Two years ago we introduced listeners to the Oakland Ballers, the startup returning baseball to the city of Oakland. Bryan and Adam were joined again by Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel to discuss the Ballers first two--highly successful--seasons, and to announce some exciting new collaborations between the Ballers and Oxide!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Paul Freedman, Bryan Carmel, and Steve Tuck.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• OxF S4 E11: A Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel
• OxF S4 E7: Data Visualization
• Bryan's blog: A parade in Oakland
• Ballers x Oxide hackathon

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide ships a rack scale system--how to test the manufacturing of the backplane and switches? Previously we've been using a collection of sacrificial servers, but this was unwieldy, expensive, and unscalable--all big problems as we ramp up manufacturing to 100s a month! Enter "Reverso", an extremely simple test fixture, that uncovered an extremely complex bug.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Oxide colleagues, Robert "RFK" Keith, Adam "The Hammer" Suczewski, and Matt Keeter.

Previously, on Oxide and Friends:

• OxF s01e26 - The Pragmatism of Hubris
• OxF s01e24 - The Sidecar Switch
• OxF s03e13 - The Network Behind the Network
• OxF s05e23 - Adventures in Data Corruption

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Adam Leventhal, Hardware Engineer
• dendrite
• Paddle-to-the-Sea
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

AI is an existential topic for all aspects of education--for none more so than Computer Science. Bryan and Adam were joined by Kathi Fisler and Shriram Krishnamurthi, professors of Computer Science at Brown, to discuss their experimental introductory course that strongly incorporates agentic programming. What do students take away from their "smoke the whole pack" approach?

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Shriram Krishnamurthi, Kathi Fisler, and Will.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• OxF s5e29: AI in Higher Education with Michael Littman
• Greenspun's tenth rule
• Andy van Dam
• Brown CS15 Tetris
• Wesleyan Tetris
• Generating Programs Trivially: Student Use of Large Language Models
• Data-Centricity: A Challenge and Opportunity for Computing Education -- Shriram Krishnamurthi and Kathi Fisler
• LLMs ⭢ Regular Expressions, Responsibly!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide mechanical engineering team to talk the mechanical challenges of building a rack-scale computer, and--in particular--of scaling manufacturing from just a few racks to hundreds. NOTE: Keep an eye on the chapter art for the pictures under discussion.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide Colleagues Elliott Donlon, Brooks Willis, Doug Wibben, and Ben Williams.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Topic
• [@M:SS](link into recording) Leventhal's Conundrum
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Brogrammer Garry Tan has been boasting about "writing" tens of thousands of lines of code each day as the paragon of productivity. Is this really the right way to think about building systems? Bryan and Adam were joined by Polish software engineer, Gregorein, who took a closer look into what Tan was generating to discuss what was found.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our guest (who we introduced a mere 4 minutes in) was gregorein.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Gregorein's twitter thread
• Bryan's blog: The Peril of Laziness Lost
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

The Oxide rack contains within it a distributed system that needs to trust itself. But how is this trust built? Bryan and Adam were joined by colleagues Andrew and Finch to explore how Trust Quorum was designed, built, and verified.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Andrew Stone, and Finch Foner.

Previously, on Oxide and Friends:

• OxF s06e02 - Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
• OxF s03e17 - Software Verificationpalooza
• OxF s06e02 - Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
• OxF s05e20 - Debugger-Driven Development

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Oxide RFD 238: Trust Quorum and Rack Unlock
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide team to describe the multi-year search for a mysterious source of hardware failures. All related to an ultra-reliable--and yet still not reliable enough--component.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by members of the Oxide team: Nathanael Huffman, Alan Hanson, Cliff Biffle, Eric Aasen, Robert "RFK" Keith, and Jordan Hendricks.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Oxide RFD 630: BMR491 Glitch Mitigation Plan
• RFK's report
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide raised a truckload of capital a few weeks ago to fund the business for the foreseeable future. Bryan and Steve describe the raise, and Adam poses the best the best (and worst) questions scraped from Hacker News.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide CEO, Steve Tuck.

Previously on Oxide and Friends:

• OxF s01e25 - Tales from the Bringup Lab
• OxF s04e30 - Intel after Gelsinger
• OxF s05e24 - Oxide’s $100M Series B
• OxF s02e18 - Silicon Valley Bank with Eric Vishria
• OxF s05e28 - Systems Software in the Large

Mentioned during the show:

• Oxide Blog: Our $200M Series C
• Oxide is hiring!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Evan Ratliff, journalist and podcaster, joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his extraordinary podcast, Shell Game, in which he started a company staffed exclusively by agentic AI.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Evan Ratliff.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Shell Game
• Evan on This American Life
• MIT Review: Moltbook was peak AI theater
• "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"
• The Startup Chronicles - HurumoAI
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam were joined by Grady Booch, software engineering pioneer and living legend, to speak about the past present and future of software engineering. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Grady Booch.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them (some LLM assistance):

• SAGE as foundational real-time distributed system
• Software crisis demand outpaced ability to build reliable systems
• Margaret Hamilton (SAGE → Apollo) and the term “software engineering”
• UML
• Rational Software founded (1982); acquired by IBM (2003)
• OO overshot via inheritance; core idea (objects as cognitive units) endured
• LLMs are unreliable narrators - they cannot do abductive reasoning
• Architecture = decisions with high cost of change
• Core skills persist: abstraction, coupling, cohesion, judgment
• Fear cycles repeat; fundamentals endure

Grady's Book Recommendations

• The Sciences of the Artificial — Herbert Simon
• The Mythical Man-Month — Fred Brooks
• Refactoring — Martin Fowler

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David join Bryan and Adam to discuss how rigorous use of LLMs can make for much more robust systems.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rain Paharia, and David Crespo.

Previously, on Oxide and Friends:

• OxF s03e08 – Does a GPT future need software engineers
• OxF s04e04 – Helios
• OxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the Large
• OxF s04e20 – Pragmatic LLM Usage with Nicholas Carlini

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• The issue Bryan was fixing
• iddqd: the crate Rain built
• Ghostty
  • David's bugs: 1 2 3
• Rain's nextest bug: SIGTTOU when test spawns interactive shell
• Oxide RFD 619: Managing types across Dropshot API versions
• drift: the crate Adam built

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!