At scale, anything we build is going to involve people. Many of us have personal schedules and to-do lists, but how can we scale that to hundreds or even thousands of people? When you file a help ticket at a massive company like Google or Facebook, ever wonder how that ticket is processed? Sanjay Siddhanti, Akasa’s Director of Engineering, is no slouch when it comes to navigating massive workflow engines – and in today’s episode, he shares his experiences in bioinformatics, workflows, and more w...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr•Ep 149•Transcript available on Metacast S1: Holiday 2022 Special Today we field questions from Programming Throwdown’s listeners about AI, machine learning, and more practical matters as developers in our annual holiday special! 00:00:24 Introductions 00:00:43 Programming Showdown merch 00:02:13 Paul S 00:03:28 Dealing with ergonomics 00:10:39 On AI coding assistant tools 00:16:43 Warren Y 00:20:24 Ben inquires about performance testing 00:27:39 Wild coding story 00:29:37 AI coding’s disruption potential 00:34:20 Jason’s Turing riddle...
Dec 26, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Package managers are an often-overlooked aspect of any operating system, but their importance is not to be underestimated – especially in today’s development environment. As both creator of Homebrew and CEO of tea.xyz, Max Howell is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of open-source development, software engineering, and balancing passion with practicality. He shares these experiences and more with us in today’s deep dive into the subject! 00:01:00 Introductions 00:01:29 When Max started T...
Dec 12, 2022•2 hr 43 min•Ep 148•Transcript available on Metacast Yonatan Cohen – Co-Founder & CTO of Quantum Machines – joins us in this episode to tackle quantum computing! Did you know anyone can run quantum programs on Amazon Web Services for mere dollars? Learn about this field early to take pole superposition in the race to understand and use quantum computers! 00:00:45 Introductions 00:01:20 Yonatan’s beginnings 00:03:49 The simulation question 00:05:51 How physics led to quantum computing 00:14:56 Richard Feynman 00:16:44 On the irreversibility of ...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep 147•Transcript available on Metacast In this tour-de-force, Mike Dalessio – Engineering Director at Shopify – and Evan Phoenix – self-described “long-time Rubyist” – join us for a practical discussion of all things Ruby! Ruby is a beautiful language, and we're really excited to cover the history and present of this language with two experts. 00:01:03 Introductions 00:01:49 Mike’s Ruby journey 00:12:28 Evan’s own Ruby experience 00:18:20 The pickaxe book 00:20:34 Weird programming interests 00:25:11 MINASWAN 00:30:33 Language confer...
Nov 14, 2022•2 hr 37 min•Ep 146•Transcript available on Metacast Today we discuss adventures, books, tools, and art discoveries before diving into unsupervised machine learning in this duo episode! 00:00:22 Introductions 00:01:28 Email & inbox organization is very important 00:07:28 The Douglas-Peucker algorithm 00:11:48 Starter project selection 00:17:01 Tic-Tac-Toe 00:21:41 Artemis 1 00:26:25 Space slingshots 00:29:47 Flex Seal tape 00:32:38 The Meditations 00:37:58 Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast 00:40:55 Pythagorea 00:46:13 Google Keep 00:48:05 Visual-IF 00...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep 145•Transcript available on Metacast Today we go back to our programming language roots with author, KT Academy founder, and Kotlin rockstar Marcin Moskala. We talk about how Kotlin makes itself doubly useful for app and backend development. 00:00:55 Introductions 00:01:38 Java frustrations 00:09:37 Why a well-organized typing system is important 00:11:59 What Kotlin is 00:14:58 Obsidian 00:20:13 Learning new things can be a prudent future investment 00:23:46 A pleasant coding experience 00:26:41 Co-routines in Kotlin 00:34:37 Wher...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Finding something online might seem easy - but as Marcus Eagan tells it, it’s not easy to get it right. In today’s episode, MongoDB’s Staff Product Manager on Atlas Search speaks with Jason and Patrick about his own journey in software development and how to best use search engines to capture user intent. 00:00:34 Introductions 00:01:30 Marcus’s unusual origin story 00:05:10 Unsecured IoT devices 00:09:56 How security groupthink can compromise matters 00:12:48 The Target HVAC incident 00:17:32 B...
