Oxide co-founders Bryan and Steve are back on the show to give an impromptu peek at the Oxide server rack and to chat about writing their own manufacturing software, overcoming false summits before shipping the first rack, the #1 reason startups fail and more. Don't miss the full-circle moment on their "meet cute" story from last time, shared at the end of the conversation :)

Segments:

(00:00:00) The Oxide rack uncrating experience

(00:02:40) The office tour

(00:04:03) Challenges of shipping and unboxing hardware

(00:11:04) Hybrid hardware company?

(00:13:38) Custom designing a crate for the rack

(00:18:12) Optimizing for time to value

(00:20:43) Writing custom manufacturing software

(00:23:25) Taking ownership of the customer experience

(00:25:29) Buy vs build

(00:27:46) The false summits before shipping the first rack

(00:30:05) “Missing just enough context to be optimistic”

(00:33:07) The #1 reason startups fail

(00:38:49) Hiring the first sales role

(00:44:53) The dangers of “happy ears”

(00:47:18) The pitfalls of rushing to market

(00:51:03) The “third VP of sales” problem

(00:56:06) The value of a good sales leader

(01:00:07) Curiosity and empathy in sales

(01:03:41) Grooming sales skills as an engineer

(01:07:33) Learning from current customers

(01:09:13) Talk to prospective customers “that we have 0% chance of closing”

(01:11:25) Actionable bad news

(01:14:11) The role of GPUs in data centers

(01:18:50) Cloud repatriation

(01:24:23) Full circle to the “meet cute”

Show Notes:

Our previous convo: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/oxide-ditching-the-rules

Bryan on Twitter: https://x.com/bcantrill

Steve on Twitter: https://x.com/sdtuck

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

Known for co-creating Django and Datasette, as well as his thoughtful writing on LLMs, Simon Willison joins the show to chat about blogging as an accountability mechanism, how to build intuition with LLMs, building a startup with his partner on their honeymoon, and more.

Segments:

(00:00:00) The weird intern

(00:01:50) The early days of LLMs

(00:04:59) Blogging as an accountability mechanism

(00:09:24) The low-pressure approach to blogging

(00:11:47) GitHub issues as a system of records

(00:16:15) Temporal documentation and design docs

(00:18:19) GitHub issues for team collaboration

(00:21:53) Copy-paste as an API

(00:26:54) Observable notebooks

(00:28:50) pip install LLM

(00:32:26) The evolution of using LLMs daily

(00:34:47) Building intuition with LLMs

(00:43:24) Democratizing access to automation

(00:47:45) Alternative interfaces for language models

(00:53:39) Is prompt engineering really engineering?

(00:58:39) The frustrations of working with LLMs

(01:01:59) Structured data extraction with LLMs

(01:06:08) How Simon would go about building a LLM app

(01:09:49) LLMs making developers more ambitious

(01:13:32) Typical workflow with LLMs

(01:19:58) Vibes-based evaluation

(01:23:25) Staying up-to-date with LLMs

(01:27:49) The impact of LLMs on new programmers

(01:29:37) The rise of 'Goop' and the future of software development

(01:40:20) Being an independent developer

(01:42:26) Staying focused and accountable

(01:47:30) Building a startup with your partner on the honeymoon

(01:51:30) The responsibility of AI practitioners

(01:53:07) The hidden dangers of prompt injection

(01:53:44) “Artificial intelligence” is really “imitation intelligence”

Show Notes:

Simon’s blog: https://simonwillison.net/

Natalie’s post on them building a startup together: https://blog.natbat.net/post/61658401806/lanyrd-from-idea-to-exit

Simon’s talk from DjangoCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLkRK2rJGB0

Simon on twitter: https://x.com/simonw

Datasette: https://github.com/simonw/datasette

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

A Silicon Valley veteran and known for his writings like "The Death of the Junior Developer", Steve Yegge joins the show to chat about his "AI Midlife Crisis", the unique writing process he employs, and building the future of coding assistants.

Segments:
(00:00:00) The AI Midlife Crisis
(00:04:53) The power of rants
(00:09:55) “You gotta be able to make yourself laugh”
(00:11:46) Steve's writing process
(00:14:10) “I published them… and nothing happened for six months”
(00:17:30) Key to perseverance in writing? Get pissed.
(00:23:24) Writing in one sitting
(00:29:05) The AI Midlife Crisis
(00:35:04) Management to IC
(00:38:35) The acceleration and evolution of programming
(00:41:43) Picking up new skills in a new domain
(00:43:40) The power of prompt engineering
(00:47:27) Secondary hashing
(00:50:47) The importance of context in coding assistants
(00:53:56) “The future of coding assistants is chat”
(00:57:15) The importance of platforms in coding assistants
(01:02:30) The nefarious T-word in AI
(01:06:32) The death of the junior developer and its consequences
(01:09:35) The future of code understanding and semantic indexing
(01:13:15) The power of context in AI platforms
(01:16:21) Surprising capabilities of LLMs
(01:21:04) Transferable skills in AI product development
(01:23:53) Mental health and the innovator's dilemma

Show Notes

• The Death of the Junior Developer: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-death-of-the-junior-developer
• Steve’s blog rants: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/
• Steve’s medium posts: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/
• Sourcegraph’s blog: https://sourcegraph.com/blog
• Steve on twitter: https://x.com/steve_yegge

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en