Building software that survives contact with reality, with Will Wilson

Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Will Wilson, CEO of Antithesis, to discuss the evolution of software testing from traditional approaches to cutting-edge deterministic simulation. Will explains how his team built technology that creates "time machines" for distributed systems, enabling developers to find and debug complex failures that would be nearly impossible to reproduce in traditional testing environments. They explore how this approach scales from finding novel bugs in Super Mario Brothers to ensuring the reliability of critical financial and infrastructure systems, and discuss the implications for a future where AI writes increasingly more code.
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Full transcript available here: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/software-testing-with-will-wilson/

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Recommended in this episode:

• Antithesis: https://antithesis.com/

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:23) Database scaling and the CAP theorem
(08:13) Abstraction layers and hardware reality
(15:28) The problem with traditional testing
(19:43) Sponsor: Framer
(23:16) The fuzzing revolution
(30:35) Deterministic simulation testing
(42:36) Real-world testing strategies
(47:22) Introducing Antithesis
(59:23) The CrowdStrike example
(01:01:15) Finding bugs in Mario
(01:07:37) Property-based vs conventional testing
(01:09:51) The future of AI-assisted development
(01:14:51) Wrap