"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's a decision model?
And why do we need models like Jev?
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.
Inference
Inference is a fancy term that just means using an ML model that has already been trained.
Prompt Engineering
Prompt engineering is the art of talking to AI models in a way that gets you the results you actually want.
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.
Guardrails
Guardrails are the rules that decide what an AI system may do on its own — what runs freely, what needs your okay first, and what's denied outright.
Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
A/B Testing and Experimentation
Experimentation is one of the ways that companies understand if their product efforts are working, and ipso facto, what they should be spending time on.
ETL
ETL stands for Extract - Transform - Load, and it’s the process of moving data around your internal systems to get it ready for analysis.
dbt Labs
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
OpenAI
OpenAI is the most popular provider of generative AI models like GPT-4.
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?
Vector Database
A vector database is a place where developers store specially formatted data to use for machine learning and AI.
Multi-tenant
Multi-tenant simply means shared with someone else, like having a roommate in an apartment.
turbopuffer
Turbopuffer is a search engine built on top of object storage (like AWS S3).
Elastic
Elasticsearch is a popular open source database for storing and searching unstructured data.
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.
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.
DevOps
DevOps is a process (e.g. a bunch of key practices) that helps teams take software they’ve built and make sure it works well at scale.
New Relic
New Relic is observability software: teams use it to monitor the performance of their apps and infrastructure.
Heroku
Heroku was and is one of the first cloud platforms as a service (PaaS).
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) lets you route your internet access through a specialized server that keeps your sensitive information private.
Tokenization
Tokenization is one of the ways that backends protect sensitive information, like credit cards or social security numbers.
Okta
Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.
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.
"Technically has allowed me better bridge the gap between user problems and how our system works under the hood."
— Adelaide Hallowell
Latest
Recent
What's a decision model?Free
And why do we need models like Jev?
Sam SchneiderWhat 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'Brien
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.)
What DeepSeek figured out, and why you shouldn't copy it
Julien LaunayCofounder at Adaptive ML at Adaptive ML
Sesh NallaVP of Engineering at 
Megan ReynoldsHostFounder at infra.nycEarlier episodes
Coming soon
- Episode 4 · Out Thu, Nov 12
The cloud is a building, and it's full
Jake CooperFounder & CEO at Railway - Episode 5 · Out Thu, Nov 19
Code review is dead, whether we admit it or not
Ian NowlandHead of Hardware at Baseten
Camille FournierVP of Engineering at CoreWeave - Episode 6 · Out Thu, Dec 3
Who gives a damn what database you use?
Sam LambertCEO at PlanetScale
On the calendar
- Episode 8 · Thu, Dec 17Guest to be announced, Co-founder and CEO, Co-founder and CEO at
What is Google doing with AI?
Inside Google's full-stack cloud bet, and how it differs from Microsoft and AWS.
Paolo Perrone
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 RaphaelsonWhat their products actually do and why they're so valuable.
Baseten
Railway
Segment
StripeQuick 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: Databases + Storage
Where your vibe coded app actually keeps its data, and how it might break when real users show up.
- 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.
- 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.