The Stack Overflow Podcast

Ryan talks with Deepak Singh, VP of Developer Agents and Experiences at AWS and lead at Kiro, about spec-driven development in a vibe coding world. They explore how AI tools have evolved from autocomplete to sophisticated agents that can write code based off of just specs, and how AWS has pioneered spec-driven development through their Kiro agent. Episode notes:Kiro is AWS’ AI IDE that brings structure to AI coding with spec-driven development. Connect with Deepak on the Kiro Discord server and read more about spec-driven development on The New Stack. We last spoke to Deepak Singh in March about how enterprise-ready agents are.Congratulations to user Whymarrh for winning a Populist badge on their answer to Git commits are duplicated in the same branch after doing a rebase. Learn more about the future of software engineering in the AI age on November 3rd, when our CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, speaks at a virtual OpenAI Forum.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Tom Moor, head of engineering at Linear, to discuss AI agents’ mixed results for productivity in the development lifecycle, the importance of context for maximizing agents’ effectiveness, and the role that junior developers need to take in a world increasingly driven by AI.Episode notes:Linear is a tool for planning and building products that streamline issues, projects, and product roadmaps.Connect with Tom on Twitter. This episode’s shoutout goes to user ozz, who won a Populist badge for their answer to Column width not working in DataTables bootstrap.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan is joined by Spiros Xanthos, CEO and founder of Resolve AI, to talk about the future of AI agents in incident management and troubleshooting, the challenges of maintaining complex software systems with traditional runbooks, and the changing role of developers in an AI-driven world.Episode notes:Resolve AI is building agents to help you troubleshoot alerts, manage incidents, and run your production systems. Connect with Spiros on Linkedin or email him at spiros@resolve.ai. Congrats to user larsks for winning a Stellar Answer badge for their answer to How do I get into a Docker container's shell?.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Leaders of Code, Eira May, B2B Editor at Stack Overflow, and Natalie Rotnov, Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Enterprise Product Suite at Stack Overflow, unpack the key takeaways from the 2025 Developer Survey for tech and business leaders. The discussion focuses on the evolving developer relationship with AI, the continued struggle with tool sprawl, and actionable recommendations for leaders looking to deliver value and improve developer experience.The discussion covers critical findings for tech leaders:The decline in developer trust in AI is linked to two main frustrations: solutions that are "almost right, but not quite" and the time wasted debugging AI-generated code.Human connection and community validation remain vital: 80% of developers still visit Stack Overflow regularly, and the number of "advanced questions" on the public platform has doubled since 2023, underscoring AI’s limitations when it comes to complex, context-dependent questions.Tool sprawl continues, as most developers use 6–10 tools, suggesting that AI tends to complicate rather than simplify workflows.Notes:Explore key insights from the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, consolidated into an executive-ready summary. Connect with Natalie Rotnov on LinkedIn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes John Dickerson, CEO of Mozilla.ai, to talk about the evolving landscape of AI agents, the role of open source in keeping the tech ecosystem healthy, the challenges OS communities have faced with the rise of AI, and the implications of data privacy and user choice in the age of multi-agent AI systems. Episode notes:Mozilla.ai is building the agent platform that helps organizations safely automate real work with AI agents. Connect with John on Linkedin or email him at john@mozilla.ai. Congrats to Populist badge winner Philipp Merkle, who won it for their answer to How to set the -Xmx when start running a jar file?.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andrei Kvapil, founder of Ænix and core developer of Cozystack, joins Ryan to dive into what it takes to build a cloud from scratch, the intricacies of Kubernetes and virtualization, and how open-source has made digital sovereignty possible. Episode notes:Cozystack is a Kubernetes-based framework for building a private cloud environment.Connect with Andrei on Linkedin. Today’s shoutout goes to user Adam for winning a Populist badge for their answer to Regex replace text but exclude when text is between specific tag. TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Dhruv Batra, co-founder and chief scientist at Yutori, to explore the future of AI agents, how AI usage is changing the way people interact with advertisements and the web as a whole, and the challenges that proactive AI agents may face when being integrated into workflows and personal internet use. Episode notes:Yutori is building AI agents that can reliably handle everyday digital tasks on your behalf on the web.Connect with Dhruv via his website. Congrats to the winner of today’s Populist badge, user Don Kirkby, who earned it with their answer to Find all references to an object in python.