush to AIChallenges companies run intoThe human factor of AI implementation and useThis episode originally aired on our other ITOps focused podcast, Get With IT. To subscribe to that show, visit here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2114207
In this episode we speak to Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData, a pioneer and leader of time series data.Key talking points: Why specialized databases are needed for collecting time series dataThe challenges of storage and compressionIntegration of time series data with training AI
In this episode, we speak with David Ross, Agile evangelist for Miro, about some of the misconceptions people may have about Agile today.Key talking points include: How Agile was perceived 15-20 years ago vs todayThe realization that prescriptive frameworks aren't always effective The importance of flexible tool sets that support evolving workflowsHow AI will impact team size and composition
In this episode, we speak with Rob Whiteley, CEO of Coder, about OpenAI's recent announcement of CriticGPT, a new AI model that provides critiques of ChatGPT responses in order to help the humans training GPT models better evaluate outputs during reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLFH). According to OpenAI, CriticGPT isn't perfect, but it does help trainers catch more problems than they do on their own.Key talking points include:The downsides of having AI testing the quality of other AI modelsWhy it's important to be specific about what types of errors the model is allowed to look forIs this another example of rushing into AI?
In this episode, we interview Cameron van Orman, chief strategy & marketing officer and GM of Automotive Solutions at Planview. He has a lot of insight into software-defined vehicles and what goes into making them, and offers thoughts on: How automakers are adapting to merge digital experiences into their carsEnsuring predictability and visibility into the software supply chain of vehiclesWhat goes into making sure these complex software systems don't fail in any capacitySubscription services driving up the total cost of ownership for car ownersTechnical debt at auto manufacturers
In this episode, SD Times news editor Jenna Barron interviews Brian Hopkins, VP of Emerging Tech Portfolio at Forrester, about the company's Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2024 list.They talk about:The shift from generative AI to agentic AIHow AI agents are giving way to a number of other emerging technologiesSplitting generative AI into two categories: text and visualHow AI is influencing security advancesRead the list: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/top-10-emerging-technologies-for-2024/
In this episode, SD Times Editor-in-Chief David Rubinstein interviews Arthur Hicken, chief evangelist at Parasoft, about the recent CrowdStrike outages.They talk about:How we've become complacent in being okay with not knowing the quality standards of the software we useThe battle between productivity and technical debtAre companies updating software too frequently?Transcript: https://sdtimes.com/test/qa-lessons-not-learned-from-crowdstrike-and-other-incidents/
In this episode, SD Times editor-in-chief David Rubinstein speaks to Konrad Niemic, founder and CEO of Lekko about: What feature flags are"Stale flags" and why they're an issueWhy 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, and 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/
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 trackHow to analyze metrics and adaptFiguring out the right questions to askAdvice 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 todayWhat leaders can do to cut down on burnoutEngineers are now informing business strategyReferenced 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 OpenAIThe lack of transparency into Apple's own modelWhy open source models are better for innovation
In this episode, David Rubinstein, editor-in-chief of SD Times, interviews Michelle Avery, group VP of AI at WillowTree, 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 politeHow organizations can measure politeness of a chatbotOn 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 rightThe challenges companies might face when trying to get observability into mobile appsOpenTelemetry'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 devsTesting is one area where they're really helpful for devs regardless of experience levelGetting past the hype of what the creators of these tools are promising and setting realistic expectationsHow 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.
In this episode, Jenna Barron, news editor of SD Times, is joined by Gina Tran, director of product for Bitwarden. They talk about the ever growing problem of secrets getting leaked into production, and why it happens. They also talk about how to prevent this problem and what improvements she has seen in secrets management practices over the last couple of years. Related reading: 1. The key to successful secrets management is to make the best way the easiest way2. Implement a good secrets management practice to reduce your security risk