Topic: Software Development

Tom Preston-Werner presents GitHub as a site that breaks through barriers that slow collaboration and sharing code. Describing it as a mechanism to prevent wasting time, he notes multiple uses of the site, including file sharing, project creation, and code development.

This week, Jeff and Joel are joined by Greg Wilson, an author, developer, and former university professor, who is also an expert on open source software development. Once make it through the jokes and get his mic sounding great, we can jump in and explore all kinds of interesting topics from favorite Canadian airlines to Microsoft data studies.

Pachube is an on-line database service provider that allows developers to connect sensor data to the Web and to build their own applications on it. Its creator, Usman Haque, discusses it, reviewing what Pachube is, how it can be used, and examples of its value as a way to manage data. He argues that services like Pachube can take advantage of open data to discover and share information.

Open source databases face a variety of challenges as the technological world continues to change. Baron Schwartz, Chief Performance Architect at Percona, observes that database developers must understand the contexts of database usage within the central challenge of increased data. He notes that open source databases are far behind both -- the technological curve and market demand, but that current inefficiencies can be solved by innovation and cooperation.

Jeff and Joel are joined by Sam Saffron (aka Waffles), our only Australian developer at Stack Exchange! Sam is also a mega open-source developer, involved with a ton of various community projects.

As part of his work for the Utah Education Network, Pete Kruckenberg originally began a project using Apache and Perl. A few months into the process, his group chose to switch to node.js to complete the project. He speaks about why the change was made, including both the postive aspects, as well as some of the downsides of the new architecture. His technical discussion presents a useful example of a typical software project and how changes are sometimes made in the middle of the work.

There are several problems in current database systems, primarily analytics, data capture, and storage. These are not future problems, argues Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, but current struggles within both MySQL and the 'NoSQL' data systems that must be overcome before the industry can have clearly superior software. Mike Olson presents these problems within the context of MySQL's development and the industry's opportunities in the future market.

It's our first test of a live podcast! In case you missed it, we streamed this week's podcast live during the taping. It's something we're playing with and may continue to do in the future if it is popular. You can tune in to the live tapings Tuesdays @ 4 PM Eastern / 1 PM Pacific -- check Joel and Jeff's Twitter feeds for the location.

"Cutting through the hype," game designer and social architecture expert Amy Jo Kim breaks down the process of creating games. She presents 'gamification' and game design with target audiences in mind. The underlying goal, she stresses, is to know your audience and meet it's desires in terms of technology, fun, and trends. Whether your are a game designer or game player, you'll enjoy learning core principles of game design.

The podcast is on the road again this week, with Jeff and Joel coming to you live from Jeff's living room in El Cerrito, CA. They're also joined by Josh Heyer (akaShog9) who calls in from Colorado. This is actually the second time we've done a podcast from Jeff's house, the first time being Episode #51 of the Stack Overflow Podcast.