KBall

I always get some funny looks when I visit my Alma mater program and tell physics students the most important think they can do is get involved in leadership and communication skill building activities. True even if they stay working in STEM!

fun news! I was laid off from Twilio.

going to take this weekend to chill out, and will start looking for roles next week.

if you or someone you know is looking for staff/principal level Developer Advocacy, OSPO, dev infra, or similar roles pass them along!

reposts from tech folks appreciated <3

Omfg I’m going to scream. Transformer models are actually really powerful, it is such a waste of everyone’s time and money that we are pouring all this energy into chatbots and not directly applying these models to real problems. Alphafold3 can solve protein folding problems chatGPT cannot

Okay y’all, in honor of my 50th birthday in a few weeks, I’m crowdsourcing a “celebration fund” - $50 for 50 years - to help me get some things out of pawn and pay a few bills.

I’d love it if you can, but if you can’t, if you could amplify this message I’d really appreciate it.

ByteDance’s Container Networking Stack with Chen Tang - Software Engineering Daily ByteDance is a global technology company operating a wide range of content platforms around the world, and is best known for creating TikTok. The company operates at a massive scale, which naturally p...

Chen Tang is an engineer at @bytedance.bsky.social. In this episode, Chen joins the show with @kball.llc to talk about eBPF, the problems it solves, and how it was used at ByteDance.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/07/01/b...

AI at Anaconda with Greg Jennings - Software Engineering Daily Anaconda is a software company that’s well-known for its solutions for managing packages, environments, and security in large-scale data workflows. The company has played a major role in making Python...

Greg Jennings is the VP of Engineering and AI at @anacondainc.bsky.social. He joins the podcast with @kball.llc to talk about the tooling ecosystem around AI app development, the Anaconda Toolbox, the rapidly evolving role of AI in engineering, and more.

@gregjennings.bsky.social

bit.ly/3GpDv5T

Check out my badge & claim your free TechLead Conference 2025: AI in Orgs remote ticket! Join 5k engineers worldwide at TechLead Conference 2025: AI in Orgs and meet 10+ top speakers at September 18 - 19, 2025

Join me at TechLeadConf 2025 in September!

I’m gonna talk about what it’s like when your team/org doubles in less than a year. It’s been a wild ride and I can’t wait to talk about it.

gitnation.com/badges/techl...

Emulating Retro Games on Modern Consoles with Robin Lavallée and Bill Litshauer - Software Engineering Daily Emulating retro games on modern consoles is a growing trend, and allows players to experience classic titles with improved performance, enhanced resolution, and added features like save states and rew...

Robin Lavallée is the CEO and Bill Litshauer is the COO at @implicitconversions.com. They join the show with @kball.llc to talk about emulating and enhancing retro PlayStation games on modern consoles.

@robinlavallee.bsky.social

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/06/19/e...

Chip Design in the AI Era with Thomas Andersen - Software Engineering Daily Synopsys is a leading electronic design automation company specializing in silicon design and verification, as well as software integrity and security. Their tools are foundational to the creation of ...

Thomas Andersen is the VP of AI and Machine Learning at Synopsys. He joins @kball.llc to discuss how AI is reshaping hardware design, the challenge of modeling tacit engineering knowledge, domain-specific LLMs, and what’s coming next.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/05/29/c...

Building PostgreSQL for the Future with Heikki Linnakangas - Software Engineering Daily PostgreSQL is an open-source database known for its robustness, extensibility, and compliance with SQL standards. Its ability to handle complex queries and maintain high data integrity has made it a t...

Heikki Linnakangas is a leading developer for PostgreSQL and the co-founder of @neon.tech. In this episode, he joins @kball.llc to discuss PostgreSQL’s rise in popularity, why he started Neon, pgvector for AI, and more.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/05/20/b...

Mojo and Building a CUDA Replacement with Chris Lattner - Software Engineering Daily Python is the dominant language for AI and data science applications, but it lacks the performance and low-level control needed to fully leverage GPU hardware. As a result, developers often rely on NV...

Chris Lattner is the CEO and Co-Founder of Modular, the company behind the Mojo language. In this episode, he joins @kball.llc to discuss his engineering journey and his current work on AI infrastructure and Mojo.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/05/22/m...

Grand Theft Auto III on the Dreamcast with Falco Girgis and Stef Kornilios Mitsis Poiitidis - Software Engineering Daily Grand Theft Auto III is a 2001 an open-world action-adventure game developed by Rockstar Games and it had a profound impact on both gaming and popular culture. Its success cemented video games as a do...

Falco Girgis and Stef Kornilios Mitsis Poiitidis are developers on the GTA3 Dreamcast port. They join @kball.llc to talk about the Dreamcast hardware and the heroic task of porting GTA3 to the console.

@falcogirgis.bsky.social

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/05/08/g...

