Programming Throwdown educates Computer Scientists and Software Engineers on a cavalcade of programming and tech topics. Every show will cover a new programming language, so listeners will be able to speak intelligently about any programming language.
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180: Reinforcement Learning
Intro topic: GrillsNews/Links:You can’t call yourself a senior until you’ve worked on a legacy projecthttps://www.infobip.com/developers/blog/seniors-working-on-a-legacy-projectRecraft might be the most powerful AI image platform I’ve ever used — here’s whyhttps://www.tomsguide.com/ai/ai-image-video/recraft-might-be-the-most-powerful-ai-image-platform-ive-ever-used-heres-whyNASA has a list of 10 rules for software developmenthttps://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc345/resources/nasa-10-rules.htmAMD Radeon RX 9070 XT performance estimates leaked: 42% to 66% faster than Radeon RX 7900 GREhttps://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/amd-estimates-of-radeon-rx-9070-xt-performance-leaked-42-percent-66-percent-faster-than-radeon-rx-7900-gre Book of the ShowPatrick: The Player of Games (Ian M Banks)https://a.co/d/1ZpUhGl (non-affiliate)Jason: Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Enginehttps://amzn.to/3ES4p5iPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Pokemon Sword and ShieldJason: Features and Labels ( https://fal.ai )Topic: Reinforcement LearningThree types of AISupervised LearningUnsupervised LearningReinforcement LearningOnline vs Offline RLOptimization algorithmsValue optimizationSARSAQ-LearningPolicy optimizationPolicy GradientsActor-CriticProximal Policy OptimizationValue vs Policy OptimizationValue optimization is more intuitive (Value loss)Policy optimization is less intuitive at first (policy gradients)Converting values to policies in deep learning is difficultImitation LearningSupervised policy learningOften used to bootstrap reinforcement learningPolicy EvaluationPropensity scoring versus model-basedChallenges to training RL modelTwo optimization loopsCollecting feedback vs updating the modelDifficult optimization targetPolicy evaluationRLHF & GRPO ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
179: Project Planning
Intro topic: Lego event space & retail store: https://www.instagram.com/bambeecave News/Links:StackOverflow Question Count Going Down https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9f0b132DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarkshttps://techcrunch.com/2025/01/20/deepseek-claims-its-reasoning-model-beats-openais-o1-on-certain-benchmarks/ Computer Science Papers Every Developer Should Readhttps://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer-science-papers-every-developerNvidia Cosmos - an AI platform to change the future of robots and cars - wins Best of CES 2025https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-signs-largest-car-maker-toyota-to-use-its-self-driving-tech/ Book of the ShowPatrick: Alice’s Adventures in a differentiable wonderlandhttps://www.sscardapane.it/alice-book/Jason: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Hulu/Netflix/etc)Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Digseumhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/3361470/Digseum/Jason: Sqlitedict - Python dictionaries saved to diskTopic: Project Planning and ManagementWhy?Gathering feedbackIdentifying risksDeciding future headcountDocumenting / discovering dependenciesCritical pathScheduleReduce the bullwhip effectHow it worksSMART goalsspecific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-boundMT is most importantGantt ChartsScrumAgileKanbanToolsWhiteboard (the generic IRL one)Post it notesJIRAAsanaOpenProjectDealing with uncertaintyBufferingIssues with recursive paddingProject planning Post-Mortems ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
178: Working from Home
Intro topic: Smart homesNews/Links:SpaceX Starship Flight Test Five / Sixhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKI7y3DTXkShareDBhttps://github.com/share/sharedbOrion AR Glasseshttps://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/Blade and Sorcery 1.0 is outhttps://www.meta.com/experiences/blade-sorcery-nomad/2031826350263349/Book of the ShowPatrick: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrencehttps://amzn.to/4fry2XWJason: Masters of Doomhttps://amzn.to/3YxuD3cPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Balatrohttps://www.playbalatro.com/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Working from HomeIntroBackground & WFH experiencesIs it Panacea?Realizing it works better for some than othersInternally MotivatedSchedulingCommunicationsHome SetupDedicated spaceHandling Non-work DistractionsKeyboards, Monitors, Music, … Desk related thingsThe specter of RTO ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
177: Vector Databases
