180: Reinforcement Learning

179: Project Planning

Intro topic: Lego event space & retail store: https://www.instagram.com/bambeecave News/Links: StackOverflow Question Count Going Down https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9f0b132 DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/20/deepseek-claims-its-reasoning-model-beats-openais-o1-on-certain-benchmarks/ Computer Science Papers Every Developer Should Read https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer...

178: Working from Home

Intro topic: Smart homes News/Links: SpaceX Starship Flight Test Five / Six https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKI7y3DTXk ShareDB https://github.com/share/sharedb Orion AR Glasses https://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/ Blade and Sorcery 1.0 is out https://www.meta.com/experiences/blade-sorcery-nomad/2031826350263349/ Book of the Show Patrick: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence https://amzn.to/4fry2XW Jason: Masters of Doom https://am...

177: Vector Databases

Intro topic: Buying a Car News/Links: Cognitive Load is what Matters https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load Diffusion models are Real-Time Game Engines https://gamengen.github.io/ Your Company Needs Junior Devs https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/09/07/your-team-needs-juniors Seamless Streaming / Fish Speech / LLaMA Omni Seamless: https://huggingface.co/facebook/seamless-streaming Fish: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech LLaMA Omni: https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni Book of the Sho...

176: MLOps at SwampUp

James Morse: Software Engineer at Cisco System Administrator to DevOps Difference between DevOps and MLOps Getting Started with DevOps Luke Marsden: CEO of Helix ML How to start a business at 15 years old BTRFS vs ZFS MLOps: the intersection of software, DevOps and AI Fine-tuning AI on the Cloud Some advice for folks interested in ML Ops Yuval Fernbach: CTO MLOps & JFrog Starting Qwak Going from a jupyter notebook to production ML Supply Chain Getting started in Machine Learning Stephen Chin...

175: Resume Writing

175: Resume Writing Intro topic: DSLR Photography vs Camera Phone News/Links: Free Internet while flying by abusing edits to your profile name https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/ Making Animated Characters with AI Art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSN76gb_Z28 On 10x Engineers https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/06/19/the-real-10x-developer-makes-their-whole-team-better/ The Beauty and Challenges of AI-Generated Artistic Gymnastics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwJIYj3hPAU Book of the Show Patric...

174: Devops

Intro topic: Social Media Auto Responder LLM News/Links: Amazon releases Amazon Q https://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/4/aws-announces-general-availability-of-amazon-q-the-most-capable-generative-ai-powered-assistant-for-accelerating-software-development-and-leveraging-companies-internal-data Cheap RiscV “Super Cluster” from Bitluni DIY 256-Core RISC-V super computer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3PgEXhdY CH32V203 Phi 3 Vision Released https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-models-added-t...

173: Mocking and Unit Tests

173: Mocking and Unit Tests Intro topic: Headphones News/Links: Texas A&M University Physics Festival https://physicsfestival.tamu.edu/ Rust vs Cpp at Google Lars Bergstrom (Google Director of Engineering): Rust teams at Google are as productive as the ones using Go and 2x those using Cpp https://youtu.be/6mZRWFQRvmw?t=27012 Is Cosine Similarity Really About Similarity https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05440 Xz utils supply chain attack Andres Freund at Microsoft https://arstechnica.com/security/20...

172: Transformers and Large Language Models

172: Transformers and Large Language Models Intro topic: Is WFH actually WFC? News/Links: Falsehoods Junior Developers Believe about Becoming Senior https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/falsehoods-junior-developers-believe-about-becoming-senior/ Pure Pursuit Tutorial with python code: https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/software/control-algorithms/basic-pure-pursuit Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYR7mmcwT2w PID without a PHD https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/pid/pidWithoutAPhd.pdf ...

171: Compilers and Interpreters

Intro topic: Monitor setups News/Links: BlueScuti, Willis, beats Tetris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU PalWorld accused of being an AI Product https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/22/palworld-accused-of-using-genai-with-no-evidence-so-far/?sh=26a9651b4239 4 Billion if-statements to determine if a number is even or odd https://andreasjhkarlsson.github.io/jekyll/update/2023/12/27/4-billion-if-statements.html Seamless M4T https://ai.meta.com/blog/seamless-m4t/ Book of the Sho...

170: 2023 Holiday Special Live

Predictions: Jason VR for Work Lowering AI training cost/ improved efficiency RISC-V takeoff Patrick Ai claim of AGI Ai peer reviewer Ai Video Generator More space vehicles reaching orbit Early career, finding role at FAANG, liaising vs shipping code. Startup? 3 part. 1. How and when current hype for AI will end? 2. Shape of the show 3. Upcoming in tech What are essential programmer knowledge items? CS Student, how to organize life and goals? What purpose life should serve? What kind of programm...

