Wed, 28 June 2023 SE Radio 570: Stanisław Barzowski on the jsonnet Language Stanisław Barzowski of XTX Markets and a committer on the jsonnet project joins SE Radio's Robert Blumen for a conversation about the jsonnet programming language. A superset of JSON, jsonnet adds programming language capabilities, particularly to address the need to handle large but mostly repetitive JSON configurations. They discuss the project’s history, use cases for Grafana and Kubernetes config, and interoperability with YAML. They examine jsonnet details, including the command line, constrained capabilities of the language, and objects and inheritance, and then consider the toolchain: compiler, formatter, and linter, as well as test frameworks and testing, package management, and the language’s performance. Barzowski describes four implementations -- go, C++, Rust, and Scala -- as well as popular libraries and the standard library. Direct download: 570_stanislaw_barzowski_jsonnet_language.mp3 Category:regular/technology -- posted at: 12:15am CEST

Thu, 22 June 2023 SE Radio 569: Vladyslav Ukis on Rolling out SRE in an Enterprise Vladyslav Ukis, author of the book Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations, discusses how to roll out SRE in an enterprise. SE Radio host Brijesh Ammanath speaks with Vlad about the origins of SRE and how it complements ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). They examine how firms can establish foundations for rolling out SRE, as well as how to overcome challenges they might face in adopting. Vlad also recommends steps that organizations can take to sustain and advance their SRE transformation beyond the foundations. Direct download: 569_vladyslav_ukis_enterprise_sre.mp3 Category:general -- posted at: 11:54pm CEST

Wed, 14 June 2023 SE Radio 568: Simon Bennetts on OWASP Dynamic Application Security Testing Tool ZAP Simon Bennetts, a distinguished engineer at Jit, discusses one of the flagship projects of OWASP: the Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) open source security testing tool. As ZAP’s primary maintainer, Simon traces the tool's origins and shares some anecdotes with SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan on why there was a need for it. They take a deep dive into ZAP’s features and its ability to integrate with CI/CD, as well as shift security left. Bennetts also considers what it takes to build a successful open source project before spending time on ZAP’s ability to script to provide richer results. Finally, the conversation ends with some questions on ZAP’s future in this AI-powered world of bots. Direct download: 568_simon_bennetts_owasp_dynamic_application_security_testing_tool_zap.mp3 Category:general -- posted at: 10:29pm CEST

Wed, 7 June 2023 SE Radio 567: Dave Cross on GitHub Actions Dave Cross, owner of Magnum Solutions and author of GitHub Actions Essentials (Clapham Technical Press), speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about GitHub actions, the value they provide, and the best practices for using them in your projects. Cross describes the vast range of things that developers can do with GitHub Actions, including some use cases you might never have thought about. They start with some general discussion of CI/CD and then consider the three main types of events that drive GitHub actions before digging in to details about fine-grained action events, Action Marketplace, contexts, yaml, docker base images, self-hosted runners, and more. They further explore identity management, permissions, dependency management, saving money, and how to keep your secrets secret. Direct download: 567_dave_cross_github_actions.mp3 Category:general -- posted at: 1:05am CEST