The Stack Overflow Podcast

What (un)exactly do you mean by semantic search?

Ryan welcomes Bryan O’Grady,  Head of Field Research and Solutions Architecture at Qdrant, to discuss the differences between traditional text search engines powered by Lucene and modern vector databases, when vector search’s exact-match needs work for things like logs and security analytics and when semantic search works for user-facing discovery and non-exact results, and how Qdrant is growing into video embeddings and local-agent contexts.  Episode notes:  Qdrant [https://qdrant.tech/] offers high-performance vector search at scale with any deployment model. Connect with Brian on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-ogrady/] or email the Qdrant team at support@qdrant.io [support@qdrant.io].  Congratulations to user Brad Larson [https://stackoverflow.com/users/19679/brad-larson] for winning a Populist badge for their answer to Find the tangent of a point on a cubic bezier curve [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4089443/find-the-tangent-of-a-point-on-a-cubic-bezier-curve]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Time is a construct but it can still break your software

Ryan welcomes  Jason Williams, senior software engineer at Bloomberg and  the creator of Rust-based JavaScript engine Boa, to the show to dive into why date and time handling in JavaScript is so difficult and how the Temporal proposal aims to fix it. They explore the current flaws and issues in JavaScript that make the Date object so hard to work with, how libraries like Moment.js helped but eventually became too complex themselves, and why the Temporal proposal took nine years to complete.  Episode notes:  Temporal [https://tc39.es/proposal-temporal/docs/] is a new TC39 proposed standard for JavaScript that replaces the Date object. It operates as a top-level namespace and brings a modern date/time API to the ECMAScript language. Connect with Jason on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/jason-williams.co.uk] or at his website [https://jason-williams.co.uk/].  Congrats to Great Answer badge winner BrenBarn [https://stackoverflow.com/users/1427416/brenbarn], who won the badge for their answer to rethrowing python exception. Which to catch? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25001971/rethrowing-python-exception-which-to-catch]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Your LLM issues are really data issues

Ryan welcomes Harsha Chintalapani, co-founder and CTO at Collate and co-creator of Open Metadata, to the show to discuss why AI and LLMs struggle with real-time, structured production data. They explore how schema changes, inconsistent definitions (like “customer”), and weak governance can break both your analytics and MLs, and what companies can do to get their data AI-ready, from metadata management to observability.  Episode Notes:  Collate [https://www.getcollate.io/] is a semantic intelligence platform built on a semantic metadata graph for discovery, governance, and AI observability across your data ecosystem. Connect with Harsha on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriharsha/].  Congrats to user buttonsrtoys [https://stackoverflow.com/users/2079612/buttonsrtoys], who won a Famous Question badge for their question Possible to edit PDF without embedded font installed? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27807875/possible-to-edit-pdf-without-embedded-font-installed]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/28/your-llm-issues-are-really-data-issues/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Lights, camera, open source!

Ryan is joined on the show by Cult.Repo producers Emma Tracey and Josiah Mcgarvie to discuss making documentaries about open-source software and the people behind the major technologies that uphold the internet. They explore why open-source projects and the people who maintain them are such interesting stories for audiences, how being outsiders has helped them tell these community stories, and what they see as the common stressors that plague all open-source projects, such as sustainability, compensation, and burnout.  Episode notes:  Cult.Repo [https://www.cultrepo.com/] produces documentaries and shorts about the human stories behind open-source technology. Check out their filmography on their YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsUalyRg43M8D60mtHe6YcA]. Have an idea for an open-source community they should cover? Email the Cult.Repo team at hello@cultrepo.com.  Shoutout to user kiranvj [https://stackoverflow.com/users/1188322/kiranvj] for winning a Populist badge for their answer to What is a good way to automatically bind JS class methods? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56503531/what-is-a-good-way-to-automatically-bind-js-class-methods]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/24/lights-camera-open-source/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

How to get multiple agents to play nice at scale

SPONSORED BY INTUIT Chase Roossin, group engineering manager, and Steven Kulesza, staff software engineer, from Intuit join the podcast to chat about what might be the hardest problem in engineering right now: getting multiple AI agents to work together in a complex system. They discuss how automated evals can make agent behaviors more predictable, agent swarms vs. one highly skilled agent, and how customer behavior shaped their technical architecture.  Episode notes Want to work on complex engineering problems like these? Explore careers [https://www.intuit.com/careers/?cid=dis_so_clicks_us_intuit-intelligence_aw_fy26-pod_alltechaudience_link_none_intuit-talent__] at Intuit. We’ve worked with Intuit on a few other great blogs and podcasts, including Best practices for building LLMs [https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/02/07/best-practices-for-building-llms/] and How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability [https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/03/01/how-intuit-democratizes-ai-development-across-teams-through-reusability/]. Connect with Chase on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaseroossin/].  Connect with Steven on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-kulesza-27240540/].  Congrats to Lifejacket badge winner Sean [https://stackoverflow.com/users/5351721/sean] for saving Creating the simplest HTML toggle button? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76837048/creating-the-simplest-html-toggle-button/76837247#76837247] with a great answer. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/22/how-to-get-multiple-agents-to-play-nice-at-scale/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].