If you come to a fork in the road, take it! Two’s Complement is a programming podcast, hosted by Matt Godbolt and Ben Rady; two programmers who both grew up wanting to make video games. One of them did, one of them didn’t, but now they both work together despite coming from very different backgrounds.
Slightly Less Terrible Tech Interviews
Ben and Matt descend like Orpheus into the horrifically awful world of tech interviews, to try and extract some sort of humanity from the process. They fail, of course, but discuss some interesting ideas along the way.
Not Invented, Hear?
Matt and Ben explore their mutual tendency to favor build over buy. Instead of using open source software that may be free-as-in-puppy, our hosts have sometimes built their own solutions, occasionally with hilariously regrettable results.
Time For Computers
Ben and Matt examine how fast computers are by comparing them to humans. Turns out they're mind-boggling-ly fast. Or maybe humans are just slow? I don't know, let's not make the humans feel bad. They're trying their best with those adorable squishy meat brains.
A Bit Rusty
Matt and Ben discuss the Rust programming language, recall some hobby projects they've used it for, and speculate about where else it might be used, such as embedded rust. Ben tries to remember how Ethereum works, and fails. Matt makes a ray tracer and a Weird Al reference.
Swift (with Doug Gregor)
Ben and Matt chat about the Swift programming language with special guest (and Swift creator) Doug Gregor. Doug teaches us a thing or two about Swift's design, and how it could possibly be a C++ successor. Matt rambles; Ben asks intelligent questions.
Carbon Footprint
Ben and Matt talk Carbon, the new language backed by Google, designed to be a successor to C++. Matt discusses his involvement with the project. Ben asks questions and cracks wise.
Weird Webapps
Matt and Ben discuss the idiosyncratic way that they learned to build web applications for trading. If latency and correctness were paramount, and you could tell all your users which browser they had to use, what would you do? Here's what we did.
Virtual Infrastructure
Ben and Matt compare container technologies like Docker to virtual machines, and discuss the tradeoffs when deploying applications. Matt explains the scary things that can happen when you share a VM with strangers. A visitor enters through the couch.
Golf for Hackers
Matt and Ben talk, about uh...golf? What? Is this right? Did you check this? Apparently, in this episode, Ben explains how technology and analytical advances in golf have dramatically changed the game. Matt gently prods him on.
Async Whatevers
Ben and Matt talk about various styles of asynchronous programming, ranging from Node.js, Ruby's EventMachine, C++ coroutines, and the new JVM Project Loom. Schedule yourself a listen, won't you?
Terrible Business Ideas
Matt and Ben both recall their prior adventures founding companies that sold tools for software developers. What's the best approach to this business? Go play a nice video game instead.
Java and/or C++?
Ben and Matt have a work conversation spill over into podcast. Join our hosts as they compare Java and C++ as two possible languages for a new project.
Compile-Time Programming (with Hana Dusíková)
Ben and Matt are joined by Hana Dusíková and discuss panoramic photographs, Matt's career peak, and compile-time programming, including her ground-breaking regular expression library. Links from the show: Hana's Panoramic photos CTRE library Hana's slides
Performance
Our most efficient podcast ever. Ben and Matt talk performance testing and optimization in fewer than 30 minutes.
Building Games Two Ways
Matt and Ben talk about their experiences creating games, both digital and analog. Matt recalls building games for the XBox, Dreamcast, and PS2. Ben talks about what makes board games fun, and how to lose your friends through playtesting.