Conversations about Software Engineering (CaSE) is an interview podcast for software developers and architects about Software Engineering and related topics. We release a new episode every three weeks.
In this conversation about software engineering, Gustaf Nilsson Kotte, web architect at IKEA, talks to host Stefan Tilkov about ways to build large web sites and applications with multiple teams. Topics covered include team organization and Conway’s law, horizontal vs. vertical splits, and options and tools for server-side and client-side integration.
Joy Clark talks with Lucas Dohmen about Web Front-End development. They first discuss the role of front-end development and frontend architecture. Lucas then explains his view on the role of JavaScript and the separation between front-end and back-end development. They continue their discussion by looking at the role of design and UX in front-end development and how styleguides can help. Then Lucas talks about performance, development for mobile devices and accessibility. They wrap up by discussing tooling and the faucet-pipeline.
Joy Clark talks with Rich Hickey about Clojure and Datomic and the reasons that Rich decided to design them the way that he did. They discuss the dependency problem and how we should change our method of developing libraries so that we do not introduce breaking changes. Rich also introduces Clojure spec and describes what it can be used for and how it differs from a static type system. To wrap up the episode, they talk about the best way to solve a problem (and know it is the right problem!) and Rich gives some advice on how to develop software and what technologies are worth looking into.
Sven Johann talks with Susan Landau about Security and Privacy. After defining those terms they proceed to find out why this important to individuals and societies. They discuss why its the job of intelligence agencies to collect data, but how we can protect us against them. Then Susan discusses the importance of Two-Factor Authentication, how wiretapping and backdoors work these days and how the FBI tries to unlock locked devices with “1984” terminology. The conversation moves from end-to-end encryption, metadata analysis and VOIP decryption to targeted attacks and political influence of security threats. They finish the conversation with what we can learn from Google and Sun Microsystems on privacy, security and the architectural requirements of anonymized test data.
Joy Clark talks with Peter Chestna about application security. The overarching topic of the podcast was what a developer can do in order to make applications more secure. This included talking about some of the most prevalent security vulnerabilities and discussing what application security is and what it entails. Peter also gave some great tips on how to integrate security into the development process.
In this second episode of a two-part interview, Stefan Tilkov talks to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert Andreas M. Antonopoulos about Bitcoin vs. blockchain tech, the programmable Ethereum system, alternatives to the proof of work approach, and using Bitcoin in hybrid scenarios.
In the first episode of a two-part interview, Stefan Tilkov talks to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert Andreas M. Antonopoulos about the Bitcoin system’s technical foundation and architecture. Andreas addresses common questions about Bitcoin’s usefulness, scalability, and energy consumption.
Joy talks with Vaughn Vernon about Domain-Driven Design. Vaughn shares his journey to DDD and the reasons behind his DDD books. They then go on to discuss strategic design, the broad brush strokes of DDD, what a model actually looks like and how to use bounded contexts to keep a system from becoming a big ball of mud. Vaughn then answers some questions about domain events and event sourcing, and makes a case for modelling uncertainty instead of fighting with concurrency.
Joy Clark talks with Gernot Starke about aim42, a method for systematically improving software. They discuss in detail the three phases of the process: Analyze, Evaluate, and Improve. Gernot shares his wisdom about how to carry out each phase using stories of his experiences in many different situations. In this way, listeners will get the big picture of how the whole process works: from visualizing all of the problems using sticky notes on the wall to specific strategies that can be used for improving the system.
Daniel Westheide, author of “The Neophyte’s guide to Scala” and Stefan Tilkov talk about some advanced Scala features and challenges, such as case classes and the problems they can create, algebraic data types, type classes and implicits, using the compiler for Prolog-like type level programming and programming with generic data structures.