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Douwe Maan’s journey sounds too fantastic to be true, yet the tale that Meltano’s founder shares with Jason and Patrick today is very, very real. Whether it’s about doing software development by 11, joining Gitlab while juggling college responsibilities, or building his own company during today’s challenging times, he has quite the story to tell. In today’s episode, he speaks on Twitter, his perspective on remote work, and why data operations are a critical part of developer stacks in today’s wo...
Sep 12, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep 142•Transcript available on Metacast 00:01:03 Introductions 00:04:47 Mojovision 00:06:07 Chips’ storied journey 00:11:06 Project Xanadu 00:18:45 Getting into Lucasfilm 00:31:31 Artificial Intelligence in games 00:39:48 GTA MP 01:00:10 How the game industry drives people 01:08:29 Agoric and its niche in the blockchain 01:20:12 Javascript’s securability 01:22:46 Working with Agoric 01:32:20 What skills Agoric’s team looks for 01:35:31 Chip’s parting thoughts 01:37:00 Farewells Resources mentioned in this episode: Chip Morningstar: Tw...
Aug 22, 2022•2 hr 38 min•Ep 141•Transcript available on Metacast 00:00:57 Introductions 00:01:51 How Ronak got started in programming 00:06:03 The first encounter with burnout 00:11:49 Double-edged benefits 00:17:23 Spoon theory 00:19:07 Why relationship clarity matters 00:25:11 A cold room story 00:30:59 Context switching’s relevance 00:35:45 QTorque’s solution to monitor cloud automation costs 00:39:19 Setting up lifetimes 00:42:17 Bom lists 00:49:19 How Quali helps with the challenges 00:54:40 What to do to actualize your true self 00:58:00 Farewells Resou...
Aug 09, 2022•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:00:45 Introductions 00:02:22 The sluggish Python-based system that Guido revitalized 00:06:03 Meeting the challenge of adding necessary complexity to a project 00:11:59 Excel in banking 00:18:15 Guido’s shift into Coil 00:19:29 Scooby-Doo pajamas 00:20:21 What motivates people to come in to the office today 00:24:09 Pandas 00:35:35 Why human error can doom an Excel setup 00:39:29 BLAS 00:46:20 A million lines of data 00:51:43 How does Dask interact with Gambit 00:54:40 Where does Coil come in...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep 139•Transcript available on Metacast 00:00:24 Introductions 00:00:49 IP v6 00:04:50 OSI 00:12:53 The IP v7 debate 00:20:18 The definition of an address’s scope 00:21:38 Why John feels DNS was a mistake 00:26:40 How IP mobility works 00:32:13 Bluetooth 00:41:41 Where will Internet architecture go from here 00:49:49 Understanding the problem space 00:59:04 The angels in the details 01:00:53 Scientific thinking vs engineering thinking 01:04:01 Victorian architecture 01:06:11 John’s career advice 01:11:18 Garbage Can Model 01:14:38 How...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep 138•Transcript available on Metacast 00:01:01 Introduction 00:01:28 COVID and the challenge of teaching 00:04:11 John’s academic and career path 00:08:14 LSI technology 00:12:13 Collaborative software development in the day 00:15:24 ARPANET’s early use 00:20:08 Atom bomb and weather simulations 00:26:55 The message-switching network 00:34:57 Pouzin 00:38:00 Every register had a purpose 00:45:15 The Air Force in 1972 00:52:10 Low memory 00:59:14 Early problems with TCP 01:11:51 The separation of mechanism and policy 01:23:25 Farewel...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 136: Metaverse with Daniel Liebeskind Decentralizing the future can often lead to missing out on genuine human communication. Daniel Liebeskind, Cofounder and CEO of Topia, talks about how they’re working to avoid that pitfall while building the foundation of a better online experience. Whether its his lessons from Burning Man, keeping the human spirit alive in today’s technological frontier, or how Topia fits in the future, Daniel has something for listeners. 