A vaugely serious podcast about software engineering.

Coding interviews are weird. We’re here to learn the patterns, expose the nonsense, and hopefully get jobs without sacrificing our sanity.

Join Abi and Ariel as we work through interview questions, share tips and tricks, talk about the tech industry, and share our interview horror stories.

(but you probably should anyway). Abi and Ariel continue their Anthropic interrogation with a critical analysis of the Claude Constitution. Is this document protecting against harmful AI or encouraging it? We discuss the advantages and dangers of training AI chatbots to act like close personal friends. We also explore what we owe our community in terms of helpfulness and emotional support.

References:

https://www.anthropic.com/constitution 

https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution 

https://reddit.com/r/claudeexplorers 

https://youtu.be/VRjgNgJms3Q?si=N_XenlOu5kRPgTba 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave 

If humanity can’t agree on a code of ethics, can we really expect AI to behave responsibly? Abi and Ariel discuss Anthropic’s mission of safe AI development and the negative impacts caused by harmful AI. We also examine how Anthropic is using Constitutional AI, Reinforcement Learning From AI Feedback (RLAIF), and scale supervision to reduce harmfulness while maintaining helpfulness in its generative AI models. 

We strongly believe that as AI use becomes more prominent, it is our responsibility as engineers to learn about how the models generating our code are developed so that we can better understand risks when creating software.

References:

⁠https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.08073⁠ 

⁠https://www.anthropic.com/research⁠ 

⁠https://github.com/anthropics/ConstitutionalHarmlessnessPaper⁠ 

⁠https://www.reuters.com/technology/anthropic-weighs-fundraising-near-1-trillion-valuation-ft-reports-2026-05-08/⁠ 

⁠https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27777984-nbc-news-march-2026-poll-03-08-2024-release-final/⁠ 

⁠https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/09/anthropic-thinks-constitutional-ai-is-the-best-way-to-train-models/⁠ 

⁠https://blog.udemy.com/anthropic-vs-openai/⁠

⁠https://suozzi.house.gov/media/in-the-news/groks-antisemitic-rants-result-unintended-update-company-says-letter-lawmakers⁠

⁠https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/business/character-ai-google-settle-teen-suicide-lawsuit⁠

If coding can be automated, where do software engineers provide value in the workforce? Does software engineering require writing code? In this episode, Abi and Ariel talk about the future of software engineering and the “expectation vs. reality” of the demand to integrate AI. We also have a tangent about the value of Fruit Love Island. Transitions are hard. Though the day to day of the software engineer will surely change, we share hopes that the innate scarcity of human effort will provide value in the face of automation. 

References: What is “Slop” (and why it gives me hope) https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=LCxpvmH1D0n47pws

Is a masters degree in engineering worth it for everyone? We talk about our experience in the Online Masters of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program at Georgia Tech and the flexibility that this online education provides to full-time professionals. Motivation matters when pursuing any degree and we share our "why" for sticking with the program despite the work it tacks on to our busy schedules. We also talk about our upcoming classes and our different reasons for specializing in AI.

Ada Lovelace is well known as the first computer programmer, but is that really true? Learn about Ada from Abi and Ariel in this episode on Ada's life and controversy. Stick around to the end to hear about how Abi got to actually see Ada's letters!

Resources:

• https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qsY-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA666&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_for_the_computation_of_Bernoulli_numbers.jpg
• https://www.amazon.com/Ada-Life-Legacy-History-Computing/dp/0262691167