ZADevChat Podcast

Chantal and Kenneth talk to Grant Ongers and Mike Davis about infosec and the local BSides conference in Cape Town. Grant and Mike are part of the organizing team behind BSides in Cape Town, and both love working in the infosec space. BSides here is based on, and supported by, the BSides conference in Las Vegas. BSides originated as a community event in Las Vegas and has been running for many years. It happens close to the popular Defcon conference. BSides CT is looking to be a great event, with some amazing hardware badges on offer and the opportunity for attendees to contribute to their Rite of Passage program and help a young budding infosec person visit Defcon & BSides LV. We also scratch the surface of infosec and it means for developers in our day-to-day work. We learned a lot, and this is only the beginning! Find and follow BSides Cape Town, Grant & Mike online: * http://www.bsidescapetown.co.za/ * https://twitter.com/BSidesCapeTown * https://twitter.com/rewtd * https://twitter.com/elasticninja Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Defcon - https://defcon.org * BSides Las Vegas - https://www.bsideslv.org * 2016 BSides CT badges - https://hackaday.com/2017/05/22/zombie-badges-take-over-security-con/ * More on the badges - https://andrewmohawk.com/2017/05/16/bsides-cpt-badge-2016/ * Badges on GitHub - https://github.com/AndrewMohawk/BSidesBadge2016 * YubiKey - https://www.yubico.com/ * Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_2nd_Factor * 0xC0FFEE - https://twitter.com/0xC0FFEE_CPT * 0xC0FFEE Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/0xC0FFEE-Cape-Town-Hacker-Meetup Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We chat to Louise Perold about testing as a means to improve the overall quality of software, and the upcoming Let's Test conference Kenneth & Len chat to Louise Perold about the art & practice of software testing. Louise reframes testing in a wonderful light, and how testers compliment and support the existing software development efforts. There are many things that simply cannot be tested reliably with automated techniques, and we explore why. Louise has been helping teams write better software since the early 2000's, and is continuing on that journey today with her new consultancy and yearly conference. Louise is one of the proud members of [House of Test](https://www.houseoftest.rocks/en/), along with [Oz Chihwayi](/51). Louise is also one of the organisers of the local [Let's Test](http://lets-test.com/?page_id=5283) conference. Just a few of the tips offered by Louise for developers working with testers: * Talk, talk, talk * Testers can help clarify your thoughts on design, and help identify where the risks can be * Don't give a checklist of instructions, those are the tests that can be automated Louise definitely gave us a lot to think about, and we hope you feel the same way after the show. Find and follow Louise online: * https://twitter.com/lperold * https://www.houseoftest.rocks/en/rebels/louise-perold/ * https://za.linkedin.com/in/louise-perold-1947528 Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Who Still Needs a Tester? - https://zadevchat.io/51 * Context Driven Testing - http://context-driven-testing.com/ * ISTQB - http://www.istqb.org/ * The Psychology of Computer Programming - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1660754.The_Psychology_of_Computer_Programming * Black Box Software Testing Courses - https://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/courses/ * K-Cards - http://testingthoughts.com/blog/26 * Joburg Software Testers Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/preview/Joburg-Software-Testers2 * Cape Town Testing Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/preview/cape-town-testing-meetup And finally our picks Louise: * Quality Software book bundle by Gerald M Weinberg - https://leanpub.com/b/qualitysoftware Len: * NVIDIA DGX Station - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station/ Kenneth: * A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We chat to Inez, Ridhwana & Lara about the Ladies that UX communities in Cape Town, and as of today Johannesburg. Chantal, Kenneth & Kevin are joined by the dynamic trio of Inez Patel, Ridhwana Khan & Lara Pietersen to talk about UX and the local Ladies that UX meetups in Cape Town and now Johannesburg. User Experience (UX) is an integral part of design, be it in the physical world or the digital world. It is the practice of putting the user first, creating empathy for the users of your systems. "If the user can't use it, it doesn't work" -- Susan Dray Lizzie Dyson and Georgie Bottomley, both UX (User Experience) professionals, loved their jobs but there was always a doubt about where the other women in the industry were. So they started the first Ladies that UX meetup in Manchester, UK, and it exploded. Lara was looking for an