Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Héctor Ramón Jiménez, creator of iced and longtime GUI and rendering developer, talks about building a cross-platform GUI toolkit in Rust. He covers iced’s Elm-inspired architecture, rendering pipeline from elements to pixels, GPU and CPU backends, async task handling to avoid UI blocking, headless testing, end-to-end test recorders and emulators, and the challenges of mobile support.

Dan Lorenc, co-founder and CEO of Chainguard and software supply chain security expert. He explains what Sigstore does and why verifying origin and integrity matters. He walks through key components like Fulcio, Rekor, and Cosign. He covers integrating signing into CI/CD, signing ML models, and real-world adoption and tooling.

Scott Hanselman, Microsoft VP of Developer Community and longtime .NET educator, explains AI-assisted coding as a progression from autocomplete to agentic loops. He breaks down ambiguity in model behavior, the need for specific prompts and verification, when to rely on fundamentals versus agents, sandboxing and safety practices, and how to define testable success for model-driven work.

Marc Brooker, VP and Distinguished Engineer at AWS with decades in software engineering, discusses specification-driven development for AI-assisted coding. He covers how crisp specs guide code generation, testing, and validation. Topics include Kiro (an agentic IDE), modularity and APIs to reduce context, agent roles for building and review, and practical rollout, metrics, and cultural readiness for adoption.

Bryan Cantrill, co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer and former Joyent CTO, system engineer known for DTrace and data-center work. He talks about hidden hardware variation and firmware failures, why hyperscalers build custom hardware, flaws in baseboard management controllers, what a control plane does, why Oxide chose Rust and Illumos, and the value of a vertically integrated rack-scale product.

Jens Gustedt, author of Modern C, senior scientist at the French National Institute for Computer Science and Control (INRIA), deputy director of the ICube lab, and former co-editor of the ISO C standard, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about the past 5 years in C, C2Y, and C23. They discuss what has happened in the C world since we last spoke 5 years ago, including how the latest C standard is going and what to expect. Jens discusses how the latest changes in the Modern C book apply to you, how a C transition header can help you get up to C23 if you're not there already, and presents a comprehensive approach for program failure. This episode explores C2Y, C23, bit-precise types, stdckdint.h, stdbit.h, 128 bit types, enumeration types, nullptr, Syntactic annotations, auto and typeof keywords, if let, as well as what's being added and removed in C2Y (possibly called "C28"), and Gustedt's four categories of program failure. 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.

Yechezkel "Chez" Rabinovich, CTO and co-founder at Groundcover, joins SE Radio host Brijesh Ammanath to discuss the key challenges in migrating observability toolsets. The episode starts with a look at why customers might seek to migrate their existing Observability stack, and then Chez explains some approaches and techniques for doing so. The discussion turns to OpenTelemetry, including what it is and how Groundcover helps with the migration of dashboards, monitors, pipelines, and integrations that are proprietary to vendor products. Chez describes methods for validating a successful migration, as well as metrics and signals that engineering teams can use to assess the migration health. 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.

Sriram Panyam, a technical fellow with experience at GM, Google, and LinkedIn, dives into the nuances of system design interviews. He breaks down common questions from tech giants like Uber and Netflix while clarifying what interviewers truly seek: clarity on requirements and effective time management. Sriram shares personal tales of failure and success, highlights common pitfalls interviewers make, and offers a strategic approach for candidates to succeed. His insights on adapting questions based on seniority are not to be missed!