Bill Kennedy: The mistake boot, building ACs, Black boxes & AI in software - The Reliability Podcast

Bill Kennedy: The mistake boot, building ACs, Black boxes & AI in software - The Reliability Podcast

Sep 22, 2023

The Reliability podcast aims to speak with engineers who have worked on large, complex systems and glean through their learnings. What best practices should one imbibe? What are non-negotiable learnings to become better at a craft? What’s ‘engineering’ going to be like with the advent of AI? We answer these and more tracing personal journeys of engineers who have built stellar careers around decoding the innumerable intricacies of software engineering.

The Reliability Podcast website: https://thereliability.org/
Piyush’s twitter: https://twitter.com/realmeson10
Bill Kennedy’s twitter: https://twitter.com/goinggodotnet

Transcript link: https://thereliability.org/episodes/S3H4U8EoWK8#Teaser

Prefer audio?👇
Google podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lOWE5MGExYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/ZTkzYjNmYzgtNzgzNi00OTUzLWIzODQtNTRkNGM1Yjg5MTU0
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5CLAMtjBmJA0dZy2HX8yCH

OUTLINE:

00:00 - Teaser

00:49 - Introduction

01:14 - How did Bill become an engineer

04:44 - Why the love for engineering

06:42 - What does it take to stay relevant in engineering?

09:00 - Persistence in the job

11:12 - College and curiosity

13:42 - The mistake boot

15:12 - What’s missing in engineering

18:39 - QA for 2 weeks rule

20:57 - Empathy with code

22:25 - Permanent software, ephemeral job

24:42 - I build Air Conditioners

27:26 - Relevance of 'engineering' in software

30:38 - WeWork-ization of software

33:26 - The cost of cloud

37:40 - Compute as a black box

39:20 - ​​The beauty of Kubernetes

41:55 - Don't use a debugger to find bugs

44:46 - We need more QA

46:37 - Engineers fail at finding bugs

48:27 - NASA and bugs

51:48 - Build fast, ship fast?

54:01 - Burning territory
01:00:40 - Zero Trust Reliability
01:04:42 - AI in software
01:07:28 - How to use AI in coding
01:09:25 - A mental mode for code
01:11:09 - AI as a sidekick programmer

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