The stories and people behind the code. Hear stories of software development from interesting people.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs with Hal Abelson
Adam talks to Hal Abelson about the textbook he coauthored in 1984, SICP and why it is still popular and influential today. "If you pick up almost any computing book it starts out 'here are these datatypes, these operations that you do' and somewhere around 20 or 30% through the book, they show you how to define a function or a procedure. Whereas we really take the opposite approach. We say the key thing is abstraction. So we kind of start there." "The axe [the book] is grinding is that people write programs to do one particular thing. And then the price of that is that a whole lot of software engineering ends up being trying to get out of the hole you dug yourself into because you made a program that was too specific." SICP Lectures The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Hal Interview https://corecursive.com/039-hal-abelson-sicp/
Open Source Health and Diversity with Heather C Miller
Heather C Miller is an Assistant Processor at CMU. She is concerned that key open source projects are at risk of failure and no one is paying attention. Adam talks to her about open source, how it grows, the diversity problems it has and much more. Heather also shares some interesting stories about the early days of Scala and her ideas for increasing diversity in tech. Heather's JuliaCon keynote Digital Infrastructure Scala Center https://corecursive.com/038-heather-miller-open-source/
Compiling to Bytecode with Thorsten Ball
What do compilers do? What is the runtime of a language? What does it mean to compile something down to bytecode and what executes the byte code. Throsten Ball Answers these questions in this interview with Adam. "A virtual machine is a computer built-in software, a CPU built-in software" "Compilers can be slow. You know, I grew up running Linux and I had Gentoo running, so I basically let my computer run for the whole night to compile my window manager. So I do know how slow compilers can be and the reason they're slow is because you're paying the upfront costs that an interpreter pays at runtime. You're paying a little bit more because you're doing additional optimizations. You're shifting the cost to a point in time where you're happy to pay it." Writing a compiler in GO GCC Codebase Mirror LLVM Codebase TCC Compiler C in 4 functions 8CC - small self hosting compiler https://corecursive.com/037-thorsten-ball-compilers/
Bartosz Milewski on Category Theory
Today Adam talks to Bartosz Milewski. He is the author of a famous blog series, lecture series and now book on Category Theory for programmers. The world of functional programming is rife with terminology imported from abstract algebra and Category Theory. In fact, it may be one of the most valid criticisms of functional programming is the use of Category-Theoretic terminology that can be unwelcoming to newcomers. Category theory can also be a tool to teach us to see software development in a different light and it can teach us to build better software. Bartosz is also just an interesting person, if you haven't heard of him yet, you are in for a treat. Bartosz's Website Blog Series Book Lecture Series https://corecursive.com/035-bartosz-milewski-category-theory/
Jimmy Koppel on Advanced Software Design
How do we create great software? What are the important skills need to properly review a PR? How do you identify assumptions of a code base and the stable contracts of a software module? Jimmy Koppel is working on his Ph.D. in the field of program synthesis at MIT. He was previously paid 100 thousand dollars to drop out of university by Peter Thiel, but yet still graduated with two degrees. The most interesting, however, about Jimmy is he is working hard to teach the world how to design better software. Due to his time working on program synthesis, he developed some unique insights into what makes software good, and what makes it bad, and he spends time teaching people his insights. Three Level of Software Peter Thiel 20 under 20 Benjamin Franklin Method You are a Program Synthesizer Jimmy's Coaching Program Episode Page: https://corecursive.com/036-jimmy-koppel-advanced-software-design/
Typescript
How do we make javascript easier to work with? Chris Krycho has been using typescript to add types to javascript since 2016. Chris is a software developer at LinkedIn who, at his previous gig, worked on converting one of the largest Ember apps in the world to TypeScript. I was shocked by the size. Chris also loves Rust and types and is a former C and FORTRAN programmers. He hosted a podcast called the New Rustacean, which he has retired from. Today we talk about TypeScript and when you should use it. We also talk about Language Server Protocols, Rust, working with large codebases, Structural types, row polymorphism and talking code over audio. Chris's Blog TypeScript New Rustacean Chris's Typescript Refinement types in TypeScript Winning Slowly Podcast https://corecursive.com/034-chris-krycho-typescript/
Rethinking Technological Positivism with Cory Doctorow
Self-driving cars or armed autonomous military robots may make use of the same technologies. In a certain sense, we as software developers are helping to build and shape the future. What does the future look like and are we helping build the right one? Is technology a force for liberty or oppression. Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors and also a public intellectual with a keen insight into the dangers we face a society. In this interview, I ask him how to avoid ending up in a techno-totalitarian society. We also talk about Turing, DRM, data mining and monopolies. The coming war on general computation Cory's Personal Site Radicalized (and other books) EFF Website for Page
Crafting Interpreters With Bob Nystrom
Bob Nystrom is the author of Crafting Interpreters. I speak with Nystrom about building a programming language and an interpreter implementation for it. We talk about parsing, the difference between compiler and interpreters and a lot more. If you are wondering why many languages have hand-rolled parser implementations yet much work on build language implementations focuses on parser and tokenizer generators then Bob's insights will be eye-opening. Also, if you've ever used regexes to pull strings apart into structured data, and I sure have, then Bob's perspective on the simplicity of hand-rolled parsers will certainly open up some new possibilities for you. Links: http://craftinginterpreters.com/ http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/