169: HyperLogLog

Intro topic: Testing your car battery News/Links: Tech Layoffs still going on https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/google-layoffs-california-companies-18465600.php Real-time dreamy Cloudscapes with Volumetric Raymarching https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/real-time-cloudscapes-with-volumetric-raymarching/ Robot Rascals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Rascals Meta Quest 3 https://www.theverge.com/23906313/meta-quest-3-review-vr-mixed-reality-headset Book of the Show Patrick: HyperLogLog ...

168: Godot

Intro topic: What are expectations on developers that have nothing to do with programming News/Links: Pushing for a lower dev estimate is like negotiating weather with a Meteorologist https://smartguess.is/blog/your-estimate-is-less-than-that/ Announcing python in excel https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439 7 Habits of Highly Effective Software Engineers https://makingsmallercircles.com/articles/7-habits-of...

167: Desktop User Interfaces

Intro topic: Jogging Metrics News/Links: Unholy LLM https://huggingface.co/Undi95/Unholy-v1-12L-13B The reverse red herring https://www.blameless.com/blog/the-reverse-red-herring The "ens–tification" of TikTok https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ Response letter to Godot is not the new Unity https://sampruden.github.io/posts/godot-is-not-the-new-unity/ https://gist.github.com/reduz/cb05fe96079e46785f08a79ec3b0ef21 Book of the Show Patrick: Math Games with Bad Drawings by B...

166: Speedy Database Queries with Lukas Fittl

- pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/ - Weekly series "5mins of Postgres": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDV_1Dz2Ixgl1nT_3DUZVFw - How Postgres chooses which index to use: https://pganalyze.com/blog/how-postgres-chooses-index - CMU databases courses: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/courses/ - Postgres community: https://www.postgresql.org/community/ As well as social links: - Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@lukas - Twitter/X: @pganalyze, @LukasFittl - GitHub: @pganalyze, @lfittl - LinkedIn: https://www.l...

165: Differential Equations

Intro topic: Revisiting the power of Spreadsheets News/Links: LK-99 Isn’t a Superconductor https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02585-7 Normalizing Flows https://pyro.ai/examples/normalizing_flows_i.html How is llama.cpp possible? https://finbarr.ca/how-is-llama-cpp-possible/ Chat with open source large language models https://chat.lmsys.org/ Book of the Show Patrick: Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin https://amzn.to/44dsgDz Jason: Overboard! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id...

164: Choosing a Database For Your Project With Kris Zyp

Things to consider when choosing a database Speed & Latency Consistency, ACID Compliance Scalability Language support & Developer Experience Relational vs. Non-relational (SQL vs. NoSQL) Data types Security Database environment Client vs Server access Info on Kris & Harper: Website: harperdb.io Twitter: @harperdbio, @kriszyp Github: @HarperDB, @kriszyp ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★...

163: Recursion

Episode 163 - Recursion Intro topic: Electric Cars News/Links: Snake Game in 101 Bytes in a QR Code https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/15ab4ct/my_qr_code_snake_game_is_now_only_101_bytes/ Superconductor Rumors abound https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/whats-going-on-with-the-reports-of-a-room-temperature-superconductor/ OpenWorm https://github.com/openworm/OpenWorm Creator of vim passes away https://news.itsfoss.com/vim-creator-passed-away/ Book of the Show Patrick: Little Book o...

162: Interactive Fiction

In the latest episode of Programming Throwdown, we delve into the captivating world of interactive fiction. We explore: Wordnet, Inform, and how games in the past have been the forerunners of today’s NLP challenges. 00:00:22 Introductions 00:00:39 To hard mode or not to hard mode 00:08:58 No moats in Google 00:16:37 Stable Diffusion blows Jason’s mind 00:21:31 Putting beats together 00:23:38 GPT4All 00:27:44 White Sand 00:35:28 Fortuna 00:38:55 Patrick’s ‘dirty’ secret 00:47:20 Wordnet 00:53:56 ...

161: Leveraging Generative AI Models with Hagay Lupesko

MosaicML’s VP Of Engineering, Hagay Lupesko, joins us today to discuss generative AI! We talk about how to use existing models as well as ways to finetune these models to a particular task or domain. 00:01:28 Introductions 00:02:09 Hagay’s circuitous career journey 00:08:25 Building software for large factories 00:17:30 The reality of new technologies 00:28:10 AWS 00:29:33 Pytorch’s leapfrog advantage 00:37:24 MosaicML’s mission 00:39:29 Generative AI 00:44:39 Giant data models 00:57:00 Data acc...

160: Position Localization

Where are you now? It’s a question that may seem easy to answer on the surface, but in truth hides more complexity than people expect. In today’s episode, we tackle the latest on AI, creative endeavors, and more before diving into the meaty discussion of position localization. 00:01:13 Steam Deck 00:11:22 Summoning Salt on Mario 00:16:49 100k stars 00:24:26 ChatGPT spam call 00:25:31 Build Your Own DB (from scratch) 00:29:50 DuckDB 00:35:07 Jason has an idea 00:37:58 Fighting Fantasy Classics 00...