00:01:34 Introduction 00:02:15 Dani...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep 136•Transcript available on Metacast 00:00:15 Introduction 00:01:03 Aran Khanna and his background 00:05:12 The Marauder’s Map that Facebook hated(Chrome Extension) 00:20:11 Why Google made Kubernetes 00:31:14 Horizontal and Vertical Auto-Scaling 00:35:54 Zencastr 00:39:53 How machines talk to each other 00:46:32 Sidecars 00:48:25 Resources to learn Kubernetes 00:52:59 Archera 00:59:31 Opportunities at Archera 01:01:08 Archera for End Users 01:02:30 Archera as a Company 01:05:46 Farewells Resources mentioned in this episode: Aran K...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep 135•Transcript available on Metacast 134: Ephemeral Environments with Benjie De Groot Download How do you test changes to your web backend or database? Many people have a "production" and one "development" database, but the development database can easily become broken by one engineer and thus unusable for the rest of the team. Also, how would two engineers make changes in parallel to the development environment? What if you could spin up hundreds or thousands of development databases as you need them? Today we have Benjie De Groot...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 134•Transcript available on Metacast As anyone who listens to the show regularly knows, I've always been fascinated by marketplaces. How do we figure out what to charge for something, and how do we match buyers and sellers? How does a company like Uber match drivers to riders so quickly? Today we have Andrew Yates, Co-Founder & CEO at Promoted.ai, to talk about marketplaces and how to optimize for this two-sided problem. 00:00:15 Introduction 00:00:27 Introducing Andrew Yates 00:00:50 Andrew’s Programming Background 00:04:19 An...
May 09, 2022•56 min•Ep 133•Transcript available on Metacast 00:00:15 Introduction 00:01:24 Gaming setups 00:12:25 News 00:12:27 I was wrong, CRDTs are the future 00:17:18 How we lost 54k Github stars 00:21:10 DALL-E 00:25:45 Inside the Longest Atlassian Outage of All Time 00:35:11: Sponsor 00:36:22 Book of the Show 00:36:38 Indie Boardgame Designers Podcast 00:37:24 The Laundry Files 00:40:35 Tool of the Show 00:40:39 Zapier 00:42:21 Earthly 00:46:46 Funding open-source projects 01:19:44 How to get funding for open-source projects 01:22:47 Farewells Reso...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep 132•Transcript available on Metacast I've been a big fan of Brave Browser ever since attending a presentation from Brandon Eich back in 2017. Brave was one of the first browsers to aggressively block the ability for websites to share information on your computer without your consent (i.e. third party cookies). I'm so excited to sit down with Jimmy Secretan, VP of Ads and Premium Services of Brave, and talk about all things Brave, from the Browser to the other products to the way Brave takes privacy on the internet to a whole new le...
Apr 11, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep 131•Transcript available on Metacast "Hacking" is a word that evokes awe from the public, laughter from developers, and pure fear from technology leaders. But what really is hacking? What does trust really mean and how do we acquire and keep trust on the Internet? It turns out that, while hacking is associated with computers, the methods behind it have been around since the dawn of time. Today we have Ted Harrington from ISE to dive deep into hacking, all the way from the medieval times to today. 00:00:15 Intro 00:01:25 Introducing...
Mar 28, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 130•Transcript available on Metacast Brief Summary: What is Web 3.0? Guest speaker Michelle Lee, Product Lead of Protocol Labs, shares how web 3.0 will revolutionize the Internet and bring trust back into the web. 00:00:25 Introduction 00:01:36 Michelle Lee’s career 00:03:10 What is human-computer interaction? 00:04:55 The Google Sheets user experience 00:06:19 Google Checkout, user feedback, and emails 00:10:23 Code for America 00:13:47 The real power of Open Source 00:14:14 Web 3.0 00:23:04 IPFS network accessibility 00:26:14 How...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep 129•Transcript available on Metacast Summary: What is WebAssembly? Guest speaker Kevin Hoffman, CTO of Cosmonic shares what WebAssembly is, why it exists, and what kind of things you can do with it. Notes: 00:00:16 Introduction 00:00:52 Cosmonic during COVID 00:02:45 Kevin Hoffman’s career and Cosmonic’s begginings 00:12:39 WebAssembly integrations 00:16:20 What is WebAssembly? 00:27:30 The developer experience 00:30:30 WebAssembly, JSON, and other object interactions 00:36:35 Rollbar 00:41:08 Compiler linking 00:49:27 wasmCloud 00...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brief Summary: Programming is difficult as it is, but imagine how difficult it was without all the current tools, compilers, synthesizers, etc. that we have today. Eran Yahav, Chief Technology Officer at Tabnine shares how AI is currently helping with code writing and how it could change in the future. 00:00:16 Introduction 00:00:51 Eran Yahav’s programming background 00:08:11 Balance between Human and the Machine 00:11:49 Static Analysis 00:29:42 Similarities in Programming Constructs 00:25:30 ...
Feb 14, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brief Summary: Erez Berkner, CEO of Lumigo, talks about his company, going serverless, and why you should too. He shares his experience and tips regarding serverless computing and its ever-growing opportunities in modern computing. 00:00:16 Introduction 00:01:43 Introducing Erez Berkner 00:06:27 The start of Lumigo 00:10:42 What is Serverless 00:20:10 Challenges with going serverless 00:39:53 Securing Lambdas 00:46:50 Lumigo and breadcrumbs 00:55:46 How to get started with Lumigo 00:57:06 Lumigo...
Jan 24, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Download We are sponsored by audible! http://www.audibletrial.com/programmingthrowdown We are on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown T-Shirts! http://www.cafepress.com/programmingthrowdown/13590693 Join us on Discord! https://discord.gg/r4V2zpC Object Caching Systems Many people have heard the names "redis" or "memcached" but fewer people know what these tools are good for or why we need them so badly. In this show, Patrick and I explain why caching is so important and how thes...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 125•Transcript available on Metacast In this holiday episode, Jason and Patrick answer questions from listeners. They also look back at the past year’s challenges and victories. 00:15:35 (Kevin) What's been the biggest thing that pushed you to learn more during your career? Was it taking a new job and moving somewhere, doing stuff in your spare time or something like a new hobby or anything else? 00:29:38 (Kevin) Favorite city to live in or visit? 00:31:29 First Winner (James B.) 00:32:21 (Clever Clover/James) Next biggest tech pre...
Jan 10, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 124•Transcript available on Metacast How do you stay focused when working on large projects that span many months? In this duo episode, we talk about Project Planning techniques and trends! We also cover solving personal data storage problems and building CNC machines & printers. 00:00:15 Introduction 00:01:33 UML 00:05:22 Home NAS and other personal storage solutions 00:18:09 Homebrew CNC machine 00:29:37 Raft (Consensus Algorithm) 00:36:54 The Mathematics of 2048 00:45:44 Book of the Show 00:45:57 Manager Tools 00:49:10 Make ...
Dec 15, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep 123•Transcript available on Metacast When you ask Alexa or Google a question and it responds, how does that actually work? Could we have more in-depth conversations and what would that look like? Today we dive into conversational AI with Joe Bradley and answer these questions and many more. Thanks for supporting the show! 00:00:15 Introduction 00:01:24 Introducing Joe Bradley 00:04:44 How Joe got into Conversation AI 00:21:35 Zork and WordNet 00:27:48 Automatic Image Detection/Captioning 00:39:31 MuZero 00:45:27 Codex 00:50:15 GPT ...
Oct 25, 2021•2 hr 35 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is "The Edge"? The answer is that it means different things to different people, but it always involves lifting logic, data, and processing load off of your backend servers and onto other machines. Sometimes those machines are spread out over many small datacenters, or sometimes they are in the hands of your customers. In all cases, computing on the edge is a different paradigm that requires new ways of thinking about coding. We're super lucky to have Jaxon on the show to share his experien...
Oct 22, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep 121•Transcript available on Metacast 
