Hey all! Since episode 82, we received a ton of email asking for more info on functional programming (FP). To cover FP in great detail we are thrilled to chat with Adam Bell. Adam is the host of the Corecursive podcast and an engineer with many years of experience in FP. In this episode, we dive into what FP is all about, when it's useful, static/dynamic typing (our favorite topic), and other areas of FP. Thanks again for all of your emails and support. It is a treasure to hear your inspirationa...
Jun 19, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 91
Hey all!! Ask and ye shall receive! Someone in the Programming Throwdown discord suggested that we cover terminals and shells, so here we are! Despite sounding simple on the surface, there's decades of complexity around terminal emulators and system shells. Patrick and I unpack this and more in today's episode! Thanks so much for all of your emails and support on Patreon! It's your enthusiasm and financial support that enable us to teach so many people, and we are eternally grateful for your sup...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 90
Hey all!! Today we are sitting down with Jerome Hardaway. Jerome is an Air Force Veteran and the founder of Vets Who Code: a non-profit dedicated to training Veterans in web development and connecting Veterans to hiring managers around the World. Whether you have served in the military or not, this inspiring podcast gives us all a glimpse into the boots of someone who rotated into a career in software development after school, and is full of great advice for newcomers to the field. Learn more ab...
Apr 30, 2019•2 hr 38 min•Ep. 89
If you use ASCII encoding, the entire Oxford dictionary is about 5 million bytes. A single 4K image contains 25 million bytes. If you watch a 4K video running at 60 frames-per-second, over 300 dictionaries worth of data are going through your tv every second. Let that sink in for a moment. One of the most magical areas of engineering is image processing. Everything from the way the images are stored to advanced AI techniques like face recognition have mind-boggling complexity. In this episode, w...
Apr 01, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 88
While the web is one of the easiest platforms for deploying software, it can also be one of the trickiest to debug. People have many different browsers, and some have plugins or settings that restrict functionality. It may be extremely difficult to reproduce errors on your development machine. As a result, we want to discover as many errors as possible before we launch a new site. With node.js and people running javascript on the server, static checks become even more important. Enter typescript...
Mar 04, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 87
Happy New Year! Today we are sitting down with Stephen Wolfram, inventor of Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, and Wolfram Language! In this super interesting episode, Stephen talks us through his journey as a mathematician, software architect, and language inventor. It was truly an honor to talk to Stephen and hear about his decades of experience. Check this interview out and give us feedback! Show notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2019/01/episode-86-wolfram-language-and.html ★ Support this ...
Jan 15, 2019•2 hr 17 min•Ep. 86
Hey all! This is our annual holiday show! We give away prizes and talk about random news stories :-D. Thanks to everyone who chatted with us on Discord, and looking forward to a super exciting 2019! I'll be sending an email to all prize winners later today! Show notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2019/01/episode-85-holiday-party.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Jan 02, 2019•58 min•Ep. 85
Hey all! How do you find and triage bugs on other people's machines when they don't have the source code (or the knowledge to build it)? That's what we explain in today's episode! It's one of the topics that's rarely spoken about but extremely important to get right before shipping any software product. Happy hacking! This is the last episode before our Christmas special! If you are a patron, make sure Patreon has your up to date address so we can mail prizes! If you aren't on Patreon, sign up b...
Dec 04, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 84
Hey all! First of all, sorry for the delay in publishing Oct's episode. There are some pretty intense wildfires close to where we live, but it looks like things are getting under control. Huge thanks to all the firefighters! In this episode Patrick and I talk about teaching kids to code! We discuss how we learned to code and what are ways to build logic and reasoning skills in kids of all ages. Also we talk about ways to get kids excited about the fundamentals behind coding and solving problems....
Nov 13, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 83
Hey everyone! This episode is an absolutely fascinating interview with Jonas Bonér, creator of Akka. We dive into reactive programming, the actor model, and the Akka toolkit. Jonas also describes his journey as a developer that led him to create Akka and found Lightbend with Martin Odersky, the creator of Scala. Jonas brings a ton of in-depth technical discussion, so buckle up! :-) Show Notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/09/episode-82-reactive-programming-and.html ★ Support this po...
Sep 28, 2018•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 82
Hey all! Since setting up the #questions channel in discord, a lot of you have written some phenominal and thought-provoking questions both there and via email, so this is a great time to go back through our favorites and answer them in a Mailbag episode! Thanks for your support by checking out our Books of the Show links and our audible and patreon links! I was able to send out all the domestic Christmas gifts (email me if you haven't gotten yours!) but we could not ship them Internationally. I...
