Compiled Conversations

Chris Brousseau, co-author of LLMs in Production and VP of AI at Veox AI, joins us to peek under the hood of large language models. We explore the journey from linguistics to machine learning, what LLMs can and can't do with meaning, the gap between demos and production systems, and where agents and context engineering are heading.

Nick Tune, author of Architecture Modernization and Staff Engineer at Payfit, joins us to discuss the challenges and strategies of modernising legacy systems. We explore the four pillars of successful modernisation, socio-technical alignment, team topologies, domain modeling, and how AI tools like Claude Code are transforming architecture work.

Shawn McCool returns to discuss event sourcing in depth. We explore what event sourcing really means, how it differs from event-driven architectures, the relationship with CQRS and DDD, and practical strategies for building evolvable systems with short-lived aggregates.

David Boyne joins us to share his journey from AWS serverless advocate to solo bootstrapper building Event Catalog. We explore event-driven architecture governance challenges, the transition to full-time open source work, building for developers, and how AI is changing architecture documentation.

We continue our conversation with Shannon Wirtz, diving into ensemble methods, neural networks (including CNNs, RNNs, and Transformers), model training and evaluation techniques, interpretation methods, and practical learning resources for those getting started with ML.

Shannon Wirtz, product analyst at Angi, joins us to demystify machine learning fundamentals. We explore what ML actually means, how it differs from traditional programming, and dive deep into core concepts including models, features, training data, and the various types of learning approaches.

We continue our conversation with Shawn McCool, exploring the Elixir ecosystem including Phoenix's LiveView, Ecto's composable queries, Nerves for IoT, and LiveBook. We discuss when to use built-in BEAM capabilities versus external services, and dive into AI integration with Tidewave.

Shawn McCool shares his journey from class-oriented programming to discovering the power of Erlang and Elixir. We explore the BEAM virtual machine, process isolation, message passing, and how Erlang's unique approach to fault tolerance and concurrency enables building more resilient systems.

Bruce Momjian returns to complete our journey through a PostgreSQL table's lifecycle. We explore how Postgres handles updates, table alterations, row deletions, and table drops - diving deep into MVCC, vacuuming, and the Write-Ahead Log.

Bruce Momjian takes us on a deep dive into the lifecycle of a PostgreSQL table. We explore how tables are created, how data is inserted and stored, and how queries work - from physical storage and MVCC to constraints and query planning.

In this episode, Scott Wlaschin shows how functional programming concepts can enhance domain-driven design, sharing practical techniques for building more expressive, testable domain models using functional approaches.

Scott Wlaschin, author of "Domain Modeling Made Functional" and creator of F# for Fun and Profit, joins us to discuss the powerful pairing of DDD and functional programming. In Part 1 we focus on DDD, covering strategic vs. tactical DDD, (sub)domains, bounded contexts, and the critical importance of listening and communication in software design.

Ashley Hindle, creator of Laravel Boost, joins us to demystify AI terminology, explore practical AI development workflows, and discuss how Laravel Boost accelerates AI-assisted development with structured guidelines, MCP tools, and version-specific documentation.

Bruce Momjian traces Postgres's 39-year journey from Berkeley to today, why extensibility (PostGIS, JSON, pgvector) became its superpower, and how the community sustains momentum. We cover TDE trade-offs in core, scaling and storage realities, and decoupled storage/compute in the cloud (Aurora, Neon) - plus what it means to stay 'on the train'.

In Part 2, Vlad Khononov applies DDD in practice - covering context-mapping patterns, EventStorming, fit-for-purpose architecture, testing, team ownership, pragmatic adoption, plus AI's impact on modeling.

Author and trainer Vlad Khononov joins us for Part 1 of a deep dive into Domain-Driven Design (DDD). We cover what DDD is really for, why strategic DDD matters more than patterns, how to identify subdomains, the relationship between subdomains and bounded contexts, and how to make pragmatic architecture choices that align with your business.

Matthieu Napoli, creator of Bref, shares how PHP found its place in serverless through AWS Lambda - and what it takes to run modern applications without managing infrastructure. We cover Bref's architecture, Laravel/Symfony support, Bref Cloud, and trade-offs with containers and Kubernetes.

In Part 2, James Eastham returns to tackle the practical side of event-driven architecture - covering failure recovery, orchestration vs. choreography, testing strategies, handling sensitive data, and how to migrate from a monolith using real-world patterns.

Developer advocate James Eastham joins us for Part 1 of a deep dive into the core principles of event-driven architecture (EDA), including types of coupling, asynchronous communication, event design, and real-world trade-offs in building distributed systems.