Signal & Trace is your source for insights into the latest in engineering culture, dev experience, and observability. We chat with leading technical founders, CTOs, and industry execs who are shaping the future of how we monitor, shape, and build software systems. Listen and learn about the trending topics and best practices around scaling applications and improving system reliability.
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8 recent
September 6, 202440 min
The Future of Developer Documentation - Han Wang from Mintlify
In this episode, we sit down with Han from Mintlify (mintlify.com) to explore how they’re revolutionizing developer documentation with a focus on interactivity and accessibility. Han shares insights into the challenges of creating tools that enhance developer productivity while ensuring ease of use. We also dive into the future of documentation and how Mintlify is paving the way for more intuitive developer experiences!
To learn more, take a look at the following!
- https://mintlify.com
- https://x.com/mintlify
- https://x.com/handotdev
April 18, 2024Episode 955 min
Turso.tech with Glauber Costa
YouTube:
https://youtu.be/cZJVH_jtelg
Blog
https://www.highlight.io/blog/blog/podcast-ep9-turso-glauber-costa
Glauber Costa
https://twitter.com/glcst
https://turso.tech/
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/chrisesplin
https://twitter.com/highlightio
April 17, 2024Episode 830 min
Nimbus.dev founder Kevin Lin
Nimbus helps companies optimize their observability costs, especially when using tools like Datadog. By identifying common log patterns and aggregating similar log entries, Nimbus can reduce the billable data volume by 80-90% without losing any of the underlying observability data. This allows companies to drastically cut their observability costs without sacrificing visibility or insights. Nimbus achieves these savings by sitting in between the customer and their observability vendor, processing and optimizing the data before sending it to the vendor.
April 5, 2024Episode 749 min
From "self-taught developer" to technical co-founder | Zain Allarahkia of Pipe.com
Blog
http://localhost:4000/blog/podcast-ep7-pipe-co-founder-zain-allarahkia
YouTube:
https://dub.sh/BbjrncD
Zain Allarahkia
https://twitter.com/zallarak
https://za1.co/
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/chrisesplin
https://twitter.com/highlightio
Channels
@highlight-io
Summary
Zain, Chris, and Jay all broke into software in different ways.
Zain and Chris both started in finance and transitioned after the Great Financial Crisis. Jay discovered hackathons in college and became obsessed with building, eventually interning at Google Deep Mind in Britain.
Zain started off with lower-level languages, teaching himself methodically with books.
Chris taught himself on-the-job, initially automating his job with PHP and gradually transitioning into a software engineering career.
00:00 Cold open
00:54 Introduction
02:53 Programming background
06:49 University experience
13:52 PHP is the ultimate productive language
26:49 New programming tools
32:56 LLMs
April 5, 2024Episode 635 min
Leading the industry with Open Source | Ben Sigelman of OpenTelemetry
Blog
https://www.highlight.io/blog/podcast-ep6-otel-with-ben-sigelman
YouTube
https://dub.sh/BbjrncD
Ben Sigelman
https://twitter.com/el_bhs
OpenTelemetry
https://opentelemetry.io/
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/highlightio
Channels
@highlight-io
Summary
The journey to OpenTelemetry began with the need for a standardized way to collect monitoring data from cloud-native applications. Two open-source projects emerged to address this challenge: OpenTracing and OpenCensus. OpenTracing focused on distributed tracing, tracking requests across complex systems. OpenCensus, on the other hand, offered a wider scope, including tracing alongside metrics collection.
In 2019, recognizing the strengths of both projects and the benefits of a unified approach, OpenTracing and OpenCensus merged to form OpenTelemetry. This collaboration brought together their respective communities and fostered a single, well-supported solution for application observability. Today, OpenTelemetry is a thriving project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, offering a future-proof path for monitoring the complexities of modern software.
00:00:00:00 Cold open
00:01:32:13 Ben's introduction
00:03:21:23 Social media to Lightstep
00:06:53:11 A hard pivot for Lightstep
00:08:39:22 Starting OTel
00:13:02:09 Early days of OTel
00:15:31:15 Instrumenting Google
00:19:19:10 OTel vs Lightstep
00:24:39:19 Potential improvements
00:30:03:16 Cardinality
00:34:32:09 Outro
March 4, 2024Episode 544 min
Replo with Yuxin Zhu
Blog
https://www.highlight.io/blog/podcast-ep5-replo-with-yuxin-zhu
Replo
https://www.replo.app/
https://twitter.com/yuxinzoo
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/highlightio
Channels
@highlight-io
Summary
Replo is a low-code toolkit that integrates with Shopify and allows
users to build e-commerce storefronts without hiring developers. Replo
focuses on design, analytics, and conversion optimization. Early-stage
and mid-market businesses typically benefit the most, with agencies
often using Replo to service the end customer.
Yuxin and his co-founder Noah started the business by taking on
consulting clients. They effectively worked for free to build out
Shopify experiences for these design partners, learning what the market
needed while they built out their initial product.
00:00 Cold open
01:16 Intro
04:22 Webflow vs Replo
10:31 Replo's early days
17:16 Customer support
21:23 Agencies
26:26 Product complexity
30:27 Monitoring user experience
35:35 Replo community
42:20 Community manager
44:05 Outro
March 4, 2024Episode 443 min
Modal.com with Erik Bernhardsson
Blog
https://www.highlight.io/blog/podcast-ep4-modal-with-erik-bernhardsson
Modal
https://modal.com/
https://twitter.com/bernhardsson
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/highlightio
Channels
@highlight-io
Summary
Erik Bernhardsson is the founder of Modal Labs, a serverless compute
platform specializing in high-performance workloads running on both CPUs
and GPUs.
Modal.com focuses on nearly instant code deploys, enabling developers to
write locally and run their code on Modal.com's cloud GPUs. Sub-second
code deploys enable super fast feedback looks, keeping developers
productive throughout their day.
00:00:00 Cold open
01:04:23 Introducing Erik
02:32:01 Modal.com
04:48:20 Data pipeline ecosystem
06:26:19 What modal does
10:20:23 Infrastructure reliability
14:22:20 Startup velocity
15:33:14 Machine learning stack
17:42:19 Serverless fully-integrated into the local stack
19:00:15 Modal's userbase
20:30:00 Building modal
21:48:07 Ultrafast feedback loops
23:52:06 Modal user experience
25:49:13 Arbitrary Python
27:45:06 Software team leadership
28:20:05 Code review not mandated
30:29:20 No meetings or sprints
31:23:20 Interviewing candidates
35:38:21 Dogmatic beliefs
37:31:04 Engineering at Modal
39:05:16 Twitter questions
February 12, 2024Episode 327 min
Alex Danilowicz of MagicPatterns.com
Blog
https://www.highlight.io/blog/podcast-ep3-magic-patterns-with-alex-danilowicz
MagicPatterns
https://www.magicpatterns.com/
https://twitter.com/teddarific
https://twitter.com/alexdanilo99
Highlight
https://www.highlight.io/
https://twitter.com/thejaykhatri
https://twitter.com/highlightio
Channels
@highlight-io
@magicpatterns 00:00 Cold Open
00:16 Intro
00:48 Alex Introduction
02:08 MagicPatterns.com
04:35 How it works
06:35 Developing the AI
10:13 AI will program everything
11:06 Using a component library
12:31 Handling MagicPatterns output
14:39 Twitter
15:22 Generating the components
16:42 Leveraging AI to build AI
18:04 Comparison to other AI tools
19:10 Figma
19:46 GPT store
24:40 Wrap up
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