Rethinking databases and Noria with Jon Gjengset
Can we make databases faster and remove the need for caching reads in an external cache? Can we make a distributed SQL based relational database that outperforms memcached? Jon Gjengset and the PDOS team at MIT CSAIL have done just that with Noria. Today I talk to Jon about Noria, about building a database in rust and his efforts to teach people intermediate rust via live coding sessions. Jon was great to talk to. He really was able to explain to me how Noria is able to do what it does and where it is in terms of maturity. The key, besides Rust and evmaps, is that Noria uses materialized views to do query optimization ahead of time, on write. The devil is in the details though, of course. And the details, in this case, are turning declarative SQL into a dataflow program that handles cache updates on new writes. http://corecursive.com/030-rethinking-databases-with-jon-gjengset/ Show notes: Noria Project pdos group at MIT Noria Paper Noria Article Jon's Rust Streaming
Learning to Think with Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Programmers guide to being productive
Andy Hunt is a celebrity in the world of software development. Or at least he is one to me. The Pragmatic Programmer is a classic book on software development book. He is an author of the agile manifesto and started the book company that has published many great books, including several by recent guests. Today I talk to Andy about how software engineers can get better at thinking and learning. How can we develop this meta-skill and how can being aware of common mistakes our brain make us more productive? Show notes: The Pragmatic Programmer Pragmatic Thinking and Learning Conglommora Webpage for Episode
Data and Scale with Pat Helland - The long view on distributed databases
Pat Helland has a wealth of knowledge on building distributed data stores. He has been working on distributed data stores since 1978, when he worked on the tandem fault-tolerant database. Since then he has been involved in many distributed database projects. Here is the key thing, he is also a master at explaining the key ideas of distributed systems using simple language and practical everyday examples. Can you get married on the phone? How are messaging systems and idempotence like regional offices communicating via fax machine? These are the type of metaphor that Pat uses. Today, Pat sits down with me and teaches me about dealing with data in a distributed, fault tolerant, infinitely scaling world. Webpage : http://corecursive.com/028-data-pat-heland/ Links: Pat's articles ON ACM QUEUE Mind your state for your state of mine Consistency Eventually Standing on Distributed Shoulders of Giants The Singular Success of SQL Life Beyond Distributed Transactions
Abstraction and Learning with Runar Bjarnason
What is abstraction? Can we have a precise definition of abstraction that, once understood, makes writing software simpler? Runar has thought a lot about abstraction and how we can choose the proper level of abstraction for the software we write. In this interview, he explains these concepts using examples from the real world, from SQL, from effectful computing and many other areas. We also talk about how to learn and acquire the skills necessary to understand abstract concepts like very polymorphic code and category theory. Runar also explains his latest project unison computing and how it uses the correct level of abstraction to rethink several foundation ideas in software development. Links: Constraints Liberate Maximally Powerful, Minimally Useful Unison Computing Webpage for show
Modern Systems Programming And Scala Native With Richard Whaling
Richard Whaling has an interesting perspective on software development. If you write software for the JVM or if you are interested in low level system programming, or even doing data heavy or network heavy IO programming then you will find this interview interesting. We discuss how to build faster software in a modern fashion by using glibc and techniques from system programming. This means using raw pointers and manual memory management but from a modern language. Richard also shares some perspectives on better utilizing the underlying operating system and how we can build better software by depending on services rather than libraries. Links: Beej's Guide to C Beej's Guide to Unix Interprocess Communication Beej's Guide to Network Programming Gary Bernhardt's Destroy All Software Screencasts (Web Server from Scratch, Malloc from scratch, shell from scratch) Stevens & Rago Systems Programming books: Advanced Programming UNIX Environment Unix Network Programming - Sockets UNIX Network programming - Interprocess Communication
Burn out and recreational coding with Jamis Buck
A decade ago Jamis Buck was not loving his job. He was an important open source contributor. He worked for the hottest trendiest software company at the time, 37 signals, creator of ruby on rails. He was on top of the world but also he was burnt out. Today Jamis talks about how he overcame burn out. We discuss how his struggle lead him to write a book about generating mazes and another about building a ray tracer. His books are great fun, and all about recreational programming. You will learn to build things with a focus not on the latest trends in software development and not even a specific programming language. The focus instead is on fun.
Software as a Reflection of Values With Bryan Cantrill
Which operating system is the best? Which programming language is the best? What text editor? Bryan Cantrill, CTO of Joyent says that is the wrong question. Languages, operating systems and communities have to make trade offs and they do that based on their values. So the right language is the one who's values align with you and your projects goals. This simple idea carries a lot of weight and I think has the potential to lift up technical discussions to a higher level of discourse. You will find it to be a helpful frame next time you need to make a technical decision. Bryan is also pretty excited about how the values of the rust community align with his values for system software. Also we cover Oberon, Clean and Simula 4, none of which I've never heard of and how IBM System/370 's Global Trace Facility doesn't hold a candle to Dtrace. Webpage for this episode Show Links: Software Values Slides The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System Microsoft should buy github All Bryan's Talks Slack Channel for Site