Modern Web

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Wes Eklund from AWS ProServe about interviews, practical AI, and the future of developer workflows. Wes shares what trips candidates up in coding and behavioral rounds, how to ask better questions, and why prepping multiple honest STAR narratives matters. Danny introduces the Thrive Framework for behavioral interviews and Rob underscores the discipline...

Danny Thompson sits down with Marino Wijay, Staff Solutions Architect at Kong and CNCF Ambassador, for a wide-ranging conversation on modern cloud-native development. They start with Kubernetes as the entry point into the ecosystem and explore what it really means to be a CNCF ambassador. Marino explains the difference between an API gateway and a service mesh, when small teams should adopt each, and why managed services often make...

Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson sit down with Andy Bell to treat CSS as a craft, not a chore. Andy explains why he mentors the browser instead of micromanaging it, how progressive enhancement keeps products resilient, and which modern features deserve attention right now, including has, anchor positioning, and clamp. The conversation gets practical on grid versus flexbox, why grid is often simpler than people think, and how ecosystems ...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson are joined by Rishab Kumar, Staff Developer Evangelist at Twilio, to explore the evolving landscape of voice and AI interactions. They discuss the rise of conversational AI, how voice interfaces are becoming the natural medium for human-computer interaction, and the tools and best practices for integrating AI into real-world applications. Rishab shares insights ...

In this episode, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson enjoy a conversation with Kilian Valkhof, founder of Polypane, a browser built for developers who care deeply about their craft. The discussion explores the shifting landscape of online developer communities as conversations migrate from Twitter to Blue Sky, Mastodon, Discord, and local meetups. Kilian shares how this decentralization has shaped advocacy around accessibility, performance...

This episode of the Modern Web Podcast features Cody De Arkland, Head of Developer Experience at Sentry, in conversation with hosts Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson. They explore how Sentry has embraced a culture of experimentation with AI, from grassroots innovation in Slack channels to leadership setting the tone for rapid adoption. Cody shares insights into Sentry’s new AI monitoring tools, including MCP support and agent tracing, wh...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Philipp Krenn, Head of Developer Advocacy at Elastic, about how Elasticsearch has evolved from a search engine into a foundation for observability, security, and AI-powered systems. Philipp explains how Elastic approaches information retrieval beyond just vector search, using tools like LLMs for smarter querying, log parsing, and context-aware data acc...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, hosts Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Sean Roberts, Head of AX Architecture and Distinguished Engineer at Netlify, about the emerging discipline of Agentic Experience (AX). They explore how AX is reshaping how we design services for AI agents, what makes an agent experience successful, and why traditional user flows often break down in agent-driven systems. Sean discusses the role of...

In this episode of Modern Web, Danny Thompson chats with MelkeyDev, a Machine Learning Infrastructure Engineer at Twitch, about AI’s real-world applications, developer productivity, and the future of careers in Go.

They cover everything from the rise of tiny AI-driven teams competing with large enterprises to how system prompts may matter more than model choice. Melkey shares his thoughts on cost-effective LLMs, production pitfalls...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, hosts Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson sit down with Andre Landgraf, Senior Developer Advocate at Neon (now part of Databricks), to explore the evolving role of AI agents in developer workflows. They discuss how more Neon databases are being spun up by agents than humans, what that means for developer and agent experience (DX vs AX), and how tools like MCP and step functions are enabling scalab...

On this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Brian Morrison, Senior Developer Educator at Clerk. They cover the state of authentication today, what makes Clerk stand out for small teams and indie builders, and how thoughtful developer experience design can make or break adoption.Brian shares why bundling tools like auth, billing, and user management is becoming more common, how Clerk handles real...

On this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, hosts Rob Ocel, Danny Thompson, and Adam Rackis are joined by Tejas Kumar, host of The Contagious Code podcast, author of Fluent React, and Developer Relations Engineer for Generative AI at DataStax. They unpack the current wave of AI announcements from Google I/O and Microsoft Build, and zoom in on the significance of MCP (Model Context Protocol) as a foundational shift in how AI-powered ...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel, Danny Thompson, and Adam Rackis sit down with Ahmad Awais, CEO and founder of LangBase, to talk about agents, context, and the future of AI-assisted software development. Ahmad shares the origin story of Chai.new, an agent that builds agents, and why he believes context, not code, is the true value layer in the AI era. The group unpacks how "vibe coding" is reshaping wh...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Danny Thompson sits down with Reed Harmeyer, CTO of Skylight Social, and Brandon Mathis, React Native engineer at This Dot Labs. They unpack the technical and strategic decisions behind Skylight’s meteoric growth: why they built on the AT Protocol, how they tackled video discovery and scaling challenges, and how a fast-tracked in-app video editor gave them an edge.

Keypoints from this e...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson sit down with Julián Duque, Principal Developer Advocate at Heroku, to talk about Heroku’s evolution into an AI Platform-as-a-Service. Julián breaks down Heroku’s new Managed Inference and Agents (MIA) platform, how they’re supporting Claude, Cohere, and Stable Diffusion, and what makes their developer experience stand out.

They also get into Model Context Protoc...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Hannes Rudolph, Community Manager at RooCode, to explore how this fast-moving, community-driven code editor is rethinking what AI-assisted development looks like. Hannes breaks down Roo’s agentic coding model, explains how their “boomerang tasks” tackle LLM context limits, and shares lessons from working with contributors across experience levels.

Keypo...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel is joined by Danny Thompson, Adam Rackis, and special guest Coston Perkins for a lively discussion on the evolving role of AI in software development. The group swaps thoughts on everything from the rise of AI agents like RooCode and Claude, to what makes tools like Vercel’s v0 surprisingly powerful for frontend work.

They debate Tailwind’s dominance as the styling output of choic...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, host Danny Thompson and co-host Adam Rackis chat with James Perkins, CEO of Unkey, an open-source API management platform built for scale, security, and developer simplicity. James shares the challenges of building globally distributed infrastructure, and why his team ditched serverless and TypeScript in favor of Go and servers.

They talk candidly about the realities of API management a...

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson talk with Corbin Crutchley — founder of Playful Programming, Microsoft MVP, GitHub Star, and maintainer of multiple TanStack libraries including TanStack Form, Store, and Config.They dive into Corbin’s work maintaining open source at scale, what makes TanStack Form different (and a bit esoteric), and why the design decisions behind it matter, especially for ente...