Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Brian Demers, Developer Advocate at Gradle, speaks with host Giovanni Asproni [https://se-radio.net/team/giovanni-asproni/] about the importance of having observability in the toolchain. Such information about build times, compiler warnings, test executions, and any other system used to build the production code can help to reduce defects, increase productivity, and improve the developer experience. During the conversation they touch upon what is possible with today’s tools; the impact on productivity and developer experience; and the impact, both in terms of risks and opportunities, introduced by the use of artificial intelligence. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society [https://www.computer.org/] and IEEE Software magazine [https://www.computer.org/software].

Vilhelm von Ehrenheim, co-founder and chief AI officer of QA.tech, speaks with SE Radio's Brijesh Ammanath [https://se-radio.net/team/brijesh-ammanath/] about autonomous testing. The discussion starts by covering the fundamentals, and how testing has evolved from manual to automated to now autonomous. Vilhelm then deep dives into the details of autonomous testing and the role of agents in autonomous testing. They consider the challenges in adopting autonomous testing, and Wilhelm describes the experiences of some clients who have made the transition. Toward the end of the show, Vilhelm describes the impact of autonomous testing on the traditional QA career and what test professionals can do to upskill. This episode is sponsored by Fly.io. [https://www.fly.io?utm=seradio] https://www.fly.io?utm=seradio

In this episode of Software Engineering Radio, Abhinav Kimothi sits down with host Priyanka Raghavan to explore retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), drawing insights from Abhinav's book, A Simple Guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The conversation begins with an introduction to key concepts, including large language models (LLMs), context windows, RAG, hallucinations, and real-world use cases. They then delve into the essential components and design considerations for building a RAG-enabled system, covering topics such as retrievers, prompt augmentation, indexing pipelines, retrieval strategies, and the generation process. The discussion also touches on critical aspects like data chunking and the distinctions between open-source and pre-trained models. The episode concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the future of RAG and its evolving role in the industry. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society [https://www.computer.org/] and IEEE Software magazine [https://www.computer.org/software].

Luca Palmieri, author of Zero to Production in Rust and Principal Engineering Consultant at MainMatter, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry [../../../team/gavin-henry/] about Rust in production. They discuss what production Rust means, how to get Rust code into production, specific Rust issues to think about when getting an application into production, what Rust profiles are, expected performance, telemetry options, error handling and what parts of Rust to use and avoid.  Palmieri discusses docker containers, tracing, robust Rust error handling, how performant Rust is in the real world, p50, p99, docker build techniques, project layouts, crates, speeding up Rust build times, unwrap(), panics, budgeting resources, inner development loops, the Facade Pattern, structured logging, and how to always use clippy. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society [https://www.computer.org/] and IEEE Software magazine [https://www.computer.org/software].

Will McGugan, the CEO and founder of Textualize, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer [https://se-radio.net/team/gregory-kapfhammer/] about how to use packages such as Rich and Textual to build text-based user interfaces (TUIs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs) in Python. Along with discussing the design idioms that enable developers to create TUIs in Python, they consider practical strategies for efficiently rendering the components of a TUI. They also explore the subtle idiosyncrasies of implementing performant TUI frameworks like Textual and Rich and introduce the steps that developers would take to create their own CLI or TUI. This episode is sponsored by Fly.io. [https://www.fly.io?utm=seradio]