The Future of Coding podcast features interviews with toolmakers, researchers, computational artists, educators, and engineers, all with compelling viewpoints on what the future of computing could be.
Compassion & Programming: Glen Chiacchieri
Glen Chiacchieri has worked at the MIT Media Lab on Scratch, at Dynamicland with Bret Victor, and is now becoming a psychotherapist. He's known for his Legible Mathematics essay, his Flowsheets programming prototypes, and the Laser Socks game, among many other projects. In this conversation, we discuss: how he grounds his research in compassion, the tradeoffs between working on the "model vs UI" of programming, his software-company-in-the-making, based on Flowsheets, our shared dream for the future of open-source READMEs, and how Dynamicland does and does not point towards the future. The notes for this conversation can be found at futureofcoding.org/episodes/26. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You Should Consider Some States Kevin Lynagh
Kevin Lynagh is a designer specializing in user interfaces for complex systems. He co-created Subform, a CAD-inspired UI design tool, with Ryan Lucas, which got a thousand backers on Kickstarter. He recently created Sketch.systems, an interactive playground for designing system behavior using Statecharts (hierarchical state machines). In this conversation, we discuss direct manipulation, Statecharts, challenges of layout engines, visual programming languages, the Clojure community, constraint systems, and the three different types of programmers. futureofcoding.org/episodes/25 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Stop Being A Sysadmin For Your Own Machine: Nick Santos
Do you hate Makefiles and YAML config files? Do you feel your soul slowly dying as you wait for your tests to run? Do you yearn for even-more-continuous integration? Nick Santos, the CTO and founder of Windmill Engineering, is here to help. Windmill's a cloud-based build-system that intelligently runs your relevant tests in the cloud, in parallel on every file save. How's that for a tight feedback loop? futureofcoding.org/episodes/24 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Teaching Abstraction: Brent Yorgey
Brent Yorgey is a professor of math and CS at Hendrix College. He studys functional programming in Haskell, type systems, and category theory, and more. He is the creator of the diagrams vector graphics Haskell library. He taught Introduction to Haskell and The Art of Recursion at the University of Pennslyvaia (which were my two favorite classes in college!). In this conversation, we talk about Brent’s Monad Tutorial Fallacy essay, type systems, FRP, essential vs accidental complexity in Haskell, and the perils of reading academic CS papers and ways to overcome them. http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/23 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Learning Programming At Scale: Philip Guo
Philip Guo researches ways to scale programming education beyond the classroom. He is the creator of Python Tutor (http://pythontutor.com/), a widely-used code visualization and collaborative learning platform, and an assistant professor at UC San Diego. In this episode, we discuss why diverse groups of people study CS, his various prototypes, and the differences between technological research and industry. http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/22 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Building for Developers: Aidan Cunniffe
My guest this week, Aidan Cuniffee, is the founder of two startups in this space, first Dropsource and now Optic. Aidan and I discuss the trade-offs between creating tools for developers vs non-programmers. We also get to hear some of the upcomming features to expect from Optic. We finish off the interview with a fun theoretical discussion of notation, representation, conciseness and learnability. http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/21 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Coding On (the) Beach: Jason Brennan
Jason Brennan is a Canadian computer scientist focused on education and computing. He’s worked at Hopscotch and Khan Academy. We discussed his experiences building multiple programming language platforms, the incomprehensibly large vision of Alan Kay, and his new project Beach. http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/20 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Building Universe: Joe Cohen
Like many of us, Joe Cohen fell in love with HyperCard. Three years ago, he founded Universe to re-imagine HyperCard for the modern day. In this interview, Joe walks us through his initial vision for Universe, and the pivots along the way. It's a refreshing story about balancing pie-in-the-sky vision with shorter-term customer needs. You can find the demo videos that Joe references here: http://futureofcoding.org/19-building-universe-joe-cohen.html Most importantly, you can download Universe for iPhone here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-build-a-website/id1211437633 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Research Recap Nine: Constructing My Crusade
Excited to be back after sickness and vacation! The notes for this episode can be found here: http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/18-research-recap-nine.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Bootstrapping Bubble.is: Emmanuel Straschnov
Many of you may have never heard of Bubble.is. That's because they don't build for developers. They build for business people who need to create technology but can't afford to work with developers. Over the past four years, Emmanual and his cofounder Josh have bootstrapped their drag-and-drop website builder into a profitable business. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Research Recap Eight: Life & Work Planning
Back in action after my two-week, sore-throat-induced hiatus, I reflect on my work over the past weeks on my Life Plan and Work Plan. If you make it to the end of this episode, you’ll also get some off-the-cuff tips for ergonomic workstation design. You can view the notes for this episode here: futureofcoding.org/episodes/16-research-recap-eight-life-and-work-planning.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Raising Genius with Scott Mueller
Scott Mueler is the founder of UCode, an after school coding program in California, which he created after teaching his then six-year-old son Ken to code. Scott tells us about how he developed his parenting/teaching/curricular philosophy, and how all educators and parents can apply these principles to raise geniueses of their own. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Research Recap Seven - Master Planning
Inspired by Juan Benet (and Elon Musk), I zoomed out last week and thought about my "master plan" for this project. You can see a detailed outline for this episode with links here: http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/14-research-recap-six-master-planning.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Teaching Elm To 4th Graders: Christopher Anand
Most people consider ML-based langauges like Elm hard enough to learn as an adult. But according to Professor Christopher Anand of McMaster University, they work really well to introduce Computer Science to children, starting in 4th grade! In this episode, Christopher and I explore the difference between alegbraic thinking and computational (or sequential) thinking, and why this is incredibly relevant today as the "coding for all" movement gains traction. You can view the notes for this episode online at http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/13-teaching-elm-to-4th-graders-christopher-anand.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Research Recap Six: CycleJS Deep Dive
The last two weeks were all about CycleJS. In order to create visual spreadsheet metaphors for CycleJS stream combinators, I need to have a better understanding of how CycleJS works, and so I played around with it by building a CycleJS Flappy bird. I also spend time recently playing with spreadsheets and Clay. You can read more at my journal (futureofcoding.org/journal). See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.