159: GraphQL with Tanmai Gopal

GraphQL is one of the biggest API enablers in software development, but just how complicated can things be? Tanmai Gopal – Hasura’s CEO extraordinaire – talks with Jason and Patrick about how the secret sauce gets made. They dive deeply from how APIs function to having them managed in practice – among several other topic, making this a must-listen episode. 00:01:19 Introductions 00:01:48 Tanmai’s late start in programming 00:05:48 Plinko 00:13:06 Coursera 00:23:28 The question of API development...

158: Software Supply Chain with Bill Manning

In today’s episode, Jason and Patrick dive deeply with JFrog’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Bill Manning. With the conversation tackling the depth and complexity of software supply chains, vulnerabilities and more, Bill deftly offers grounded advice to listeners old and new. 00:00:26 Introductions 00:00:40 Bill’s plethora of job titles 00:09:33 The excitement of learning a language 00:15:08 Mechanical keyboards 00:21:17 Bill’s advice on adapting 00:27:55 What a supply chain is 00:34:28 Castle anal...

157: Kubernetes with Craig Box

There’s more than what meets the eye when it comes to Kubernetes, and Craig Box – ARMO’s VP of Open Source & Community –is one of several who have seen its many twists and turns since its inception. He talks with Jason and Patrick about Kubernetes’ origins in pop culture, utility in the modern workflow, and possible future in today’s episode. 00:01:31 Introductions 00:03:39 Craig’s early internet speed experience 00:07:46 An adventure towards Google 00:16:55 Project Seven 00:21:17 Mesos 00:2...

156: Perl and Regular Expressions

Should AI research be paused? How far ahead have deepfakes come? Join Patrick and Jason as they tackle their answers to these timely questions – plus an in-depth discussion on Perl in practice – with today’s episode of Programming Throwdown. Resources mentioned in this episode: Join the Programming Throwdown Patreon community today : https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h News/Links : GPT4All & Stanford Alpaca https://github.com/nomic-ai/gpt4all Giant AI Experiments 6 month pause ...

155: The Future of Search with Saahil Jain

When it comes to untangling the complexities of what lies ahead for search engines in this age of AI, few are as deeply versed in the subject as You.com Engineer Saahil Jain. Jason and Patrick talk with him in this episode about what search even is, what challenges lie ahead, and where the shift in paradigms can be found. 00:01:16 Introductions 00:02:06 How physics led Saahil to programming 00:07:20 Getting started at Microsoft 00:13:39 Analyzing human text input 00:22:22 The exciting paradigm s...

154: Python Again with Jason C. McDonald

A second Jason joins this episode of Programming Throwdown! Jason McDonald – Python evangelist, author, and more – talks to Patrick and Jason about his experience with the programming language, how his disability helped and hindered his software career, and where its strengths and weaknesses lie. 00:01:05 Introductions 00:02:27 Jason’s pivotal Doctor Who regeneration 00:04:49 The power of dialog boxes 00:10:10 Python’s power 00:12:37 How disability discrimination can look 00:17:40 Making vs play...

153: ChatGPT

ChatGPT has made a mark on the world as we know it, but that’s only the tip of the AI iceberg. Join us as we discuss how the field of artificial intelligence is growing – including some developments that might not be on your radar! 00:00:23 Introductions 00:02:01 Jason’s attic adventure 00:06:09 Comparing saws 00:10:57 Patrick’s surprisingly useful thing 00:12:21 SpaceX 00:17:31 Human motion diffusion model 00:20:47 37Signals 00:29:30 Polars 00:35:37 Books of the Show 00:46:11 Neon 00:50:33 Patr...

152: The Future Database with Sam Lambert

Databases are key to almost any project, large or small. Most database systems in the cloud are designed for heavy use and the costs can get expensive quickly, but database-as-a-service is a rapidly growing area, where many databases can share the same hardware for a much reduced rate, or even for free! Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale, joins Jason and Patrick to discuss database-as-a-service. 00:01:41 Introductions 00:02:34 Sam’s Github learning lesson 00:07:08 The day after 00:10:57 Getting sta...

151: Machine Learning Engineering with Liran Hason

Machine Learning Engineer is one of the fastest growing professions on the planet. Liran Hason, co-founder and CEO of Aporia, joins us to discuss this new field and how folks can learn the skills and gain the experience needed to become an ML Engineer! 00:00:59 Introductions 00:01:44 How Liran got started making websites 00:07:03 College advice for getting involved in real-world experience 00:12:51 Jumping into the unknown 00:15:22 ML engineering 00:20:50 The missing part in data science develop...