Open-source, complexity & AI coding 🔧 — with Salvatore "Antirez" Sanfilippo

Refactoring Podcast

Today's guest is Salvatore Sanfilippo, also known as Antirez!Salvatore is the creator of Redis, an open source data store used by hundreds of thousands of developers across the world. And he's also a writer. He published the popular sci-fi novel called Wohpe, which anticipated a lot of what is happening today with AI.With Salvatore, we talked about open source — what makes a project successful and how to make it successful for its maintainers. Then we discussed how Salvatore uses AI for extremely complex coding, which makes him 5x faster than without AI. And finally, I asked him about his writing work and what is the experience of writing a novel versus a software project.02:55 Introduction06:47 Salvatore's life priorities12:40 Develop an open source project in 2025 18:14 Being a generalist with AI support19:25 Making an open source project sustainable23:54 Complexity of modern front-end development24:58 Big Tech, complexity and open source30:19 Escaping the complexity loop33:40 The rebirth of fullstack through AI34:53 How Salvatore creates code with AI41:16 Does AI increase code productivity?44:14 The importance of the right prompt47:06 Writing tests in the AI era of development50:49 Whope, Salvatore's sci-fi novel53:28 Writing a novel and writing code—This episode is brought to you by https://workos.com—Some show notes:• Salvatore's website: https://antirez.com/• Salvatore's Youtube: / @antirez • Wohpe: / wohpe —You can also find this at:

• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm
• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9d...
• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]