{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Agents and Engineers: Agentic AI, Software, and Agentic Engineering","title":"The New Sport of Programming","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3345,"description":"Matthew Rocklin is an open-source software developer best known for creating Dask, a Python library for scalable parallel and distributed computing. He has contributed to projects including Toolz, SymPy, and Theano, worked at Anaconda and NVIDIA on the RAPIDS ecosystem, and founded Coiled, a company focused on running Dask in the cloud. He has a PhD in computer science from the University of Chicago.\nDan and Matthew discuss how Coiled changed after Matthew stepped away from its ambitious, VC-backed growth path. The company went from roughly fifty people at its peak to three part-time engineers, while making more money and operating more smoothly. Matthew now connects agents to Slack, email, QuickBooks, the bank, the calendar, the codebase, and company context, which lets them spot problems that cross disciplines.\nMatthew describes a lightweight operating system for the company. The structure is simple, a Git repository of Markdown files records customers, employees, systems, and his own context. Agents answer ad hoc questions, produce a daily brief, and run a separate monthly cadence for close and overages. They remain read-only for now. Matthew is willing to have them issue invoices when asked, but not to cut checks or reboot virtual machines on their own.\nThe conversation turns to the personal cost of this new leverage. Matthew does not miss writing every line of code, but he has had to reshape his attention around seven parallel agent sessions and long-running turns. He compares agentic programming to a new sport. The work demands more inspiration and creates a more addictive waiting state, so walks, breaks, and deliberate distance from the screen matter as much as technical skill.\nAgents have fovever changed the culture of OSS. Matthew expects conservative open source projects to protect stability while more experimental projects split off and evolve quickly. His own Frisky project rebuilds parts of Dask in Rust, runs about a hundred times faster in his early...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/TK0Nqa_Yt1Nidvhw7SvORku00Quhyrr-EpS6aCekMzA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hMmU5/YmJlYjNlY2E2ZThh/OGYwZmExY2M5MGMz/MDQyNC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}