"Subscribed for quick summaries of topics. Saves time. Googling and Youtube and collating info isn't convenient."
— RB
Making practical sense of software and AI.
What is Google doing with AI?
Inside Google's full-stack cloud bet, and how it differs from Microsoft and AWS.
How to use open-weight AI models
Picking a model, a harness, and where to run the thing.
What's going on with open-weight models?
How open-weight models went from a curiosity to great in 2 short years.
Training
Training is the process of creating an AI model and teaching it how to actually do something useful.
Neural Network
Neural networks are the mathematical brains behind modern AI—think of them as simplified versions of how your actual brain processes information.
Loss Function
When training a machine learning model, a loss function is something you design that tells the model when its answers are right and when they're wrong.
Model weights
Model weights are the numbers a model learned during training — an astoundingly unsexy name for the single most important component of an AI model.
Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
Reverse ETL
Reverse ETL is the process of syncing data from your data warehouse to your business tools like Salesforce and Hubspot.
Product analytics
Product analytics is the process of companies figuring out what users are actually doing in their product, with the goal of improving it.
Segment
Segment helps teams track their product and marketing data and send it to whichever tools it needs to go to.
Alteryx
Alteryx is a group of tools that helps business teams get insights out of their data, without needing to write any code.
What's DuckDB?
Meet the world's friendliest database (allegedly).
Software Eng for Vibe Coders: Databases + Storage
Where your vibe coded app actually keeps its data, and how it might break when real users show up.
What does Turbopuffer do?
And what's going on in the category formerly known as vector databases?
Relational database
A relational database is sort of like Excel, but for developers: it’s how applications store and analyze data.
Query
A query is how talk to your database.
MongoDB
MongoDB is a highly popular unstructured, NoSQL document database for powering your applications.
Algolia
Algolia provides a set of tools that helps engineers build search functionality into their apps.
The Vibe Coder's Guide to Cloud + Scaling
How to survive your app going viral.
The Vibe Coder's Guide to Deployment
How your app gets off your laptop and onto the real internet, and what to do when a deploy breaks.
Software Eng for Vibe Coders: On Frontends + Backends
A new series to help non-engineers build products that can handle going viral.
Networking
Networking in software engineering refers to connecting two or more different things.
Technical Debt
Technical debt is a term developers use to refer to all of the annoying thorns they need to deal with because of past decisions someone made in their codebase and architecture.
Vercel
Vercel builds the AI cloud – they make it easy for engineers to deploy and run the user facing (frontend) + AI parts of their applications.
Splunk
Splunk is a tool for storing and searching logs, specifically focused on security.
Tokenization
Tokenization is one of the ways that backends protect sensitive information, like credit cards or social security numbers.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) lets you route your internet access through a specialized server that keeps your sensitive information private.
WorkOS
WorkOS gives developers the building blocks for enterprise login, like single sign-on and user provisioning, so they don't have to build them from scratch.
Okta
Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.
"Technically has allowed me better bridge the gap between user problems and how our system works under the hood."
— Adelaide Hallowell
Latest
Recent
What does LangChain do?
What started as a humble LLM framework has become an everything store for agents.
David KrevittThe Vibe Coder's Guide to Cloud + ScalingFree
How to survive your app going viral.
Will RaphaelsonWhat's DuckDB?Free
Meet the world's friendliest database (allegedly).
Garrett O'BrienThe Vibe Coder's Guide to DeploymentFree
How your app gets off your laptop and onto the real internet, and what to do when a deploy breaks.
David Krevitt
Thanks to AI, everything we knew about software is stale.
On Technically Speaking, host Megan Reynolds, founder of infra.nyc, asks high-profile technical leaders to explain how it works and where it's headed. (Honestly, they're figuring it out too.)
Season 1 starts Thursday, October 22.
Coming soon
- Episode 1 · Out Thu, Oct 22
We can do better than --dangerously-skip-permissions
Michael GrinichFounder & CEO at - Episode 2 · Out Thu, Oct 29
What does an AI researcher actually do?
Jonathan FrankleChief AI Scientist at 
- Episode 3 · Out Thu, Nov 5
What DeepSeek figured out, and why you shouldn't copy it
Julien LaunayCofounder at Adaptive ML
Sesh NallaVP of Engineering at 
On the calendar
- Episode 4 · Thu, Nov 12Jake Cooper, Founder and CEO at Railway
- Episode 5 · Thu, Nov 19Guest to be announced, Head of Hardware, Head of Hardware at
- Episode 6 · Thu, Dec 3Guest to be announced, CEO, CEO at
- Episode 7 · Thu, Dec 10Guest to be announced, Co-founder and CEO, Co-founder and CEO at
- Episode 8 · Thu, Dec 17Guest to be announced, Co-founder and CEO, Co-founder and CEO at
Software Eng for Vibe Coders: Auth + SecurityFree
How to make sure anyone on the internet can't just delete your app's data, and other security considerations.
David Krevitt
How to use open-weight AI models
Picking a model, a harness, and where to run the thing.
Will Raphaelson
Software Eng for Vibe Coders: Databases + StorageFree
Where your vibe coded app actually keeps its data, and how it might break when real users show up.
David KrevittWhat their products actually do and why they're so valuable.
DigitalOcean
LangChainSegment
SnowflakeQuick explanations of the concepts you see every day.
Learning Tracks
Curated collections of foundational articles to guide you through the basics of getting more technical at work.
AI, it's not that complicated ↗
How to understand and work effectively with AI and ML models and products.
- How do Large Language Models work?
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
- What's RLHF?
How AI models learned to stop being weird and start being helpful.
- What's GPT-3?
GPT-3 is a Machine Learning model that generates text.
- What’s a data science notebook?
Data Science Notebooks help data teams explore data with code.
Analyzing Software Companies ↗
The products and business models of leading software companies.
- Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
- What does Snowflake do?
Snowflake sells a powerful cloud data warehouse for analytics and data science teams.
- What does OpenAI do?
OpenAI is the most popular provider of generative AI models like GPT-4.
- What does dbt do?
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
Building Software Products ↗
How to make positive contributions to your product roadmap.
- The top 5 things PMs should know about engineering
Engineering and code basics that can make you a better PM to work with.
- What's code?
Code is step by step directions, but for computers.
- What's the internet?
A network of computers all connected to each other and sharing information.
- What's cloud?
Cloud is how companies rent infrastructure over the internet.
From Spreadsheets to Databases ↗
You've outgrown Excel, but you've got to put that data somewhere besides your parents basement.
- The Beginner's Guide to Databases
There are 300+ databases; what do they all do?
- SQL for the rest of us
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
- The Excel User's Guide to Databases: Schemas
Why that schema change is going to take your engineers two weeks.
- The Excel User's Guide to Databases: Migrations
Why your feature is held up by a migration and why this is actually good.
How AI Models Actually Work ↗
Under the hood of today's powerful AI models: how they're trained, implemented, and otherwise used.
- What is Machine Learning?
How computers learn patterns from data — and why it’s the foundation for everything from stock prediction to ChatGPT.
- How do Large Language Models work?
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
- How do you train an AI model?
A deep dive into how models like ChatGPT get built.
- The beginner’s guide to AI model architectures
Unlike an onion, hopefully these neural network layers won't make you cry.
Software Engineering for Vibe Coders ↗
Your AI wrote the app. This is everything that happens after — where it runs, how it stays up, and what breaks first when real users show up. A six-part series, made with our friends at Railway.
- Software Eng for Vibe Coders: On Frontends + Backends
A new series to help non-engineers build products that can handle going viral.
- Software Eng for Vibe Coders: Auth + Security
How to make sure anyone on the internet can't just delete your app's data, and other security considerations.
- Software Eng for Vibe Coders: Databases + Storage
Where your vibe coded app actually keeps its data, and how it might break when real users show up.
- The Vibe Coder's Guide to Deployment
How your app gets off your laptop and onto the real internet, and what to do when a deploy breaks.
Working With Data Teams ↗
How to make positive contributions when working with analytics and data science teams.
- How do product analytics work?
Product analytics is how teams instrument and analyze data about their product usage.
- What your data team is using: the analytics stack
A deep dive into all of the tools that data teams use to do their work.
- SQL for the rest of us
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
- What's the Modern Data Stack?
The new set of tools data teams use to get their jobs done.