#108 Winter Tech Forum and Current Projects

At Western State Colorado University in Gunnison on Sept 11, 2025, Bruce Eckel, Bill Venners and Dianne Marsh each give their own 10-minute perspectives on finding fulfillment in the field, especially considering the impact of AI and other recent changes in computing. The remainder of the session answers questions from the student audience.Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is "code" but without most of the benefits of being code. Sam Goodwin is reinventing IaC with Alchemy and an upcoming Alchemy Effect project which aims to manage infrastructure dependencies & provisioning in the same way we manage requirements in Effect Oriented Programming.Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Excitement around Python type checking continues to grow and the tools continue to evolve. We chat with Aaron Pollack and Steven Troxler about ⁠Pyrefly - a Rust-based Python type checker and IDE extension. We also touch on the adoption and sentiment around types in Python's ecosystem.Resources:Pyrefly DiscordPackage Type Coverage ReportPackages being tracked for moving types from typeshed to the source projectTyping Survey SlidesBlog post with survey analysisPython typing community forumMCP PyreflyDiscuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Carl Meyer works on the ty Python type checker, built in Rust by Astral the creators of Ruff and uv. We chat about type systems, the evolution of static typing in Python, and the focus on performance.Resources:Richard Feldman: Roc compiler moving from Rust to ZigDiscuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

We chat with Jennifer Reif about integrating LLMs with data using RAG, vectorized data, and Graph databases.Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Rod Johnson, creator of the Spring Framework, has created a JVM-based AI Agent framework called Embabel. We dive in and learn how enterprises can build more reliable Agents using deterministic planning and domain-driven orchestration.Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

We chat with Steve Manuel (of dylibso.com and mcp.run) about LLM "plugins" with Wasm & MCP (Model Context Protocol).Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Justin Reock has spent a lot of his career thinking about how to help developers be more productive. In this episode we learn about the methodologies that can help developers spend more time in "flow state" - happily coding the fun stuff. Further reading: Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4 Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Lize Raes teaches us about AI models, LLMs, Tools, Agents, and MCP.Article from Anthropic on Agent architectures: Building effective agentsDiscuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Join us at the 2025 Winter Tech Forum! www.wintertechforum.com Projects Mentioned: uv for Python TypeScript Effect Pkl CloudFormation Extras Pkl GitHub Actions Other Episodes Mentioned: #81 TypeScript & Effects with Michael Arnaldi #97 The Pkl Configuration Language with Philip Hölzenspies