Thu, 28 November 2024 SE Radio 644: Tim McNamara on Error Handling in Rust Tim McNamara, a well-known Rust educator, author of Rust in Action (Manning), and a recipient of a Rust Foundation Fellowship in 2023, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about error handling in Rust. They discuss the errors that Rust prevents, what an error is in Rust, what Tim classes as the "four levels of error handling," and the lifecycle of your journey reaching for them. McNamara explains why Rust handles errors as it does, how it differs from other languages, and what the developer experience is like in dealing with Rust errors. He advocates best practices for error handling, what Result<T> is, the power of Rust Enums, what the question mark operator is, when to unwrap, what Box<dyn std::error::Error> really means, how to deal with errors across the FFI boundary, and the various Rust error-handling crates that you can use to give you more control. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. Direct download: 644-tim-Mcnamara-error-handling-rust.mp3 Category:guest/technology -- posted at: 12:01am CEST

Wed, 20 November 2024 SE Radio 643: Ganesh Datta on Production Readiness Ganesh Datta, co-founder of Cortex.io, joins host Robert Blumen for a conversation about production readiness. The conversation covers the history of production readiness; its relationship to microservice architecture; the Google SRE model's impact on production readiness; production readiness checklists; the process; and production readiness transparency. Direct download: 643-ganesh-datta-production-readiness.mp3 Category:guest/technology -- posted at: 10:18pm CEST

Wed, 13 November 2024 SE Radio 642: Simon Wijckmans on Third-Party Browser Script Security Simon Wijckmans, founder of c/side -- a company that focuses on monitoring, securing, and optimizing third-party JavaScript -- joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi for a conversation about the security risks posed by third-party browser scripts. Through real-world examples and insights drawn from his work in web security, Simon highlights the dangers, including malicious attacks such as the recent Polyfill.io incident. He emphasizes the need for vigilant monitoring, as these third-party scripts remain essential for website functionalities like analytics, chatbots, and ads, despite their potential vulnerabilities. Simon explores the use of self-hosting solutions and content security policies (CSPs) to minimize risks, but he stresses that these measures alone are insufficient to fully safeguard websites.  As the discussion continues, they delve into the importance of layering security approaches. Simon advocates for combining techniques like CSPs, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven analysis, which his company c/side employs to detect and block malicious scripts. He also touches on the complexities of securing single-page applications (SPAs), which allow scripts to persist across pages without full reloads, increasing the attack surface for third-party vulnerabilities. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. Direct download: 642-simon-wijckmans-third-party-browser-script-security.mp3 Category:guest/technology -- posted at: 9:17pm CEST

Wed, 6 November 2024 SE Radio 641: Catherine Nelson on Machine Learning in Data Science Catherine Nelson, author of the new O’Reilly book, Software Engineering for Data Scientists, discusses the collaboration between data scientists and software engineers -- an increasingly common pairing on machine learning and AI projects. Host Philip Winston speaks with Nelson about the role of a data scientist, the difference between running experiments in notebooks and building an automated pipeline for production, machine learning vs. AI, the typical pipeline steps for machine learning, and the role of software engineering in data science. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. Direct download: 641-catherine-nelson-machine-learning-data-science.mp3 Category:guest/technology -- posted at: 7:00pm CEST