Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Danny Yang and Sam Goldman, both Software Engineers at Meta, speak with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Rust-based Pyrefly type checker for Python. After a look at the foundational concepts for annotating and checking types for Python programs, Danny and Sam present a deep dive of the implementation of Pyrefly. While comparing and contrasting against various type checkers, they also describe how Pyrefly implements the language server protocol (LSP) for Python. The episode explores a range of other topics, including how to balance the features, performance, and language integrations of a type checker.

Bryan Cantrill, the co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer company, speaks with host Jeremy Jung about challenges in deploying hardware on-premises at scale. They discuss the difficulty of building up Samsung data centers with off-the-shelf hardware, how vendors silently replace components that cause performance problems, and why AWS and Google build their own hardware. Bryan describes the security vulnerabilities and poor practices built into many baseboard management controllers, the purpose of a control plane, and his experiences building one in NodeJS while struggling with the runtime's future during his time at Joyent. He explains why Oxide chose to use Rust for its control plane and the OpenSolaris-based Illumos as the operating system for their vertically integrated rack-scale hardware, which is designed to help address a number of these key challenges. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

In this episode, Subhajit Paul joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi to discuss how enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems work in practice and where machine learning and generative AI are beginning to fit into real-world ERP environments. Subhajit grounds the conversation in ERP fundamentals, explaining core business flows such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and plan-to-produce, and why ERP systems are central to running large enterprises. He then walks through the realities of ERP implementation, sharing examples of both successful and failed projects and highlighting common challenges around testing, process coverage, integrations, and change management. The discussion also explores how AI is being applied in ERP today, including practical ML use cases such as inventory optimization and anomaly detection, as well as emerging generative AI and agent-based approaches. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Murat Erder, CTO for Financial Services at Valtech in Europe, and Eoin Woods, independent consultant in the field of software architecture, join host Giovanni Asproni to talk about Continuous Architecture—an approach to software design where architectural decisions are made and refined continuously throughout the lifecycle of a system, instead of up front in a big design phase. The show starts with a definition of Continuous Architecture and a description of the six principles underpinning it. Following that is an explanation of the main reasons and advantages of this approach, which finishes with some hints on how to get started using it. During the conversation, they explore several key points, including how to empower teams to take architectural decisions and recording those decisions; using feedback loops to refine the architecture; the role of software architects and architectural governance; the importance of focusing on quality requirements; and the impact of artificial intelligence on the field. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

In this episode, Sahaj Garg, CTO of wispr.ai, joins SE Radio host Robert Blumen to talk about the challenges of building low-latency AI applications. They discuss latency's effect on consumer behavior as well as interactive applications. The conversation explores how to measure latency and how scale impacts it. Then Sahaj and Robert shift to themes around AI, including whether "AI" means LLMs or something broader, as they look at latency requirements and challenges around subtypes of AI applications. The final part of the episode explores techniques for managing latency in AI: speed vs accuracy trade-offs; speed vs cost; latency vs cost; choosing the right model; reducing quantization; distillation; and guessing + validating. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Max Geurnsey III and Luniel de Beer, co-authors of the book Ready: Why Most Software Projects Fail and How to Fix It, discuss the concept of readiness in software engineering with host Brijesh Ammanath. Although Agile workflows and technical practices help delivery, many software efforts still struggle to achieve desired outcomes. Rework, shifting requirements, delays, defects, and mounting technical debt can plague software delivery and impede or altogether halt progress toward goals. The problem is often that implementation begins prematurely, before the team is properly set up for success. A strict system of explicit readiness work and gating, called Requirements Maturation Flow (RMF), has the potential to solve this problem in an SDLC-independent way. Teams that adopt RMF can dramatically improve progress toward real goals while reducing stress on engineering teams. In this episode, Max and Luniel deep dive into RMF and explain its foundational pillars. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.