Intro topic: Buying a CarNews/Links:Cognitive Load is what Mattershttps://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-loadDiffusion models are Real-Time Game Engineshttps://gamengen.github.io/Your Company Needs Junior Devshttps://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/09/07/your-team-needs-juniorsSeamless Streaming / Fish Speech / LLaMA OmniSeamless: https://huggingface.co/facebook/seamless-streamingFish: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech LLaMA Omni: https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni Book of the ShowPatrick: Thought Emporium Youtubehttps://youtu.be/8X1_HEJk2Hw?si=T8EaHul-QMahyUvQJason: Novel Mindshttps://www.novelminds.ai/Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Escape Simulatorhttps://pinestudio.com/games/escape-simulator/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Vector Databases (~54 min)How computers represent data traditionallyASCII valuesRGB valuesHow traditional compression worksHuffman encoding (tree structure)Lossy example: Fourier Transform & store coefficientsHow embeddings are computedPairwise (contrastive) methodsForward models (self-supervised)Similarity metricsApproximate Nearest Neighbors (ANN)Sub-Linear ANNClusteringSpace Partitioning (e.g. K-D Trees)What a vector database doesPerform nearest-neighbors with many different similarity metricsStore the vectors and the data structures to support sub-linear ANNHandle updates, deletes, rebalancing/reclustering, backups/restoresExamplespgvector: a vector-database plugin for postgresWeaviate, Pinecone Milvus ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
176: MLOps at SwampUp
James Morse: Software Engineer at CiscoSystem Administrator to DevOpsDifference between DevOps and MLOpsGetting Started with DevOpsLuke Marsden: CEO of Helix MLHow to start a business at 15 years oldBTRFS vs ZFSMLOps: the intersection of software, DevOps and AIFine-tuning AI on the CloudSome advice for folks interested in ML OpsYuval Fernbach: CTO MLOps & JFrogStarting QuarkGoing from a jupyter notebook to productionML Supply ChainGetting started in Machine LearningStephen Chin: VP of DevRel at Neo4JDeveloper Relations: The JobWhat is a Large Language Model?Knowledge graphs and the Linkage ModelHow to Use Graph databases in EnterpriseHow to get into ML Ops ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
175: Resume Writing
175: Resume WritingIntro topic: DSLR Photography vs Camera PhoneNews/Links:Free Internet while flying by abusing edits to your profile namehttps://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/Making Animated Characters with AI Arthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSN76gb_Z28On 10x Engineershttps://stackoverflow.blog/2024/06/19/the-real-10x-developer-makes-their-whole-team-better/The Beauty and Challenges of AI-Generated Artistic Gymnasticshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwJIYj3hPAUBook of the ShowPatrick: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liuhttps://amzn.to/3xNEoRBJason: The Checklist Manifestohttps://amzn.to/3W2JjpMPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch)https://amzn.to/3S9VJLfJason: Amazon Qhttps://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AmazonWebServices.amazon-q-vscodeTopic: Resume Writing (Courtesy of Matthew C.)Why have a resume?Many jobs require it to get into the considerationToday many are screened for keywords automaticallyLog for future youWhat is a resume?One-page descriptionKey accomplishments & experiencesComparison to CVReferencesHow to write a good resume?Do’sInclude your github if it has good contributionsBe specific (dates, locations, skills)Isolate your specific contributionsBe accurate/honestBe conciseBe ready to discuss any point you have on the resumeList hobbies/activities/extracurricularsDon’tsHave mistakes (especially dates)Use images (most companies use text extraction)Use it as a design portfolioPut social qualities (e.gs. hard-working, motivated, friendly)Use fancy templates/toolsResourcesManager Tools: How to scan resumes https://www.manager-tools.com/2016/05/how-scan-resume-part-1 Google docsLatex/Lyx for CVsHow to think about your career and how it impacts your future resume writing (career planning)Technologies and architectures more than specifics of project detailsHow various choices may age over time ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
174: Devops
Intro topic: Social Media Auto Responder LLMNews/Links:Amazon releases Amazon Qhttps://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/4/aws-announces-general-availability-of-amazon-q-the-most-capable-generative-ai-powered-assistant-for-accelerating-software-development-and-leveraging-companies-internal-dataCheap RiscV “Super Cluster” from BitluniDIY 256-Core RISC-V super computerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3PgEXhdYCH32V203Phi 3 Vision Releasedhttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-models-added-to-the-phi-3-family-available-on-microsoft-azure/OllamaChatGPT 4ohttps://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/Book of the ShowPatrick: MyFirstMillion Podcasthttps://www.mfmpod.com/Jason: A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligencehttps://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsfPatreon https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Dave the Diverhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1868140/DAVE_THE_DIVER/Jason: Turing Completehttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/ Topic: DevOpsWhat is DevOpsDevOps vs SREWhy DevOps is importantEngineering time is expensiveOutages can hurt company metrics & reputationBuild & Testing InfrastructureBazel & Build/Test IdempotencyBuild/Test FarmsBuildBarnGithub ActionsJenkinsInfrastructure as codeTerraformBlue Green DeploymentContinuous Everything!Continuous IntegrationContinuous DeploymentHow to Measure DevOpsBuild TimesRelease cadenceBug tracking / round trip timesEngineer SurveysTime spent doing what you enjoyDevOps Horror Stories ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
