As software teams begin to migrate to serverless, they will require more in the way of serverless specific tooling: cost tracking, alerting, monitoring, and so on. Here, we look at a number of serverless tooling providers and discuss what they bring and how they will compete with traditional tooling services. Topics: Installable versus Hosted Platform On Hosted Platform Tooling providers - CloudZero - Dashbird - Hasura GraphQL Engine - IOpipe - Iron.io - lumigo - Node Lambda -...

Serverless has caused a massive shift in approaches to application design. On this episode, we explore what serverless gives teams, and the tradeoffs involved in going the serverless route. We cover players like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, and what else is in store for the space. Topics: What Serverless is On their benefits Monolithic versus microservices architectures How might development teams work on serverless applications versus traditional ones On tradeoffs of...

Relational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s approach to NoSQL data structures allow them to serve specific customer problems with specialized solutions. We look at some customer case studies and...

Edge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of Fastly’s customers. We discuss major risks that the company might face and postulate on why we think they’re trading at a discount compared to other...

There has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We get into the weeds of what it means to claim to be an API first financial services company. Enjoy the episode. Topics: On Silvergate Capital...

Recently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manufacturer. And we look at them in the context of growing trends in AI and ML chips. We compare and contrast AMD and NVIDIA and discuss the new growth...

On this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to us about why he thinks this space is important. He explains how Vega, in many ways, augments and replaces some exchanges, and how it serves as an...

On this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-friendly offering and how quickly the product can be incorporated into a system. We spend a little time with their financials and then discuss our...

We go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials. Topics: The Web Performance and Security Company Cloudflare's mission Companies putting mission statements int their prospectuses How would an early stage startup use Cloudflare versus a Fortune 500 On "Our Industry" section On "Why We Win" section...

Software Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles Schwab at the time they launched their electronic trading platform. Ron articulates his views on the different types of developers out there and...

On this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we examine design and development principles when building product in this space, and the differences when building traditional software product. Zaki...

We chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Service, or BNS. We also go over Blockstack’s smart contract language Clarity, and the broad tooling that will exist for developers working on the...

We chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in traditional finance and a prior life as a derivatives trader. We then compare and contrast traditional and crypto derivatives markets. We also talk...

Ben DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things I really respect about Ben is his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This conversation contains a bit of philosophy around Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly around how polarized the two spaces have become. We get into...

We recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts. Topics: What does C4 stands for Keynote w/ Pamela Morgan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos Announcement: Mastering the Lightning Network C4 and it's Purpose CBP Prep...

Dr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discuss smart contracts and their current problems. We discuss Arbitrum, Offchain Labs’ solution to the smart contract scaling problem which uses a...

We have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important they are for workflow. We also discuss “Domain Driven Design,” or the idea that when creating a layer of functionality, to keep it bounded within its...

On this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box industry known as insurance, and how they work with customers on product development. I learned a lot from this conversation. Enjoy. But before we get...

We speak with Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and Mastering Ethereum, and also board member at the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, known as C4. C4 will be hosting the Blockchain Training Conference in Denver, Colorado at the end of August. In this conversation, we learn about the conference, how Andreas thinks about blockchain teaching pedagogy, and the certifications that C4 is offering now: the Certified Bitcoin Professional (or CBP)...

We speak with Stuart Popejoy co-founder from Kadena. This was a really great technical conversation around the hybrid public-private blockchain that Kadena is building with their Chainweb platform and LISP inspired smart contract language Pact. We cover how traditional finance firms incorporate new technologies into their workflow, real world use cases of Kadena, and what’s happening in the Enterprise. We also get into the technical details of Chainweb’s Proof-of-Work consensus system and the...

On this episode, we look at a recently filed IPO, Father Time. This isn’t a hot IPO. In fact, no bankers are underwriting this. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s entirely self-underwritten by the company founder. They are planning to build a coupon system from scratch, so we talk through how that would look from a technical perspective. We consider their business model and the budget in their S-1. Topics: On Father Time IPO What a blank check type deal is How to work with a...

We look at the SEC’s charging of Kik Interactive’s unregulated securities offering. We recap the SEC complaint, outlining their argument that Kik was a deeply underfunded, low-revenue, high-expense company that attempted a “hail mary” by circumventing securities law by running the Kin ICO. Finally, we step through the pieces of evidence the SEC presents. Topics: SEC put out a press release along with a complaint on Kik Interactive  - SEC Charges Issuer With Conducting $100 Million...

We look at Martin Fowler’s article titled “Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?” We discuss the gives and takes of writing good software and managing technical debt. We look at misconceptions around software quality and cost, and how planning and blueprinting (architecting) up front can save teams money in the future. Moreover, we look at how good software offers teams a competitive advantage over others due to the ability to ship new features quickly and confidently. Topics: Who...

We look at a recent SIM port hack where a crypto professional lost $100k worth of crypto from his Coinbase account. We discuss in detail how he was attacked and how you can safeguard your crypto assets better. We then do a recap of the one-day Elixir conference, Empex, where topics ranged from OTP to LiveView to functional programming more broadly. Topics: What a SIM port attack is How people can be careful Their experience at Empex Their thoughts on Elixir Links: The Most Expensive...