OpenAI Eng & Dev Tools Founder: How Software Engineering Is Changing | Charlie Marsh
The Peterman PodShow Notes
Charlie Marsh is the founder of Astral, the Python devtool startup that was acquired by OpenAI. I inteviewed him about how software engineering is changing and learnings from starting his own company as an engineer.
• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/ • The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done
Podcast links:
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/Iw65FD4MGgs • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 • Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/openai-eng-and-dev-tools-founder
Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:
• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro (00:40) Origin story (06:04) The front page of Hacker News (14:35) Why he chose Rust (20:10) Full codebase migration from Zig to Rust (28:40) LLM generated code and open source (35:34) Performance optimizations (44:54) Optimization with AI and combating slop (01:02:08) Learnings as an eng starting a company (01:17:55) Top technical talk recommendation (01:18:56) Advice for his younger self (01:22:00) Outro
Where to find Charlie:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshcharles/ • GitHub: https://github.com/charliermarsh • X/Twitter: https://x.com/charliermarsh
Where to find Ryan:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman
Referenced in this episode:
• Python tooling could be much, much faster: https://notes.crmarsh.com/python-tooling-could-be-much-much-faster • The coolest PR he's ever seen: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/pull/789 • Andrew Kelley’s data-oriented design talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IroPQ150F6c • Ruff: https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff • uv: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv • ty: https://github.com/astral-sh/ty • Salsa: https://github.com/salsa-rs/salsa
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