SE Radio 616: Ori Saporta on the Role of the Software Architect

Infrastructure engineer and Kubernetes ingress-Nginx maintainer James Strong joins host Robert Blumen to discuss the Kubernetes networking layer. The discussion draws on content from Strong’s book on the topic and covers a lot of ground, including: the Kubernetes network's use of different IP ranges than the host network; overlay network with its own IP ranges compared to using expanded portions of the host network ranges; adding routes with kernel extension points; programming kernel extension points with IP tables compared to eBPF; how routes are updated as the host network gains or loses nodes, the use of the Linux network namespace to isolate each pod; routing between pods on the same host; routing between pods across the host network; the container-network interface (CNI); the CNI ecosystem; differences between CNIs; choosing a CNI when running on a public cloud service; the Kubernetes service abstraction with a cluster-wide IP address; monitoring and telemetry of the Kubernetes network; and troubleshooting the Kubernetes network. Brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society.

Andreas Møller, founder of Toddle, a no-code tool for building scalable performant web applications, speaks with SE Radio's Brijesh Ammanath about no-code platforms. They discuss the role of developers in a no-code ecosystem and explore scalability and performance considerations, as well as enterprise adoption of no-code tools. Andreas also expands on why he built Toddle.dev and its unique features. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software.

Frances Buontempo, author of the new book Learn C++ by Example, discusses the C++ programming language, a widely used general-purpose programming language. Host Philip Winston spoke with Buontempo about where C++ fits into the landscape of existing programming languages and how recent C++ standards have changed things. They talk about specific language features such as lambdas, templates, concurrency, ranges, concepts along with tips for learning and using C++. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

Ori Saporta, co-founder and Systems Architect at vFunction, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about the role of the software architect. The episode begins with Ori’s thoughts on what is typically missed or overlooked regarding this role. The conversation then explores aspects of both hard and soft skills required of software architects. Other topics include the relationship of the software architect to other roles, to design and process, and to quality. The show concludes by addressing the importance of dependency management by software architects. Brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society.

Kent Beck, Chief Scientist at Mechanical Orchard, and inventor of Extreme Programming and Test-Driven Development, joins SE Radio host Giovanni Asproni for a conversation on software design based on his latest book "Tidy First?". The episode starts with exploring the reasons for writing the book, and introducing the concepts of tidying, cohesion, and coupling. It continues with a conversation about software design, and the impact of tidyings. Then Kent and Giovanni discuss how to balance design and code quality decisions with cost, value delivered, and other important aspects. The episode ends with some considerations on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the software developer's job. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

Shahar Binyamin, CEO and co-founder of Inigo, joins host Priyanka Raghavan to discuss GraphQL security. They begin with a look at the state of adoption of GraphQL and why it's so popular. From there, they consider why GraphQL security is important as they take a deep dive into a range of known security issues that have been exploited in GraphQL, including authentication, authorization, and denial of service attacks with references from the OWASP Top 10 API Security Risks. They discuss some mitigation strategies and methodologies for solving GraphQL security problems, and the show ends with discussion of Inigo and Shahar's top three recommendations for building safe GraphQL applications. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

Wouter Groeneveld, author of The Creative Programmer and PhD researcher at KU Leuven, discusses his research related to programming education with host Jeremy Jung. Topics include evaluating projects, constraints, social debt in teams, common fallacies in critical thinking, maintaining flow state, documenting and retaining knowledge, and creating environments that encourage creativity. Brought to you by IEEE Software and IEEE Computer Society.

Eyal Solomon, CEO and co-founder of Lunar.dev, joins SE Radio’s Kanchan Shringi for a discussion on tooling for API consumption management. The episode starts by examining why API consumption management is an increasingly important topic, and how existing tooling on the provider side can be inadequate for client-side issues. Eyal talks in detail about issues that are unique to API consumers, before taking a deep dive into the evolution of middleware built by teams and companies to address these issues and the gaps. Finally they consider how Lunar.dev seeks to solve these issues, as well as Eyal's vision of lunar.dev as a open source platform. This episode is sponsored by WorkOS.

Ines Montani, co-founder and CEO of Explosion, speaks with host Jeremy Jung about solving problems using natural language processing (NLP). They cover generative vs predictive tasks, creating a pipeline and breaking down problems, labeling examples for training, fine-tuning models, using LLMs to label data and build prototypes, and the spaCy NLP library.

Phillip Carter, Principal Product Manager at Honeycomb and open source software developer, talks with host Giovanni Asproni about observability for large language models (LLMs). The episode explores similarities and differences for observability with LLMs versus more conventional systems. Key topics include: how observability helps in testing parts of LLMs that aren't amenable to automated unit or integration testing; using observability to develop and refine the functionality provided by the LLM (observability-driven development); using observability to debug LLMs; and the importance of incremental development and delivery for LLMs and how observability facilitates both. Phillip also offers suggestions on how to get started with implementing observability for LLMs, as well as an overview of some of the technology's current limitations. This episode is sponsored by WorkOS.