173: Mocking and Unit Tests
173: Mocking and Unit TestsIntro topic: HeadphonesNews/Links:Texas A&M University Physics Festivalhttps://physicsfestival.tamu.edu/Rust vs Cpp at GoogleLars Bergstrom (Google Director of Engineering): Rust teams at Google are as productive as the ones using Go and 2x those using Cpphttps://youtu.be/6mZRWFQRvmw?t=27012Is Cosine Similarity Really About Similarityhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05440Xz utils supply chain attackAndres Freund at Microsofthttps://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/Book of the ShowPatrick:80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgeraldhttps://amzn.to/3xyEKLoJason: A Movie Making Nerdhttps://amzn.to/49ycDJjPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Shapez Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playdigious.shapez&hl=en_US&gl=USShapez iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shapez-factory-game/id6450830779Jason: Dwarf Fortresshttps://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/Topic: Mocking and Unit TestsWhat are Unit TestsBalance between utility, maintenance, and coverageUnit Test: testing small functionsRegression Test: Testing larger functionsSystem Test: End-to-end testing of programsWhat are mocks & fakesWhen to use mock vs. fakeMocking libraries in various languagesPython: https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.mock.htmlJava: https://github.com/mockito/mockitoC++: https://github.com/google/googletest ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
172: Transformers and Large Language Models
172: Transformers and Large Language ModelsIntro topic: Is WFH actually WFC?News/Links:Falsehoods Junior Developers Believe about Becoming Seniorhttps://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/falsehoods-junior-developers-believe-about-becoming-senior/Pure PursuitTutorial with python code: https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/software/control-algorithms/basic-pure-pursuit Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYR7mmcwT2w PID without a PHDhttps://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/pid/pidWithoutAPhd.pdfGoogle releases Gemmahttps://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-open-models/Book of the ShowPatrick: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time)https://amzn.to/3uEhg6vJason: How to Make a Video Game All By Yourselfhttps://amzn.to/3UZtP7bPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Stadia Controller Wifi to Bluetooth Unlockhttps://stadia.google.com/controller/index_en_US.htmlJason: FUSE and SSHFShttps://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-sshTopic: Transformers and Large Language ModelsHow neural networks store informationLatent variablesTransformersEncoders & DecodersAttention LayersHistoryRNNVanishing Gradient ProblemLSTMShort term (gradient explodes), Long term (gradient vanishes)Differentiable algebraKey-Query-ValueSelf AttentionSelf-Supervised Learning & Forward ModelsHuman FeedbackReinforcement Learning from Human FeedbackDirect Policy Optimization (Pairwise Ranking) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
171: Compilers and Interpreters
Intro topic: Monitor setupsNews/Links:BlueScuti, Willis, beats Tetrishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHUPalWorld accused of being an AI Producthttps://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/22/palworld-accused-of-using-genai-with-no-evidence-so-far/?sh=26a9651b42394 Billion if-statements to determine if a number is even or oddhttps://andreasjhkarlsson.github.io/jekyll/update/2023/12/27/4-billion-if-statements.htmlSeamless M4Thttps://ai.meta.com/blog/seamless-m4t/Book of the ShowPatrick:Foundation by Isaac Asimovhttps://amzn.to/3SrmgnPJason: Propaganda by Edward Bernayshttps://amzn.to/47JUCXJPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: The Room Gamehttps://www.fireproofgames.com/games/the-roomJason:Incredibuildhttps://www.incredibuild.com/Topic: Compilers and Interpreters (Request by Jessica W.)Machine CodeArchitecture SpecificAssemblySingle vs Two Pass CompilerHigh level LanguagesIntermediate RepresentationJVM ByteCode vs Machine Code for portabilityScripting/InterpretersJITProfile Guided OptimizationResourceshttps://www.craftinginterpreters.com/https://nandgame.com/Turing Complete ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
170: 2023 Holiday Special Live
