Amp: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Quinn Slack (CEO) and Thorsten Ball (Amp Dictator) from SourceGraph join the show to talk about Amp Code, how they ship 15x/day with no code reviews, and why subagents and prompt optimizers aren’t a promising direction for coding agents.
Amp Code: https://ampcode.com/
Latent Space: https://latent.space/
Full Video Episode
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction00:41 Transition from Cody to Amp03:18 The Importance of Building the Best Coding Agent06:43 Adapting to a Rapidly Evolving AI Tooling Landscape09:36 Dogfooding at Sourcegraph12:35 CLI vs. VS Code Extension21:08 Positioning Amp in Coding Agent Market24:10 The Diminishing Importance of Model Selectors32:39 Tooling vs. Harness37:19 Common Failure Modes of Coding Agents47:33 Agent-Friendly Logging and Tooling52:31 Are Subagents Real?56:52 New Frameworks and Agent-Integrated Developer Tools1:00:25 How Agents Are Encouraging Codebase and Workflow Changes1:03:13 Evolving Outer Loop Tasks1:07:09 Version Control and Merge Conflicts in an AI-First World1:10:36 Rise of User-Generated Enterprise Software1:14:39 Empowering Technical Leaders with AI1:17:11 Evaluating Product Without Traditional Evals1:20:58 Hiring
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Being unambiguous in what you want: the software engineer in a vibe coding world
Quinn Slack, CEO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, joins the show to dive into the implications of AI coding tools on the software engineering lifecycle. They explore how AI tools are transforming the work of developers from syntax-focused tasks to higher-level design and management roles, and how AI will integrate into enterprise environments.
Episode notes:
Sourcegraph is building AI-code agents for enterprises to accelerate how companies build software.
Connect with Quinn on LinkedIn, X, and on his website.
Today’s shoutout is for user sumek, who won a Populist badge for answering the question How do you search through Vim's command history?.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Efficient scaleups in 2024 vs 2021: Sourcegraph (with CEO & Co-founder Quinn Slack)
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On today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Quinn Slack, CEO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, a leading code search and intelligence platform. Quinn holds a degree in Computer Science from Stanford and is deeply passionate about coding: to the point that he still codes every day! He also serves on the board of Hack Club, a national nonprofit dedicated to bringing coding clubs to high schools nationwide. In this insightful conversation, we discuss:
• How Sourcegraph's operations have evolved since 2021
• Why more software engineers should focus on delivering business value
• Why Quinn continues to code every day, even as a CEO
• Practical AI and LLM use cases and a phased approach to their adoption
• The story behind Job Fairs at Sourcegraph and why it’s no longer in use
• Quinn’s leadership style and his focus on customers and product excellence
• The shift from location-independent pay to zone-based pay at Sourcegraph
• And much more!
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Where to find Quinn Slack:
• X: https://x.com/sqs
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinnslack/
• Website: https://slack.org/
Where to find Gergely:
• Newsletter: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/mrgergelyorosz
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/
• X: https://x.com/GergelyOrosz
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In this episode, we cover:
(01:35) How Sourcegraph started and how it has evolved over the past 11 years
(04:14) How scale-ups have changed
(08:27) Learnings from 2021 and how Sourcegraph’s operations have streamlined
(15:22) Why Quinn is for gradual increases in automation and other thoughts on AI
(18:10) The importance of changelogs
(19:14) Keeping AI accountable and possible future use cases
(22:29) Current limitations of AI
(25:08) Why early adopters of AI coding tools have an advantage
(27:38) Why AI is not yet capable of understanding existing codebases
(31:53) Changes at Sourcegraph since the deep dive on The Pragmatic Engineer blog
(40:14) The importance of transparency and understanding the different forms of compensation
(40:22) Why Sourcegraph shifted to zone-based pay
(47:15) The journey from engineer to CEO
(53:28) A comparison of a typical week 11 years ago vs. now
(59:20) Rapid fire round
The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• Inside Sourcegraph’s engineering culture: Part 1 https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/inside-sourcegraphs-engineering-culture• Inside Sourcegraph’s engineering culture: Part 2 https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/inside-sourcegraphs-engineering-culture-part-2
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References and Transcript:
See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.
Get full access to The Pragmatic Engineer at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/subscribe
Leading in the era of AI code intelligence (Interview)
This week Adam is joined by Quinn Slack, CEO of Sourcegraph for a “2 years later” catch up from his last appearance on Founders Talk. This conversation is a real glimpse into what it takes to be CEO of Sourcegraph in an era when code intelligence is shifting more and more into the AI realm, how they’ve been driving towards this for years, the subtle human leveling up we’re all experiencing, the direction of Sourcegraph as a result — and Quinn also shares his order of operations when it comes to understanding the daily state of their growth.
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Quinn Slack – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Sourcegraph.com
Cody from Sourcegraph
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Head of Instagram comments on teen impact, Jay-Z’s NFT lawsuit + Sourcegraph’s Quinn Slack | E1285
First, Jason reacts to comments from Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri on the impact of Instagram on teen girls and comparing the risks of social media to the automobile industry (1:50). Then, Jason breaks down OpenSea's update on their front-running employee (11:55), and Jay-Z's NFT lawsuit (15:40). Finally, Sourcegraph CEO Quinn Slack joins to discuss growing his universal code search engine, selling a high-ticket SaaS product and more (21:48)!