international community to connect with when she discovered Ladies that UX and it _stuck_. The Cape Town LTUX meetup is the first African chapter of LTUX, started by Lara. Inez and co-organizer Ridhwana launched the Johannesburg chapter of Ladies that UX on the 31st of August 2017. We hear from Inez, Ridhwana & Lara about their general experiences as women in tech, and why community events are so important to support each other. With Ladies that UX having over 50 chapters around the world, it gives also enables them and other community members to connect with each other. Both events focus on creating a safe and inclusive space for woman in the UX field to connect, share & learn from each other. Each event follows a slightly format, from lean coffee and/or cocktails to workshops and presentations. We also chat to Ridhwana about her upcoming TechWomen trip to the US, and how she'll use her that LTUX connections to meet inspiring women over there, and then bring all her learning back to share with the LTUX community back here. We wish her all the best with her journey! In close we ask each guest to relate with us some advice for incorporating UX into our work. The suggestions are great, go have a listen. Find and follow Ladies that UX online: * https://twitter.com/ladiesthatuxcpt * https://www.meetup.com/Ladies-that-UX-Cape-Town/ * https://www.meetup.com/Ladies-that-UX-Johannesburg/ * http://ladiesthatux.com/cape-town * capetown _at_ ladiesthat _dot_ ux _dot_ com Find and follow Inez online: * https://twitter.com/Inez_patel Find and follow Lara online: * https://www.linkedin.com/in/lara-pietersen/ * https://twitter.com/LaraPietersen Find and follow Ridhwana online: * https://twitter.com/ridhwana_k Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * TechWomen - https://www.techwomen.org/ * A journey through the eyes of a newbie female developer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXPN4UnrmuA * Silicon Valley (HBO) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series) Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We chat to Jade Abbott from Retro Rabbit about artificial intelligence, broadly and more specifically about NLP and what that means for us. Chantal, Kenneth & Len talk to Jade about natural language processing, commonly referred to as NLP. What does it take to get a machine to understand what we're saying as people? Jade has always had a fascination with smart machines, from trying to build robots in school and now teaching machines to understand what we're saying. Jade takes a fairly complex topic and helps us come to terms with it. We question whether people, or intelligence, is algorithmic and what that means. Processing natural language is not without challenges and Jade walks us through the maze of terminology and some tools to get started with, and we have several resources below to help as well. What would happen if AI tries to right a movie? What happens if the movie was made? Importantly, neural nets are not the whole of AI. We wander around expert systems, random forests, and other great statistical models that very useful and predictable. Is intelligence just an algorithm? What do you think? Let us know! Find and follow Jade online: * https://twitter.com/alienelf * http://github.com/jaderabbit * https://twitter.com/fmfyband * https://fmfy.bandcamp.com/ Jade has some repos with sample projects on GitHub: * https://github.com/jaderabbit/botcon2016 * https://github.com/jaderabbit/deepdreamsofelectricsheep * https://www.kaggle.com/jaderabbit/training-an-lstm-to-write-songs Jade offers some great resources not specifically covered in the show. For people looking to get into AI: * https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning - Andrew Ng's Coursera Machine Learning course * Kaggle - http://www.kaggle.com/ * https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-best-data-science-courses-on-the-internet-ranked-by-your-reviews-6dc5b910ea40 How Neural Networks Really Work: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EInQoVLg_UY&t=78s How Neural Network's Really Work by Geoffrey Hinton Using Natural Language for AI * The key blog post on using deep learning for Natural Language Processing: http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/ * Beautiful tutorial on Word2Vec http://mccormickml.com/2016/04/19/word2vec-tutorial-the-skip-gram-model/ * My kaggle notebook for training a neural network to generate songs: https://www.kaggle.com/jaderabbit/training-an-lstm-to-write-songs Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Ex Machina - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film) * Alien Covenant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien:_Covenant * Marvin from Hitchhikers Guide - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_(character) * Sherlock - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series) * Natural Language