YouTube video by JavaScript Conferences by GitNation We Talked to Tom Occhino About React’s Origins, Vercel & the Future of Web Dev (w/ JS Party)

This interview @kball.llc and I did with with @tomocchino.com was really fun, especially for me as I was working in the codebase React was born out of at the time! www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qOl...

The Dysfunctional Developer | The New Era of Developer Workflows KBall and Nick dive into the chaotic world of AI-powered coding! They swap stories about how tools like Cursor and Neovim are completely changing their day-to-day work life and making them question...

🎙️ The new era of developer workflows

@kball.llc and @nicknisi.com unpack how AI coding tools are transforming their dev work in 2025—productivity gains mixed with the anxiety of watching their craft evolve into something where directing AI might replace coding.

dysfunctional.fm/episodes/the...

The Dysfunctional Developer | The LLM Show In this conversation, the Nick, Amy, Chris, and KBall discuss the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in software development, exploring its definitions, mechanics, and applications. They...

Geeking out with the @dysfunctional.fm crew about LLMs and their impact on software dev: dysfunctional.fm/episodes/the...

I really enjoyed digging into this topic. The concept from @kball.llc of essentially unlimited demand for software really changes the way you think about the future of software engineering.

The Dysfunctional Developer | The Code Review Show In this episode of the Dysfunctional Developer podcast, KBall and guests discuss the intricacies of pull requests and code reviews in software development. They explore various practices, the impor...

The Code Review Show

dysfunctional.fm/2

Feross and team are the real deal. They are aiming squarely at one of the most painful and dysfunctional parts of modern development, and continue doing great work to help developers deal with it.

Vibe Coding at Heroku with Vish Abrams - Software Engineering Daily AI tools are transforming how developers write code, and although it’s difficult to pinpoint how much code is now AI-generated code, estimates suggest it’s between 20% and 40%, and this figure is pois...

Vish Abrams is Chief Architect at Heroku and he joins @kball.llc for a wide-ranging conversation about AI tools, vibe coding, the Model Context Protocol, Heroku’s managed inference service, and more.

@vishvananda.bsky.social

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/04/24/v...

G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶r̶… ex-Googler.

nerdy.dev/ex-googler

Turing Award Special: A Conversation with David Patterson - Software Engineering Daily David A. Patterson is a pioneering computer scientist known for his contributions to computer architecture, particularly as a co-developer of Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC, which revoluti...

David A. Patterson is a pioneering computer scientist, co-developer of the RISC architecture, and a Turing Award winner. He joins @kball.llc to talk about his life and career.

@acm.org

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/04/10/t...

CHICAGO…

Massive crowd at Boston’s city hall plaza for the #HandsOff protest against Trump and Musk

Quantum Computing at Rigetti with David Rivas - Software Engineering Daily Rigetti Computing is an American company specializing in quantum computing, founded in 2013. The company develops quantum processors and hybrid quantum-classical computing systems, and aims to make qu...

David Rivas is the CTO at Rigetti Computing. He joins the podcast with @kball.llc to talk about Rigetti, the fundamentals of quantum computing, the state of the technology, and where we’re headed.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/03/13/q...

(Boosts encouraged!)

Hi! 👋

I’m Kat. I’ve been a professional dev for over 15 years. I maintained the NPM CLI for 5 of those. I sat in TC39. I work at Microsoft. I’m self taught w/a film degree and no formal CS edu.

Are you new to tech? What do you wish you could ask some1 like me?

Literally AMA

One last party (JS Party #350) Jerod is joined by KBall, Nick & Amy to throw one last JS Party! We review last year's predictions, discuss the state of the web dev world, opine on coding AIs (of course) & divulge what comes next fo...

🥲 One last JS Party.

The final episode of JS Party is now out. Thanks to @changelog.com for a wonderful run!

changelog.com/jsparty/350

@avohq.io hey folks getting all avo-advanced package installs (and hence all bundler installs using avo-advanced) failing due to an SSL error on packager.dev -- any alternates or workarounds?

🎧 Great convo here with @ccheever.com, @ide.bsky.social and @kball.llc about the origin of 𝝠 Expo and the problems we plan to solve in the future.

Streamlined React Native Development with Charlie Cheever and James Ide - Software Engineering Daily Expo is a development framework that streamlines the process of building cross-platform mobile apps using React Native. It eliminates the need for complex native code setup by providing pre-built APIs...

@ccheever.com and @ide.bsky.social are the Co-Founders of @expo.dev and they join the podcast with @kball.llc to talk about the framework and the problems it solves.

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/01/01/s...

Welcome back to Here Comes The Sun! We start later today, the solstice, the very shortest and darkest day of the year. Every day I'll tell you exactly how much longer the day was than the day before, until we get to the precious daylight savings day.