Podcast
Feeling of Computing
Hosted by Ivan Reese, Jimmy Miller, and Lu Wilson · EN
A romp through the field of computer programming, grapling with our history and wondering what should come next. A mix of deeply technical talk, philosophy, art, dark lore, and good takes. Hosted by Ivan Reese, Jimmy Miller, and Lu Wilson.
13episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Beyond Efficiency by Dave Ackley
Mar 4, 202401:44:07Tap to summarizeDave Ackley's paper Beyond Efficiency is three pages long. With just these three pages, he mounts a compelling argument against the conventional way we engineer software. Instead of inflexibly insisting upon correctness, maybe allow a lil slop? Instead of chasing peak performance with cache and clever tricks, maybe measure many times before you cut. So in this episode, we're putting every CEO in the guillotine… (oh, that stands for "correctness and efficiency only", don't put us on a list)… and considering when, where, and how to do the robust thing. Links $ patreon.com/futureofcoding — The most recent bonus episode is a discussion with Stefan Lesser about new "laws of physics" we can invent inside the computer. Don't destroy the earth, then make sure your thing can't be destroyed, then don't destroy your data, and finally, do your damn job, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. A Software Epiphany, and the accompanying HN discussion — giga viral, so sick PartyKit? Nice! What started as a simple todo list turned into an ocean of tech boy milk and, ultimately, the AI apocalypse. Jepsen is a rough, rugged, deeply thoughtful and fantastically cool approach to distributed systems testing, by Kyle Kingsbury. Also, we didn't talk about it, but his reversing / hexing / typing / rewriting / unifying technical interview series is essential reading. Ivan's examples of robustness vs efficiency were RAID, the CAP theorem, Automerge, the engineering of FoundationDB, and Byzantine fault tolerance— all of which stake out interesting territory in the efficiency/robustness tradeoff spectrum, all of which are about distributed systems. Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?, a paper by John Backus. We Don't Really Know How to Compute!, a talk by Gerald Sussman. The Robust-First Computing Creed is rock solid. The Wikipedia article on von Neumann architecture did not come through with the goods. Ivan works with Alex Warth now, and thus may fairly speak in half-truths like "I've been working with constraints recently…" The Demon Hoard Sort Bogosort is never coming to Dreamberd The Witness was made by Jonathan Blow, who has Aphantasia, but he also made a game called Braid, and Braid is good. Datamosh is a creative misuse of the lack of robustness that comes from storing diffs instead of full state snapshots. Here's a lovely gallery of examples. Abstraction by xkcd Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Can't let Lu get through the above without derailing onto Fiverr, PCP, Fight Club, and the Dust Brothers. Randy Newman was nearly quoted in Ackley's Indefinite Scalability for Living Computation — god help you if you read our show notes and don't listen to the episode. "It is difficult", says Upton Sinclair when asked about Jimmy Miller being Jimmy Miller, and how we all ought to approach our own sense of Jimmy Miller. Music featured in this episode: Hawker News by user: spiralganglion Corporate World by the Dust Brothers No more jokes! Find us at these normal places: Ivan: Mastodon • Website Jimmy: Mastodon • Website Lu: Mastodon • Website Dave: Mastodon • Website Send us email, share your ideas in our Slack, and support the show on Patreon. Yes, do all three please. http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/70Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/feelingofcomputingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcribe →Myths & Mythconceptions by Mary Shaw
Dec 29, 202302:58:48Tap to summarizeIn the spirit of clearly communicating what you're signing up for, this podcast episode is nearly three hours long, and among other things it contains a discussion of a paper by author Mary Shaw titled Myths & Mythconceptions which takes as an organizing principle a collection of myths that are widely believed by programmers, largely unacknowledged, which shape our views on the nature of programming as an activity and the needs of programmers as people and the sort of work that we do as a sort of work, and where by acknowledging these myths the three of us (Mary Shaw primarily, and by extension Jimmy and I, those three people, that's it, no other people appear on this podcast) are able to more vividly grip the image of programming with our mind's eye (or somesuch) and conceive of a different formulation for programming, and in addition to these myths this paper also incudes a number of excellent lists that I take great pleasure in reading, beyond which I should also note that the paper does a job of explaining itself and that hopefully you'll find I've done a similar job, that's the spirit, please enjoy. Links $ patreon.com/futureofcoding — I've recently changed it so that there's only 1 instance of the INTERCAL tier available, so if you're interested in those perks you'd better hop on it quick before nobody else does! There's also a video, though I haven't watched it. Claude Shannon would have something to say about revealing information. Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is an album by Prince Rama. Listen to it as loudly as you can on Bandcamp, Spotify, or Apple Music. Val Town is the new startup by Future of Coding community founder Steve Krouse Ivan recently took a job at Ink & Switch on the "Ink" research track. Programmer Bums, or, rather, Computer Bums Limmy's Wa Retool MythBusters The Flop House's Final Judgements: Good-Bad, Bad-Bad, Kinda-Like CRDT Data Robust-First Computing is an approach championed by the hero Dave Ackley, and I have a well-informed hunch that you'll be hearing a lot more about it in future episodes. The T2 Tile Project is another Ackley joint that, perhaps, works as a wild example of what Mary Shaw means when she talks about an "execution ecosystem". Devine's talk at Strange Loop: An approach to computing and sustainability inspired from permaculture MUMPS (the medical thing, not to be confused with mumps the medical thing) is used by Epic (the software company, not to be confused with Epic the software company). The Glass Cannon podcast network. Lu's SPLASH talk Cellpond: Spatial Programming without Escape The Turing tarpit Functional Programming with Bananas, Lenses, Envelopes and Barbed Wire by Erik Meijer, Maarten Fokkinga, Ross Paterson. Richard D. James is the same person as Richard P. (Peter) Gabriel, right? Similarly, see Neil Armstrong's work on Erlang (which is popular in telephony, right?). The Witness is not going to appear in our show notes. Jack Rusher. Jack Rusher? Jack Rusher! TrainJam Gary Bernhardt's talk Ideology Nobody remarked on these silly links last time, so this time I'm drawing more attention to them: Tode: Neopets • MySpace Berd: Angelfire • Orkut Bot: Geocities • Friendster https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/069Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/feelingofcomputingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcribe →Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay & Adele Goldberg
Jul 18, 2022Tap to summarizeThere once was a podcast episode. It was about a very special kind of book: the Dynabook. The podcast didn't know whether to be silly, or serious. Jimmy offered some thoughtful reflections, and Ivan stung him on the nose. Sponsored by Replit.com, who want to give you some reasons not to join Replit, and Theatre.js, who want to make beautiful tools for animating the web with you. futureofcoding.org/episodes/57Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/feelingofcomputingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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