Conversations about programming. By Andreas Ekeroot and Lars Wikman, funded by Underjord.io.
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About Learning New Languages
Everyone's favorite idempotent podcast returns to discuss learning new languages and concepts. Can mixing and matching new concepts and syntax help or hinder language adoption? A new concept but a familiar syntax might make a language easier for all the drifting Javascript developers to grab on to.Lars considers picking up a lisp at some point.It's harder to pick up new languages when you're mainly keen on building. Lars is very much in a building phase. He has problems, but they are his problems.Lars is currently learning - among other things - by working with other people, putting himself out there, and arranging a conference.LinksAlan PerlisA language that does not affect the way you're thinking is not worth knowingDomain-specific languagesRailsPhoenixElixirErlangPrologGleamElmThe CodeBEAM Gleam keynote by Hayleigh Thompson and Louis Pilfold is not out in video form yetAnt (the build system)BashXLST - Extensible Stylesheet Language TransformationsXquerySAX parserSweetXmlExercism course on GleamLustre web frameworkSprocket web framework - Gleam-style implementation of LiveviewOTPAtomVMCardputerREPL - read-eval-print loopNIFGHC - the Haskell compilerLuaDave Lucia and Robert Virding talking about Lua on the BEAM - also not out in video form yetThe Konami codeUiuaZFSEvan - creator of Elm - in Kodsnack 604SmalltalkPony
About C
Wherein the wonders of C are explored.But first, let Andreas tell you what's so great about Chalmers' approach to teaching computer engineering. Spoiler: starting with Haskell, close to math.The tooling around C: cultural mystery meat.Lars tries out a shocking plan for a productive framework for C!It's very cool to be able to just poke memory. Memory, arrays, structs, and strings are discussed. Strings are a bundle of fun. Arrays are desugared.Finally, a dive into the wonderful world of interoperability, both with and without C directly involved.LinksRustCD latchesGymnasiet - roughly upper secondary school or high schoolC++AutotoolsAutoconfLinux from scratchSlackwareDebianMakefilesBashGNU MakeBuildrootCmakeZigTOMLIsaac who does Zigler for ElixirPOSIXWin32 API:sLibuvSIMDB-treeRedisErlang NIFCocoa - the wild Elixir community member integrating stuffOpenCVPythonx - run Python from within ElixirLuaLuerlLFE - Lisp flavoured ErlangFennel - lispier LuaChicken Scheme
About Defining Functional Programming
What is functional programming?Andreas grabs his whiteboard and his Turing machine, and starts from laziness, while Lars thinks of immutability, functions, and data.Is syntax important for being functional or not?The functionalness of various languages are delved into, from Haskell to Rust via Python, Go, and Ruby. And, of course, the evil version of Elixir.A good pipeline can be really nice.Oh, and you shouldn't use witchcraft anymore.LinksFunctional programmingHaskellLazy evaluationLambda calculusTuring machinesAlonzo ChurchGödel - "A German guy" who formalized the definition general recursive functionsImmutabilityPure functionsWitchcraftContinuation passingPartial applicationCurryingThe ML language familyWhy the lucky stiffSam AaronSonic piRocClojureAST - abstract syntax treeUVThe UV company: AstralMemoizationSingleton
About Giving Talks
Lars wants a less demanding way to prepare for giving talks, but he doesn't have the time right now.Andreas knows a cheat code for public speaking. Lars uses slides like a blunt instrument.How should you wield your slides? How do you weigh information content against entertainment value? Should you try to reach precisely everyone with your talk? Many slides, or few? Lars has the questions, and some of the answers, at least for himself.Last but not least, Lars reveals his current way of preparing for talks. It ideally involves getting quite bored.LinksProof of Andreas speaking in publicSverokBeamer - write your slides in LaTeXLars' Gigcity Elixir talkJosé ValimChris McCordØredevLars' Øredev talkLars Lisbon talk - Lively LiveViewCode BEAM BerlinJon CarstensNull modemErlang clustersWireguardOpen source summitAnother brick in the wall
About Developer Experience
What are people talking about when they talk about developer experience? Pretty colors in the terminal?What is worth improving, what is not? Lars has thoughts about all of developer experience, not least the one of Nerves. How flaky do you accept, for how fast?Revealed: why all Andreas' Elm programs are one line long.Also: Why not attend the Øredev developer conference in Malmö this November? LinksDX - developer experienceElmLanguage serverElixir's brand new official language server team unifies the work of the previous separate teamsThe Elm language serverMix - Elixir build toolNervesNervesHubNerves CloudBuildrootVintage - network configuration and management for Nerves devicesREPL - Read-evaluate-print loopCcacheIEx - Elixir's interactive shellHyllieØredevYoctoSKFBredbandsbolagetNervesHubLinkOTPSmalltalkLisp machinesBeam RadioBryan HunterRebar3
About Endings and Beginnings
Andreas' place of work ceased to exist.It was mostly a relief.The main worry is about resting and recovering enough before whatever comes next begins. All the learnings about how not to do certain things live on.The right way of doing those things still remains to be learned.Lars is on the other end of the spectrum: beginning completely new things. Figuring out where exactly Delaware is, finding a Nerves-shaped Elixir hole, wading through Python scripts, and so much more.Also: Why not attend the Øredev developer conference in Malmö this November? LinksLönegaranti - wage guaranteeUppsägningstid - notice periodAriaHyllieØredevFrank Hunleth talking about NervesNervesRaspbianRaspberry pi 3Raspberry pi zeroAdafruitInky pHAT e-ink displayLars' ported Inky libraryBuildrootYoctoNervesHubJosh KalderimisTravis CINerves CloudMilwaukeeDelawareStripe AtlasHeartbleedShellshockStagefrightRow hammerCrowdStrikeFlickswitchSmartRent
About Non-CRUD
CRUD - a classic term among supposedly simple web apps. But, not always the right move? Not always all that mappable to the actual problem?Discussed: picking spicy architectures, non-CRUD data storage needs, slovely solutions, dirty refunds, and doing the OAuth dance.Hey, thing happened!Finally: a story where pubsub was reasonable, and some telemetry.LinksCRUD - Create, read, update, deleteDjangoRuby on railsPhoenixAshRethinkDBMnesiaPlausible analyticsTimescaleClickhouseNervesconfAlex McLainNervesCubDBRocksDBDynamoDBThe DynamoDB paperEctoOAuth
About Embedded
Embedded is a weird thing. Lars is all Nerves and tries to explain and report from a world where people know part numbers off the top of their heads. The physical device missing is rarely a thing that happens in web development.Embedded-style work can sneak into other areas as well. Without a root file system, everything is a lot more secure. Security is a deep topic in general, and WPA is not just for wifi.Andreas shares his view of what "embedded" means, plus the story of building a really bad audio cable.LinksRaspberry piNervesFrank HunlethThreadripperCoral TPUTensor processing unitsAI kit for Raspberry pi 5Lars' Nervesconf talk is not out yetTI AM625ZephyrReal-time operating systemHAL - hardware abstraction layerHAL 9000OxideArm TrustzoneBuildrootLinux from scratchAlpineWolfiVintagenetwpa_supplicantEduroam802.1xPAP MS-CHAPEAPEAP-TLSOrangepiGet secrets by shooting lasers at security chipsNonceHMAC
About Interviewing
Andreas is a man of many hobbies. Interviewing for example. But sometimes, you get strange questions from strange people, end up feeling scared, or start lying just a bit. Then, perhaps, you tell the story of a bug. Perhaps we shouldn't work during the winter?Lars doesn't have interviews. More like sales calls. H§e shares his experiences of how to recruitment, both as part of interviews and as a more straightforward recruiter.Finally: the secret to everything Lars does.LinksPercy NilegårdHiring Processes with Gergely Orosz - Oxide and Friends (podcast)The Indiana Jones switchGigcity ElixirLars' conference reportChattanoogaNervesAmazon AuroraRewriting the Technical Interview
About Ranting at Ecto
Stories about Ecto quickly redeeming itself, and of what it takes to introduce foreign keys.Some of us are super comfortable referencing the ID. Lars dislikes that Ecto needs to be more complicated because of SQL, but the abstractions do hold.Also: the biggest reason to ever use a ORM! It can be reallynice to come back to one after a tour of plain SQL-land.Some people have just been bitten so hard by cowboys.LinksEctoForeign keysRethinkDBReferential integrityAXALantmännenModelForm in DjangoCowboy and PlugDSLUpsertsFragmentsHaxl - DSL for creating queriesSQLAlchemyets
About Long-Lived Code
Fredrik wants to think about long-lived code. Lars is offended, Andreas only a little bit so.Are there other good software development practices out there? Other than the ones focusing on building something quickly? Practices for building software which lives on and is maintained for much longer than we seem to care to admit? Should we remove dependencies over time? The swamp of dependency management and vendoring is probed, gradually shifting into firmware, the horrors of floating point (proper excuses are made), small language models.Finally, of course, indecent cups of tea.LinksLagomReactFlux architectureReduxChangelog episode with Justin Searls about dependencies as liabilitiesKent Beck talking about managing risks in software developmentKent Beck drawing on a whiteboard and staring at the audienceMithril.jsInteract.jsVendoringWorking effectively with legacy code - the book about legacy systemsDelphi 5FlaskDynamic linkingSAMLPOSIXLibcGlibcMuslH.264MicrocodeOxide and friendsCoral TPU:sTensorflow lite286PentiumCUDAROCmQuantizationLLaMA
About Fat Tuesday Buns
The Saint Valentine's peak passed without issue. Andreas had time for semlor.Lars has opinions on semlor, and can imagine many possible improvements. Like having an apple. Or a pizza.Lars has had a nice influx of work, including hardware work using Nerves. Testing and very hackish hot code reloading are both included.Finally, some thoughts on Linux audio, and musings about the possibility of creating really nice audio tools for the platform.LinksSaint ValentineThe strangler fig patternThe strangler patternPhoenixCowboySemlaMudcakeThe Swedish chef making chocolate mooseFinnish fastlagsbulle with jamOne of Lars' blog posts about NervesFrank Hunleth - also hot code reloads the way Lars has doneLars' Stream deck library for ElixirStream deckElgato key lightPulseAudioPipeWireRogue amoeba's audio tools for MacJACKCustom APT repositoryQuotesThe Nordics go all awkward and weirdIn my heart, it was a catastrophyHad time for semlorAn unimpressive pastryIt's less messy to have an appleProfessional nervesBuilding with nervesA reasonable enough abstractionThe Rogue Amoeba for Linux
About things you built long ago that start doing weird things
Andreas tells the story of a old system which suddenly exhibited a new and frightening bug. Lars shares similar experiences of things going wrong in new and novel ways.When things do go wrong, it is so nice to have supervision trees or other things which allow you to hear about problems, not to mention recover from them.Also covered are some stories about TCP, networks, and timeouts. And a realization that testing the frameworks upon which you build could have saved some bacon, had it just been done a long time ago.LinksDjangoModel-view-controllerDrupalUnicode collationSupervision treesOxide and friends - episode 27TCP_NODELAYQUIC and HTTP/3UDPNyqvist-Shannon sampling theoremHexagonal designQuotesGaming convention management systemWhen I say view, I mean controllerView is a better wordIf I ignore it, it will go awayDestructive favouritesAlternative class hierarchiesFailed in new and novel waysBoth a mistake, and interestingAaah, circumflex!TCP the good parts
About Data Pipelines
Lars dove into data pipelines, and emerged bearing arrows and wishing for a lot fewer copies.What is there to think about regarding data pipelines, what is interesting about them?Which tools are out there, and why might you want to use them?Why all this talk about making fewer copies of data?What does Lars' current ideal pipeline look like, and where does Elixir fit in?Links Matt Topol Apache Arrow Large language models Vector search BigQuery sed AWK jq Replacing Hadoop with bash - "Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster" Hadoop MapReduce Unix pipes Directed acyclic graph tee - to "materialize inbetween states" Apache Beam Apache Spark Apache Flink Apache Pulsar Airbyte - shoves data between systems using connectors Cronjob Fivetran - Airbyte competitor Apache Airflow ETL - Extract, transform, load Designing data-intensive applications Stream processing Ephemerality Data lake Data warehouse The people's front of Judea DBT - SQL-SQL batch-work-thingy SQL with Jinja templates Snowflake - data warehouse thing Scala Broadway Oban - "robust job processing for Elixir" Dashbit pandas - Python data library APL Arrow flight GRPC DataFusion - query execution engine Polars - "DataFrames in Rust" Explorer - built on top of Polars Voltron data The Composable Codex Pyarrow - Arrow bindings for Python Quotes I've been reading a lot about data pipelines What's so special about data pipelines? There's a lot of special tooling There's a lot of bad, bad tooling Less than optimal tooling Converging on something biggerlk He got me eventually All of your steps in one bucket What tools do you associate with data? I inherited a data pipeline BashReduce Iterate on the L and the T The modern data stack And then you demand more work No unnecessary copies Barely a copy Reconnecting with my Python roots
About Fun With GenServers
GenServers are fun! Andreas gives all the context. Things were learned, knowledge was aquired. You can do so much with GenServers, but make sure you have a good reason.If you don't watch out, this is where concurrency goes to die.Dynamic supervisors, and their children, are thoroughly considered.Also delved into is the mess other ecosystems make of doing things at the same time, waiting, and so on.The strange worlds of C and other unusual languages are considered.Finally, an interesting bug.Links Alan Turing Turing machine GenServer Cowboy Plug Umbrella ETS - Erlang Term Storage Øredev The actor model Virding's first rule of programming Registry DynamicSupervisor The Goth library - Google auth library for Elixir The GIL - the global interpreter lock Friday afternoon deploy Promises Esbuild Uiua - "A stack-based array programming language" Prefix tree Packmatic library, by Evadne Wu - streaming zip archives Quotes Where the system grows horizontally The kind of thing that starts happening when you hire developers It was missing a hat I have become nothing, the simplifier of things Where all the concurrency goes to die A whole dance party of sad, dark people The children of the dynamic supervisor Homes can be nodes Hundreds of interested parties Turns life into promises Poking some C programmers