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes back Evan You, the creator of Vite and Vue.js, to discuss the evolution of build tools in web development, the unique features of Vite from its plugins to its hot module capabilities, and the future of Vite, including its integration with Rust. Plus, they touch on Vite’s new documentary and the power of open-source communities.Episode notes:Vite is a frontend build tool powering the next generation of web applications. Check out all of the work Evan is doing at his company VoidZero. For more on the origins of Vite, watch the newly-released Cult.repo’s documentary. If you’d rather hear Evan talk about Vue.js, listen to the podcast we published with him earlier this summer. Today’s shoutout goes to user dbush for winning a Populist badge on their answer to How does printing a union itself and not its member work in C?.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan sits down with Dimitri Stiliadis, CTO and co-founder of Endor Labs, to talk about how AppSec is evolving to address AI’s use cases. They discuss the implications of AI-generated code on security practices, the importance of human oversight in managing vulnerabilities, and how organizations should be balancing security and efficiency with AI. Episode notes:Endor Labs is AppSec for the software development revolution, helping you pinpoint critical risks whether your code is written by a human or AI. Connect with Dimitri on LinkedIn.Today’s shoutout is for user skovorodkin, whose answer for Elegant Python code for Integer Partitioning  was so good, it outscored the accepted answer. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gil Feig, co-founder and CTO of Merge, joins the show to explore Merge’s approach for reducing third-party APIs to a single call, the complexities of and need for data normalization, and the role that AI and MCP plays in the future of API functionality. Episode notes: Merge connects you to any third-party system for fast, secure integrations for your products and agents.Connect with Gil on LinkedIn and X. Shoutout to user Abhijit for winning a Lifeboat badge on their answer for Complex numbers in python.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the second part of this two-part Leaders of Code episode, Peter O'Connor, Director of Platform Engineering, and Ryan J. Salva, Senior Director of Product at Google Developer Experiences, dive beyond AI hype to explore the shifts reshaping how engineering teams operate and scale. From the critical role of documentation quality in AI workflows to the cultural transformations needed for successful adoption, Peter and Ryan discuss the deeper implications of integrating AI into modern software development practices.The discussion also:Explores how poor documentation creates problems as AI systems learn and repeat mistakes, making high-quality documentation essential for successful AI integrations.Covers how consistent tools and processes become more important when using AI, and why leaders should prioritize helping teams learn and experiment with AI tools instead of just measuring productivity.Offers practical advice for leaders on how to create environments where developers can learn and build confidence with AI tools.Notes:Listen to Part 1 of the conversation here.Connect with Peter O’Connor and Ryan J Salva.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan sits down with Marco Palladino, CTO of Kong, to talk about the rise of AI agents and their impact on API consumption, the MCP protocol as a new standard for agents, the importance of observability and security in AI systems, and the importance for businesses and entrepreneurs to leverage opportunities in the agentic AI space now. Episode notes: Kong is an all-in-one API platform for AI and agentic workflows.Marco previously joined the podcast in 2024. Connect with Marco on Twitter.Congratulations to user Mark for receiving a Lifeboat badge for their answer to Visual Studio Code: Expand the horizontal bar for scrolling tabs.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Pia Nilsson, GM for Backstage and head of developer experience at Spotify, to discuss the evolution and adoption of Backstage, the impact of AI on dev experience, and how Spotify approaches platform engineering and standardization to help teams solve for specific needs. Episode notes: Backstage is an open-source IDP by Spotify that reduces everyday friction, cognitive overhead, and operational toil for developers.We previously talked to the Backstage team in 2022.Poor Ryan. If only he had Backstage at his last job. You know what makes Backstage even better? Our Stack Overflow for Teams integration. Connect with Pia on LinkedIn.Markus Pscheidt gets today’s shoutout for winning the Populist badge with their answer to Dynamic tag values for the Counter metric in Micrometer.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Hollan, director of product at Snowflake, joins Ryan to discuss the role that data plays in making AI and AI agents better. Along the way, they discuss how a database leads to an AI platform, Snowflake’s new data marketplace, and the role data will play in AI agents. Episode notes:Snowflake provides a fully-managed data platform that developers can build AI apps on. We’re happy to have Stack Exchange data available on the Snowflake Marketplace.  Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn and Twitter. Congrats to Timeless for throwing a Lifejacket to Using pandas to read HTML.TRANSCRIPTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Sebastian Gierlinger, VP of Engineering at Storyblok, to talk about how headless content management systems (CMS) fit into an increasingly componentized software landscape. They run through the differences between headless and traditional CMS systems (and databases), prototyping and security concerns, and how a team building distributed systems can get that precious velocity by decoupling their content from its rendering. Episode notes:Storyblok provides a headless CMS they say is made for humans but built for the AI-driven era. Want to learn more about CMS design? Check out other pieces we’ve done with CMS providers Drupal and Builder.io. Connect with Sebastian on LinkedIn or Twitter. Congrats to Populist badge winner Răzvan Flavius Panda for dropping an amazing answer on How do I change the maintenance database for Postgres?.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan chats with  Karen Ng, EVP of Product at HubSpot, to chat about Model Context Protocol (MCP) and how they implemented it for their server for their CRM product. They chat the emergence of this as the standard for agentic interactions, the challenges of implementing the server and integrating it with their ecosystem, and how agentic AI has affected work at Hubspot. Episode notes:Hubspot is a customer-relationship management (CRM) platform that aims to help businesses grow. MCP is an open-source protocol for connecting AI agents to external systems, originally developers at Anthropic. Connect with Karen on LinkedIn. Virtual hi-five to Rob Truxal for asking What is the purpose of "pip install --user ..."? and garnering themselves a Stellar Question badge. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Geraint North, AI and developer platforms fellow at Arm, to dive into the impact of GenAI on chip design, Arm’s approach to designing flexible CPU architectures, and the challenges of optimizing large language models at the chip level for edge devices. Episode notes: Arm is a global compute platform that allows the world’s leading technology companies to innovate and deliver AI experiences.Arm just announced their Lumex CSS Platform, which provides a complete compute subsystem platform for mobile and desktop providers to enable efficient AI workloads. Connect with Geraint on LinkedIn.Congrats to Lifejacket badge winner I.sh., who won the badge for answering How to take screenshot on failure.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this two-part episode of Leaders of Code, Peter O’Connor, Director of Platform Engineering, welcomes Ryan J. Salva, Senior Director of Product at Google, Developer Experiences, for a deep dive into the future of software development. They explore how AI-assisted tools are reshaping the developer experience, going far beyond just writing code. From breaking down deployment bottlenecks to streamlining operations and transforming how teams collaborate, this conversation unpacks where developer tooling is headed and how AI is changing the game at every stage of the software lifecycle.The discussion also:Addresses how AI is transforming team structures, enabling engineering teams to operate effectively with just a few people, reducing collaboration overhead and accelerating decision-making.Highlights the future of platform engineering and DevOps, where AI will assist with standardization and dynamically create and manage deployment pipelines in real time.Episode notes:Connect with Peter O’Connor and Ryan J Salva.Check out Google’s open source repository, Gemini-CLI, on GitHub.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan is joined by our very own Ash Zade, Product Manager, and Alex Warren, Staff Software Engineer, to discuss our newly released stackoverflow.ai, how it’s enhancing user experience by combining human-validated answers with AI, and our future plans for deeper personalization and community integration. Episode notes: stackoverflow.ai is helping you get the technical answers you need with less friction, all powered by our 16 years of community knowledge.Connect with Ash on LinkedIn.Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.This week we’re shouting out user Ketan Ramani for winning a Populist badge for their answer to How to go about formatting 1200 to 1.2k in Android studio.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan welcomes Jeffrey van Gogh, Director of Engineering, Android Developer Experience, at Google and board member of the Kotlin Foundation. They discuss the evolution of the Kotlin language from JVM to multiplatform, how their governance board works with the community to stop breaking changes, and the intricacies of Kotlin’s multiplatform capabilities beyond just Android.Episode notes: The Kotlin Foundation’s mission is to protect, promote, and advance the development of the Kotlin programming language.Over half of respondents in this year’s Annual Developer Survey reported that they want to start using Kotlin in the next year. Connect with Jeffrey on LinkedIn or email him at jvg@google.com.Congrats to user BMac on winning a Populist badge for answering the question How to convert UPPERCASE text to Title Case using CSS.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.