Sep 06, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 81
What is a thread/process? How can you speed up a program that requires a lot of compute resources? How can you have a single machine serve web pages to 100s of people, some of whom have slow connections? Patrick and I answer these questions on today's show: Concurrency! We have also set up a discord channel! We will be posting news stories as we find them and also record the show live! Check out our channel here: https://discord.gg/r4V2zpC Show Notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/07...
Jul 31, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 80
Sunday is a non-traditional day for a new episode and this is definitely a non-traditional episode! Today we are talking about Technical Arguments. We cover the most common arguments/debates you will have on the job as a software engineer and how to make the best arguments to reach the best decisions with the least amount of friction. Patrick and I tried not to inject our own opinions, but it's hard not to add our two cents (yes, spaces really are better). This episode is the first of a potentia...
Jul 01, 2018•2 hr 32 min•Ep. 79
Web services are for much more than building websites: they are one of the most common techniques for passing information among programs. Creating a web API for your program is a great way to access it from a browser, another program, or a mobile app. Today we chat with Abhinav Asthana, CEO of Postman, about building, scaling, and testing web services! Show Notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/05/episode-78-building-and-testing-web.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
May 31, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 78
Julia may be the most requested language we have ever received on the show, so Patrick and I took some time of the past few weeks to get familiar with Julia and share our findings. Overall, it's a really slick language that has data and process parallelism built into the language, so it will run on many threads or even many machines without having to design a communication system by hand. Show Notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/05/episode-77-julia.html ★ Support this podcast on Pat...
May 02, 2018•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 77
Writing documentation is an art and there aren't many cut-and-dry rules that will guarantee the right documentation quality. In this episode Patrick and I chat about our lessons learned and also cover a bunch of ways to document and write self-documenting code. Show Notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/04/episode-76-code-documentation.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Apr 04, 2018•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 76
Ever want to build your own robot? We explain how to do this using Arduino! Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/03/episode-75-arduino.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Mar 05, 2018•2 hr 38 min•Ep. 75
Today we discuss Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts with Amy Wan, CEO of Sagewise. Amy has a legal background and combines this with expertise in cryptocurrency, blockchain, ICOs, and smart contracts. Show Notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/01/episode-74-cryptocurrency-smart.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Jan 30, 2018•59 min•Ep. 74
How can you use all of the computers in your lab/office at the same time to speed up tasks? Today we talk with Dori Exterman, CTO of Incredibuild, about parallel computing and the awesome tool Incredibuild has created that can run any multi-process program on several machines. Show Notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/12/episode-73-parallel-computing-with.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Dec 19, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 73
How can you maintain a separate version of your app/site in all langauges and locales? How do you handle right-to-left text, various currencies, and a bunch of languages with non-ascii characters? We explain all this and more in Internationalization! Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/11/episode-72-internationalization.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Nov 28, 2017•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 72
Today, we are going to talk about... office space! Not the hilarious 1999 movie directed by Mike Judge, but modern office spaces for engineers and developers. We cover office setups, desk setups, amenities, and more! We won't cover IDEs (check out episode 55 for that) but we do cover how to code comfortably. Show Notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/10/episode-71-office-spaces.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Oct 30, 2017•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 71
Did you know that there was a programming language co-invented by a consortium of government offices and top businesses (at the time)? Today we talk about that language: COBOL, and also discuss the mainframe computers of that era that ran COBOL. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/09/episode-70-cobol-and-mainframes.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...
Sep 28, 2017•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 70
Today we chat with Mark Engelberg about his background in software engineering and game design. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/08/episode-69-puzzle-games-with-mark.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Aug 17, 2017•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 69
Today we chat with John Sonmez about soft skills: communication, self-motivation, learning to learn, and negotiation, Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/07/episode-68-soft-skills-with.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Jul 19, 2017•2 hr 43 min•Ep. 68
Today we explain how cryptocurrency works and why it is possible to buy and sell electonic currency. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/06/episode-67-cryptocurrency.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Jun 30, 2017•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 67
In this episode we explain how code reviews work and why they are so important. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/05/episode-66.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
May 30, 2017•57 min•Ep. 66
In this episode we interview Josh and Adam from Kobiton. They describe the challenges with releasing a mobile app for many platforms, and how Kobiton allows one to test their app on many devices in the cloud. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/05/episode-65-testing-on-mobile-with.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
May 15, 2017•49 min•Ep. 65
In this episode we explain how data is encrypted and decrypted, and how you can use encryption in the things you build. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/03/episode-64-cryptography.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Mar 30, 2017•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 64
In this episode we interview Spencer Gibb and Mark Heckler from Pivotal, the company behind Spring Framework: a set of powerful enterprise Java libraries and services. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/02/episode-63-spring-framework.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Feb 28, 2017•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 63
On this show we discuss PHP and Hack, an language that extends PHP. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/01/episode-62-php-and-hack.html ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Jan 24, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 62
