Austin recently joined the PROSE (Program Synthesis) team in Developer Division from the University of Tennessee where he was an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department.

In this conversation, Austin and I discuss such topics as:

• His recently discovered love of LEGO as an adult
• How bouldering helps him strengthen his problem solving skills
• The differences and similarities between working as a professor and as a Program Manager at Microsoft
• The effectiveness of using a 'flipped classroom' teaching technique
• How Visual Studio and Visual Basic 6 got him started in programming
• How to use feedback loops in recommendation systems to generate superior results
• What we can do to improve tools for software developers by better understanding what their intentions are

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Some links from the show:

• What a $500,000 grant proposal looks like - Austin Z. Henley (austinhenley.com)
• Nintendo Entertainment System LEGO set
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Scott Fleming (Austin's PhD advisor) - The University of Memphis
• OpenAI Codex
• GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer