Software Engineering Daily

In software engineering, C++ is often used in areas where low-level system access and high-performance are critical, such as operating systems, game engines, and embedded systems. Its long-standing presence and compatibility with legacy code make it a go-to language for maintaining and extending older projects. Rust, while newer, is gaining traction in roles that demand safety and concurrency, particularly in systems programming.

We wanted to explore these two languages side-by-side, so we invited Herb Sutter and Steve Klabnik to join host Kevin Ball on the show. Herb works at Microsoft and chairs the ISO C++ standards committee. Steve works at Oxide Computer Company, is an alumnus of the Rust Core Team, and is the primary author of The Rust Programming Language book.

We hope you enjoy this deep dive into Rust and C++ on Software Engineering Daily.

Kevin Ball or KBall, is the vice president of engineering at Mento and an independent coach for engineers and engineering leaders. He co-founded and served as CTO for two companies, founded the San Diego JavaScript meetup, and organizes the AI inaction discussion group through Latent Space.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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CRISPR is a powerful tool in biotechnology that allows scientists to precisely edit genes, much like editing lines of code in a computer program. Just as developers can remove or alter specific parts of a code to fix bugs or enhance functionality, CRISPR enables researchers to modify DNA to correct genetic disorders, improve crops, or develop new treatments. The development of CRISPR-based editing was recognized by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.

Profluent Bio is an AI-first protein design company that recently developed OpenCRISPR-1, which is an AI-generated, CRISPR-like protein that does not occur in nature. Importantly, the company also released the protein and nucleic acid sequences for OpenCRISPR-1.

Aadyot Bhatnagar is an ML Scientist at Profluent Bio and previously worked at Salesforce. He joins the podcast with Sean Falconer to talk about OpenCRISPR-1 and how it was made.

Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from information visualization to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is Head of Marketing and Developer Relations at Skyflow and host of the podcast Partially Redacted, a podcast about privacy and security engineering. You can connect with Sean on Twitter @seanfalconer.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

The post Engineering an Open Source CRISPR with Aadyot Bhatnagar appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

The Google Sheets calculation engine was originally written in Java and launched in 2006. In the early days of the product, all calculation happened on the server. However, starting in 2013 the engine has run in the browser using JavaScript.

Google Sheets is now one of the first products at Google to use WebAssembly Garbage Collection, or WasmGC, on Chrome.

Michael Thomas is the Multiplatform Lead for Google Workspace and Thomas Steiner is a Developer Relations Engineer at Google. They join the podcast to tell the story of why and how Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from JavaScript to WasmGC.

Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from information visualization to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is Head of Marketing and Developer Relations at Skyflow and host of the podcast Partially Redacted, a podcast about privacy and security engineering. You can connect with Sean on Twitter @seanfalconer.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

The post How Google Sheets Uses WasmGC with Michael Thomas and Thomas Steiner appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

LangChain is a popular open-source framework to build applications that integrate LLMs with external data sources like APIs, databases, or custom knowledge bases. It’s commonly used for chatbots, question-answering systems, and workflow automation. Its flexibility and extensibility have made it something of a standard for creating sophisticated AI-driven software.

Erick Friis is a Founding Engineer at LangChain and he leads their integrations and open source efforts. Erick joins the podcast to talk about what inspired the creation of LangChain, agentic flows vs. chained flows, emerging patterns of agentic AI design, and much more.

Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from AI to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is an AI Entrepreneur in Residence at Confluent where he works on AI strategy and thought leadership. You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

The post LangChain and Agentic AI Engineering with Erick Friis appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.