Predictions:Jason VR for Work Lowering AI training cost/ improved efficiency RISC-V takeoff Patrick Ai claim of AGI Ai peer reviewer Ai Video Generator More space vehicles reaching orbit Early career, finding role at FAANG, liaising vs shipping code. Startup?3 part. 1. How and when current hype for AI will end? 2. Shape of the show 3. Upcoming in techWhat are essential programmer knowledge items?CS Student, how to organize life and goals? What purpose life should serve?What kind of programmer were you in college?Happy Holidays! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
169: HyperLogLog
Intro topic: Testing your car batteryNews/Links: Tech Layoffs still going on https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/google-layoffs-california-companies-18465600.php Real-time dreamy Cloudscapes with Volumetric Raymarchinghttps://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/real-time-cloudscapes-with-volumetric-raymarching/ Robot Rascals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Rascals Meta Quest 3 https://www.theverge.com/23906313/meta-quest-3-review-vr-mixed-reality-headset Book of the Show Patrick:HyperLogLog Paper https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/40671.pdf Jason: Eureka! NVIDIA Research Breakthrough Puts New Spin on Robot Learning https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/10/20/eureka-robotics-research/ Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the Show Patrick: Techtonica: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/ Jason: ESP32 development board: https://amzn.to/3Qpmb20 WEMOS Topic: HyperLogLog MotivationCardinality Counting LinearCounting Hash + expectation of collision based on how full Bloom Filter LogLog Use first N bits as bucket Use max sequential 0s in each bucket Average HyperLogLog Handle empty buckets Use correction factor like linear counting for low counts (number of empty buckets) and high counts Distributing Transfer bucket counts ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
168: Godot
Intro topic: What are expectations on developers that have nothing to do with programmingNews/Links: Pushing for a lower dev estimate is like negotiating weather with a Meteorologisthttps://smartguess.is/blog/your-estimate-is-less-than-that/ Announcing python in excelhttps://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439 7 Habits of Highly Effective Software Engineershttps://makingsmallercircles.com/articles/7-habits-of-highly-effective-software-engineers/ Raspberry pi 5 begins shipping https://www.phoronix.com/news/Raspberry-Pi-5-Shipping Book of the Show Patrick:Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Illustrated Editionhttps://amzn.to/3St3L35 Jason: The Pete and Sebastian Showhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pete-and-sebastian-show/id570256898 Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the Show Patrick: Obsidianobsidian.md Jason:Ink by Inkle https://github.com/inkle/ink Topic: Godot What is a game engine? Graphics, animation, particle effects Tilemaps Entity component systems Physics Sound I/O Input handling (touchscreen, joystick) GDScript Why use a game engine? Portability Allow for testing individual components of the game Libraries for ads, in-app-purchases Godot Open source Focused on 2-D but now many 3-D features Great development environment AI Hero Started in phaser (development rut) Moved to Godot, rapid prototyping ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
167: Desktop User Interfaces
Intro topic: Jogging MetricsNews/Links: Unholy LLM https://huggingface.co/Undi95/Unholy-v1-12L-13B The reverse red herring https://www.blameless.com/blog/the-reverse-red-herring The "ens–tification" of TikTok https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ Response letter to Godot is not the new Unity https://sampruden.github.io/posts/godot-is-not-the-new-unity/ https://gist.github.com/reduz/cb05fe96079e46785f08a79ec3b0ef21 Book of the Show Patrick: Math Games with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin https://amzn.to/48qlg9A Jason: The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates https://amzn.to/3LChBff Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the Show Patrick: Factorio (Desktop Game) Jason:AI Hero (iOS and Android) Topic: Desktop user interfaces What is a user interface? Web and Mobile UI toolkits Desktop options Qt Cross platform, custom UI elements Qt creator, code generator WxWidgets Cross platform, uses native UI elements WxFormDesigner, code generation Can look different on different operating systems Electron Local nodejs webserver Html/JavaScript technology Requires interprocess communication to use other languages Jupyter notebooks Mathematica-like notebook Not for distribution StreamlitPython to web compiler Game EnginesUnity, Godot, Unreal Tips for building desktop UI UI is slow (startup time, interaction time) Separate the UI from the engine & business logic ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
166: Speedy Database Queries with Lukas Fittl
Links:https://pganalyze.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/lfittl/https://www.linkedin.com/company/pganalyze/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★