Processing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing * word2vec - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2vec * Convolutional neural network - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network * Recurrent neural network - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network * Kaggle - https://www.kaggle.com/ * Sunspring | A Sci-Fi Short Film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2Ihqjmc * Rabbiteer - https://rabbiteer.io/ And finally our picks Jade: * Kaggle - https://www.kaggle.com * Sunspring | A Sci-Fi Short Film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2Ihqjmc * Creativity: how is AI impacting this human skill? - http://bit.ly/2wjumoD Chantal: * For Computers, Too, It's Hard to Learn to Speak Chinese - http://bit.ly/2graOJr Kenneth: * Westworld - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(TV_series) Len: * Instaparse - https://github.com/Engelberg/instaparse Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We talk to Ruddy Riba about her career as a women in tech, and Pink-IT and what they are doing to help women in tech find a supportive community and grow their networks. Chantal, Kenneth & Len talk to Ruddy about some of the challenges woman in technology face, and what she and her partners in Pink-IT are doing to help get women into tech. Ruddy shares with us the story of growing up far from Johannesburg, getting into university and seeing the immense drop-off rate of young women in just the first few classes at university. Entering her first job as the only female on the team, it became clear to Ruddy that this disparity needs to be addressed. Pink-IT is an organization that strives to connect women in tech with mentors they can look up to as they grow into the industry. She's also helped high-school students, especially girls, realize that software development is a viable career choice when they didn't even know it existed. Right there at high-school level Ruddy is taking actions that will help address the gender difference in our industry. Ruddy gives us a ton of great information and actionable insights on what we all can do to address the gender equality issues in our industry. One very powerful point is that of intentional mentorship, intentionally helping a female developer grow. Support Ruddy and her work with Pink-IT and their related organizations to foster and grow an inclusive environment that we'll all benefit from in the end. Find and follow Ruddy and Pink-IT online: * http://pink-it.co.za/ * https://twitter.com/PinkIT_za * https://twitter.com/RuddyRiba Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * BBD - http://www.bbd.co.za * JCSE - https://www.jcse.org.za/ * Wake Up Shake Up - https://wakeupshakeupsa.com/ * Jozihub - http://jozihub.org/ * Geekulcha - http://geekulcha.com/ * Raeketsetsa - http://raeketsetsa.geekulcha.com/ And finally our picks Ruddy: * Go Programming Language - https://golang.org/ * Pink-IT - http://pink-it.co.za/ Chantal: * Tracy Chou / @triketora - https://twitter.com/triketora * Sailor Mercury / @sailorhg - https://twitter.com/sailorhg Kenneth: * #ILookLikeAnEngineer - https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ILookLikeAnEngineer * Diversify who you follow on Twitter to gain different perspectives! * Wonder Woman (2017) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman_(2017_film) * Amazing Twitter thread on Wonder Woman costumes - https://twitter.com/AWeaverWrites/status/878967719072288768 Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We talk to Clarice Bouwer about imposter syndrome, what it is and how to overcome it. Join us as we learn about this and other issues around the often overlooked topics of mental well-being. Chantal & Kenneth talk to Clarice Bouwer. Clarice started the Corporate Programmer blog as a survival guide for her work in a big corporate environment, and has written over 50 great posts. It turns out surviving in a big corporate is all out people & relationships! Inspired by Scott Hanselman's "I'm a phony. Are you?" post, Clarice wrote up her own experiences with feeling like an imposter. This well written post landed her interviews on two other podcasts, ours, and the Reddit front page. Clarice also gave a presentation at Rubyfuza 2017 and a recent Jozi.rb. This post and other well researched posts on her blog focuses a lot on how important mental health & well-being is and shares a lot things we can do to look after ourselves. Find and follow Clarice online: * http://www.corporateprogrammer.com/ * https://twitter.com/cbillowes * https://github.com/cbillowes The main post & presentation the show centers around can be found at: * http://www.corporateprogrammer.com/blog/the-imposter-within/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkgAc0DY4s8 Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * I'm a phony. Are you? - https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx * The Fear Behind the Scenes - http://www.corporateprogrammer.com/blog/the-fear-behind-the-scenes/ * Developer on Fire 202 - http://developeronfire.com/podcast/episode-202-clarice-bouwer-leaving-comfort-behind * Pauline Rose Clance Imposter Syndrome Test - http://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/IPscoringtest.pdf * Headspace - https://www.headspace.com/ * Inspiring Response to Losing a Home in the Plett fires - https://www.sapeople.com/2017/06/09/beezy-baileys-inspiring-response-losing-home-works-art-plettenberg-bay-fire-south-africa/ And finally our picks Chantal: * Accidentally destroyed production database on first day of a job, and was told to leave, on top of this i was told by the CTO that they need to get legal involved, how screwed am i? - https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6ez8ag/accidentally_destroyed_production_database_on/ Clarice: * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386162.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy Kenneth Kalmer: * Shots of Awe - https://www.youtube.com/user/ShotsOfAwe Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We talk to Gail Shaw about data, in all its shapes and sizes. Gail is a 10 year Microsoft MVP, and has tamed many a database in her career and shares some great insights with us. Chantal, Kenneth & Len talk data with Gail Shaw. From Gail's first 8086 PC, dual majoring in physics & computer science and printed Oracle error codes we join Gail on her journey into the realm SQL Server and how she's conquered it. We get some advice for squeezing a little more performance out of your production database, which might be more obvious than you'd think! Ever wondered about SQL Server on Linux? Gail has some great insights as to why Microsoft might gone down that route. We all take stock of Microsoft's great recent contributions to the open-source, and the efforts to liberate their tools from their operating systems. We venture into the world of big data, cautiously, while clarifying some terms and distinguishing big data from just "a lot of data". Thinking of big data in terms of analytics help focus the discussions and breaks big data up into layers. The consequences of incorrect medical diagnostics even came up! Find and follow Gail online * https://twitter.com/SQLintheWild * http://sqlinthewild.co.za/ We mention some recorded talks by Gail. * https://sqlbits.com/Sessions/Event14/All_about_Indexes * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bl9dArtmA Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Intel 8086 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086 * Modula-2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2 * Microsoft Access - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access * MSSQL Server on Linux in Docker - https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/mssql-server-linux/ * 3V's of Big Data - http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/3Vs * Data lake - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_lake * Python - http://python.org * R - https://www.r-project.org/ * The Iris dataset - http://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/datasets/plot_iris_dataset.html * PASS Summit - http://www.pass.org/ * Microsoft Cognitive Services - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/ * Decision trees - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree * Boosted Decision Tree - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn905801.aspx * Predictive Analytics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_analytics * Prescriptive Analytics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive_analytics * Cortana Intelligence - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/cortana-intelligence And finally our picks Gail: * Kaggle - https://www.kaggle.com/ * Microsoft Research - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/ Len: * TensorFlow - https://www.tensorflow.org/ Chantal: * Boomerang for Gmail - http://www.boomeranggmail.com/ Kenneth: * Theory of Everything - https://toe.prx.org Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We talk to Tim Haak about playing with wifi networks covering large parts of Gauteng, and running Docker in production, and how to sanely get started with conquering containers. Kenneth & Kevin chat to Tim about Docker, what it is, how its evolving and how to sanely start packaging your apps in containers for shipping. Heads up! There were some audio syncing issues during post production, but the content is still great! Also, this show was recorded in 2016 and the content held up quite nicely! Containers & Docker are revolutionizing how software gets deployed, and how distributed systems are being built. As you'll learn, Tim has extensive experience deploying more than just rudimentary bits of software. His involvement with the Pretoria WUG and building