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Topics

Development

Featured in Development

Adopting Memory-Safety and Fine-Grained Compartmentalisation with CHERI

David Chisnall discusses how the CHERI hardware architecture redefines pointer safety to solve isolation and sharing challenges. He explains how CHERI enables spatial and temporal memory safety for C/C++, scales down to microcontrollers with CHERIoT, and replaces costly OS-level RPC mechanisms with lightweight, auditable compartmentalization - all without requiring massive codebase rewrites.

All in development

Architecture & Design

Featured in Architecture & Design

Architecture as a Socio-Technical Craft

Architecture is not a fixed choice made once; fitness is a moving target driven by changing regulations, tech, and markets. Even a sound design can silently stop fitting over time without bad calls. Spanning seven articles on context stores, gateways, and topologies, this collection treats architecture as an evolving sociotechnical craft where teams deliberately shape friction, fitness, and flow.

All in architecture-design

AI Infrastructure

Featured in AI, ML & Data Engineering

SafeChat: Building AI-Powered Safety Systems at Scale in a Real-Time Marketplace

Bruna Pereira explains how DoorDash built a content-agnostic AI moderation platform. She covers replacing costly LLM-only pipelines with a hybrid pattern: using fast internal models to filter obvious cases, LLM multi-axis scoring for nuanced decisions, and no-code workflows with backtesting. Discover how this architectural pattern cut safety incidents while scaling to millions of daily messages.

All in ai-ml-data-eng

Culture & Methods

Featured in Culture & Methods

Turning Outward: Growing From Code to Influence

Brad Grantham discusses how software engineers and architects can transition from individual contributors to influential technical leaders. Brad shares actionable insights on expanding skills into business and legal domains, adapting communication styles for non-technical stakeholders, moving past ego to empower teams, and navigating complex organizational dynamics to maximize engineering impact.

All in culture-methods

DevOps

Featured in DevOps

Enchant Your AI and APIs with eBPF Magic ��

Dan Finneran discusses the risks of unowned AI-generated code in production and demonstrates how eBPF can intercept and control AI API traffic in Kubernetes. He explains how kernel-level socket hooks enable transparent prompt filtering, model swapping, token limits, and syscall restrictions to secure AI agents without modifying application source code or restarting containers.

All in devops

Events

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AI Security & Privacy Engineering Certification

Secure and govern production AI systems, from sensitive data to guardrails, evals, and audits.
Online. Register now.

Architect Certification

Distributed systems, decentralized decisions, platform engineering, and AI architecture.
Online. Register Now.

Engineering Leadership Certification

Work through leadership decisions with senior peers facing similar technical trade-offs.
Online. Register Now.

AI-Assisted Engineering Certification

Your coding agent moves fast. Who checks whether it's making the codebase better?
Online. Register Now.

QCon San Francisco

What's working across AI, architecture, and leadership, from the teams doing it.
Register. Early bird ends August 11.

QCon AI New York

Production AI across agents, context, evals, security, and infrastructure, from the senior engineers building it.
Registration open.

QCon London

What early-adopter teams have proven in production, across 15 engineering tracks.
Register. Early bird ends August 11.

InfoQ Homepage Interviews Pragmatic Dave on Passion, Skill and 'Having A Blast'

Pragmatic Dave on Passion, Skill and 'Having A Blast'

30:35

Bio

Dave Thomas is recognized internationally as an expert who develops high-quality software - accurate and highly flexible systems. He helped write the now-famous Agile Manifesto, and regularly speak on new ways of producing software. He is the author of six books, including the best selling The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master and Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.

About the conference

Jan 24, 2008

Interview with

Dave Thomas

by

Jim Coplien

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