In this episode of the Ardan Labs Podcast, Bill Kennedy interviews Jonathan Amsterdam from the Go team at Google about his journey from academia and finance to software engineering, his work on Go and API design, and the importance of adaptability, community, and building impactful software.

00:00 Introduction

00:30 What is Jonathan Doing Today?

02:00 First Memories of a Computer

09:30 Entering University

14:00 Early Coding / Academics 

20:50 Interest in AI / ML

27:00 Career Beginnings 

33:00 Transitioning to Java and Teaching

41:00 Distributed Software

45:00 Ambitions / Finding Stability 

55:00 Experiences at Google 

1:07:20 Joining the Go Team

1:17:00 Go and MCP

1:24:00 API Design and Philosophy

1:30:20 Contact Info

Connect with Jonathan: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-amsterdam-b901b21/

Mentioned in this Episode:

Go-sdk: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk

Want more from Ardan Labs? You can learn Go, Kubernetes, Docker & more through our video training, live events, or through our blog!

Online Courses : https://ardanlabs.com/education/ 

Live Events : https://www.ardanlabs.com/live-training-events/ 

Blog : https://www.ardanlabs.com/blog 

Github : https://github.com/ardanlabs