ISP infrastructure definitely put him in a good position to grapple with and conquer the Docker story. Tim has plenty of insights of using this fairly new technology that you can learn from. Find and follow Tim online * https://twitter.com/tim_haak * https://github.com/timhaak * https://www.linkedin.com/in/timhaakco * https://www.haak.co Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Docker - https://docker.com * Docker Swarm - https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/ * Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io * Ceph - http://ceph.com/ceph-storage/ * Gluster - https://www.gluster.org/ * RancherOS - http://rancher.com/rancher-os/ * CoreOS - https://coreos.com/ * Rkt - https://coreos.com/rkt * Johannesburg Docker Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/Docker-Johannesburg/ And finally our picks Kenneth: * Tariffic - https://www.tariffic.com/ * Pink-I.T - http://pink-it.co.za/ Kevin: * Datadog - https://www.datadoghq.com/ Tim: * Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - http://www.hbo.com/last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver * Docker Swarm - https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/ Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes

We talk to Lance Gleason of Polyglot Programming about the software, embeddable devices, biltong and how the local community stacks up against the rest of the world. Chantal, Kenneth & Kevin chat to Lance about his involvement with the South African tech community. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Lance has definitely made a name for himself in various local communities as a very involved member and connector. It was thanks to Lance that we met and invited Rebecca Franks for [episode 39](/39/), and Mandla and Theo for [episode 36](/36/). From gaming on a Commodore VIC-20 to building software for a family business to working at Kodak on satellite imaging system, to digitizing the vast media archives of CNN/Turner, Lance has had a storied career so far and leaves a great impression wherever he goes. Lance adopted a polyglot programming approach as a means to go to conferences and tap into communities. Lance gave his first ever conference talk in Cape Town at Rubyfuza 2010. Lance is also on the organizing committee for Rubyfuza, and support the yearly Ruby DCamp event that happens outside Nelspruit in the spring. Lance has also done the hard work of identifying the best biltong in the country, but you'll have to listen to find out where exactly. Lately Lance has been working with embeddable and wearable technologies and has some very interesting thoughts on the challenges faced in the field including a few things you might not think off initially. From fitness and mindfulness to medical, industrial and other applications. We wrap up the conversation reflecting on how our local talent compares against other communities overseas. Lance's perspective from having traveled from tech community to tech community is great and supportive and wants us to shine bright on the international stage. Find and follow Lance and Polyglot Programming online: * https://twitter.com/lgleason * https://github.com/lgleason * http://www.polyglotprogramminginc.com/ * http://purrprogramming.com/ Here are some resources mentioned in the show: * Commodore VIC-20 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 * Ruby DCamp ZA - http://www.rubydcamp.org.za/ * Ruby DCamp - http://rubydcamp.org/ * Rubyfuza - http://rubyfuza.org/ * RubyKaigi - http://rubykaigi.org/ * House4Hack - http://www.house4hack.co.za/ * Google Glass - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass * Spire - https://spire.io/ * NeoPixels - https://www.adafruit.com/category/168 * Bike Wheel POV Display - https://learn.adafruit.com/bike-wheel-pov-display/overview And finally our picks Kenneth: * Loxton Lager - http://www.loxtonlager.co.za/ * Borderlands - https://borderlandsthegame.com/ Kevin: * The Ultimate Guide to Building Database-Driven Apps with Go - https://www.vividcortex.com/resources/the-ultimate-guide-to-building-database-driven-apps-with-go Chantal: * rAge Expo - http://www.rageexpo.co.za/ * Earth View from Google Earth - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from-google-ea/bhloflhklmhfpedakmangadcdofhnnoh?hl=en * Chanel's Data Center Collection by Karl Lagerfeld - https://qz.com/799962/chanels-karl-lagerfeld-made-a-data-center-into-the-most-glamorous-runway-in-fashion/ Lance: * MbientLab - https://mbientlab.com * NodeMcu - http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html * Purr Programming - http://purrprogramming.com/ Thanks for listening! Stay in touch: * Website & newsletter - https://zadevchat.io * Socialize - https://twitter.com/zadevchat & http://facebook.com/ZADevChat/ * Suggestions and feedback - https://github.com/zadevchat/ping * Subscribe and rate in iTunes - http://bit.ly/zadevchat-itunes