Future of Coding
118 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsPlayful explorations of the rich past and exciting future that we're all building with our silly little computers. Hosted by Jimmy Miller and Ivan Reese.
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Episodes
Beyond Efficiency by Dave Ackley
March 04, 2024 02:53 - 1 hour - 95.3 MBDave 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)… ...
Myths & Mythconceptions by Mary Shaw
December 29, 2023 00:10 - 2 hours - 164 MBIn 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 so...
Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler
November 19, 2023 03:56 - 2 hours - 114 MBThe subject of this episode's paper — Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler — is one of those grand ideas that makes you want to go stargazing. To stare out into space and just disassociate from your body and become one with the heavens. Everything — life, space, time, existence — all of it is a joke! A cosmic ribbing delivered by the laws of the universe or some higher power or, perhaps, higher order. Humanity waited two thousand years, from the time of the ancient Greeks through until the...
Considered Harmful
September 29, 2023 23:23 - 1 hour - 96.5 MBGo To Statement Considered Harmful is a solid classic entry in the X Considered Harmful metafiction genre, authored by renowned computer scientist and idiosyncratic grump, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra. Surprisingly (given the impact it's had) this is a minuscule speck of a paper, lasting only 1-ish pages, and it even digresses several times from the main point. Fear not! Jimmy and I spend the entirety of these two podcast hours thoroughly analyzing the paper, wringing every last drop of insight from...
A Small Matter of Programming by Bonnie Nardi
August 23, 2023 02:47 - 2 hours - 142 MBThis community is a big tent. We welcome folks from all backgrounds, and all levels of experience with computers. Heck, on our last episode, we celebrated an article written by someone who is, rounding down, a lawyer! A constant question I ponder is: what's the best way to introduce someone to the world of FoC? If someone is a workaday programmer, or a non-programmer, what can we share with them to help them understand our area of interest? A personal favourite is the New Media Reader, but ...
Interpreting the Rule(s) of Code by Laurence Diver
July 03, 2023 16:40 - 3 hours - 166 MBThe execution of code, by its very nature, creates the conditions of a "strong legalism" in which you must unquestioningly obey laws produced without your say, invisibly, with no chance for appeal. This is a wild idea; today's essay is packed with them. In drawing parallels between law and computing, it gives us a new skepticism about software and the effect it has on the world. It's also full of challenges and benchmarks and ideas for ways that code can be reimagined. The conclusion of the ...
INTERCAL by Donald Woods & James Lyon
June 01, 2023 03:08 - 1 hour - 105 MBThis is a normal episode of a podcast called Future of Coding. We talk about INTERCAL, a real tool for computer programming. [Do I need to say more? Will this sell it? Most people won’t have heard of INTERCAL, but I think the fake out “normal” is enough to draw their attention. Also, I find “computer programming” funny. Not sure why I put that in quotes.] Links [at least, the ones I remembered to jot down] The final Strange Loop is coming up this September. Ivan and Jimmy will both be ther...
Out of the Tar Pit by Ben Moseley & Peter Marks
April 01, 2023 17:36 - 2 hours - 128 MBOut of the Tar Pit is in the grand pantheon of great papers, beloved the world over, with just so much influence. The resurgence of Functional Programming over the past decade owes its very existence to the Tar Pit’s snarling takedown of mutable state, championed by Hickey & The Cloj-Co. Many a budding computational philosophizer — both of yours truly counted among them — have been led onward to the late great Bro86 by this paper’s borrow of his essence and accident. But is the paper actuall...
No Silver Bullet by Fred Brooks
February 11, 2023 21:19 - 3 hours - 165 MBJimmy and I have each read this paper a handful of times, and each time our impressions have flip-flopped between "hate it so much" and "damn that's good". There really are two sides to this one. Two reads, both fair, both worth discussing: one of them within "the frame", and one of them outside "the frame". So given that larger-than-normal surface for discursive traversal, it's no surprise that this episode is, just, like, intimidatingly long. This one is so, so long, friends. See these wit...
Programming as Theory Building by Peter Naur
January 06, 2023 21:50 - 1 hour - 105 MBThis is Jimmy’s favourite paper! Here’s a copy someone posted on HitBug. Is it as good as the original? Likely not! Ivan also enjoyed this Theory Building business immensely; don’t be fooled by the liberal use of the “blonk” censor-tone to cover the galleon-hold of swearwords he let slip, those mostly pertain to the Ryle. For the next episode, we’re reading No Silver Bullet by Fred Brooks. Links The Witness, again! The Generation Ship Model of Software Development The philosophy of suck...
Magic Ink by Bret Victor
December 08, 2022 21:38 - 2 hours - 128 MBBefore the time-travelling talks, the programmable rooms, the ladders and rocket launchers, we had the first real Bret Victor essay: Magic Ink. It set the stage for Bret's later explorations, breaking down the very idea of "software" into a few key pieces and interrogating them with his distinct focus, then clearly demoing a way we could all just do it better. All of Bret's works feel simultaneously like an anguished cry and a call to arms, and this essay is no exception. For the next episo...
Worse is Better by Richard P. Gabriel
October 30, 2022 01:59 - 1 hour - 67.1 MBFollowing our previous episode on Richard P. Gabriel's Incommensurability paper, we're back for round two with an analysis of what we've dubbed the Worse is Better family of thought products: The Rise of Worse Is Better by Richard P. Gabriel Worse is Better is Worse by Nickieben Bourbaki Is Worse Really Better? by Richard P. Gabriel Next episode, we've got a recent work by a real up-and-comer in the field. While you may not have heard of him yet, he's a promising young lad who's sure to ...
Structure of a Programming Language Revolution by Richard P. Gabriel
September 20, 2022 15:15 - 1 hour - 108 MBToday we're discussing the so-called "incommensurability" paper: The Structure of a Programming Language Revolution by Richard P. Gabriel. In the pre-show, Jimmy demands that Ivan come right out and explain himself, and so he does, to a certain extent at least. In the post-show, Jimmy draws such a thick line between programming and philosophy that it wouldn't even look out of place on Groucho Marx's face. Next episode, we will be covering the Worse is Better family of thought products, so ...
Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay & Adele Goldberg
July 18, 2022 15:35 - 2 hours - 151 MBThere 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/57 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Augmenting Human Intellect by Doug Engelbart
June 06, 2022 01:17 - 2 hours - 120 MBsymbol-manipulation.com collaboration.com thought-experiments.org behaviorism.com theatre.js system.org evolution.ca pithy.com replit.com summary.co.uk cringe.net futureofcoding.org programming.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider
April 12, 2022 05:54 - 2 hours - 131 MBJimmy Miller joins the show as co-host. Together, we embark on a new series of episodes covering the most influential and interesting papers in the history of our field. Some of these papers led directly to where we are today, and their influence cannot be overstated. Others were overlooked or unloved in their day, and we revive them out of curiosity and wonder. A few even hint at an inspiring future we haven't yet achieved, placing them squarely in line with our community's goals. We give t...
Ella Hoeppner: Vlojure
January 05, 2022 16:37 - 1 hour - 70 MBToday's guest is Ella Hoeppner, who first came onto the radar of our community back in the fall when she released a web-based visual Clojure editor called Vlojure, with a captivating introduction video. I was immediately interested in the project because of the visual style on display — source code represented as nested circles; an earthy brown instead of the usual dark/light theme. But as the video progressed, Ella showed off a scattering of little ideas that each seemed strikingly clever ...
Scott Anderson: End-user Programming in VR
November 07, 2021 20:03 - 2 hours - 113 MBScott Anderson has spent the better part of a decade working on end-user programming features for VR and the metaverse. He's worked on playful creation tools in the indie game Luna, scripting for Oculus Home and Horizon Worlds at Facebook, and a bunch of concepts for novel programming interfaces in virtual reality. Talking to Scott felt a little bit like peeking into what's coming around the bend for programming. For now, most of us do our programming work on a little 2D rectangle, with a cl...
Amjad Masad: Replit
August 27, 2021 21:56 - 2 hours - 110 MBThe name Replit will be familiar to regular listeners of our show. The backstory and ambitions behind the project, however, I bet will be news to you. Amjad Masad, the founder and first programmer of Replit, is interviewed by Steve Krouse in this episode from the vault — recorded back in 2019, released for the first time today. Amjad shares the stories of how he taught himself to use a computer by secretly observing his father, his early experiments with Emscripten building VMs for the web, ...
Toby Schachman: Cuttle, Apparatus, and Recursive Drawing
July 21, 2021 02:23 - 1 hour - 105 MBIn this episode, I'll be talking to Toby Schachman, who many of you are surely familiar with thanks to an incredible string of projects he's released over the past decade, including Recursive Drawing back in 2012, Apparatus in 2015, and most recently Cuttle which opened to the public this past week. All of these projects superficially appear to be graphics editors, but by interacting with them you actually create a program that generates graphics. Their interfaces are wildly different from b...
Mary Rose Cook: Isla & Code Lauren
June 04, 2021 00:51 - 2 hours - 123 MBMary Rose Cook is a programmer with.. just.. so many side projects, oh my — and, she works at Airtable. Mary created Gitlet, a version of Git in 1000 lines of JavaScript with extensive annotation. That might be her most well-known project, but of particular interest to our community are her programming environments Isla and Code Lauren. These projects explore syntax, learnability, execution visualization, and other surfaces of the development experience that I think we all would love to see ...
Ravi Chugh: Sketch-n-Sketch
March 09, 2021 23:55 - 2 hours - 126 MBRavi Chugh is a (recently-tenured 🎉) prof at the University of Chicago. He’s famous for leading the Sketch-n-Sketch project, an output-directed, bidirectional programming tool that lets you seamlessly jump back and forth between coding and directly manipulating your program’s output. The tool gives you two different projected editing interfaces for the same underlying program, so that you can leverage the different strengths of each. In the interview we talk about the principles of bidirecti...
Jennifer Jacobs: Para & Dynamic Brushes
June 14, 2020 20:47 - 1 hour - 103 MB"Metaphors are important here." There's a small handful of people that I've been requested again and again to interview on the Future of Coding podcast. Jennifer Jacobs is one of those people. Her work on Dynamic Brushes in particular, and parametric drawing in general, occupies a major intersection between disciplines and provides insights that we can all apply to our own work. This interview touches on childhood education, programming tools for both non-programmers and expert programmers,...
Max/MSP & Pure Data: Miller Puckette
May 12, 2020 06:18 - 1 hour - 64.2 MBMiller Puckette created "The Patcher" Max (the precursor to Max/MSP), and later Pure Data, two of the most important tools in the history of visual programming and computer music. Max was designed by Miller in the mid-1980s as an aid to computer-music composers who wanted to build their own dynamic systems without needing write C code. Max had no facility for sound generation at first, but that would come eventually with the addition of MSP. A decade later, after some academic politics nonse...
#47 - Max/MSP & Pure Data: Miller Puckette
May 12, 2020 06:18 - 1 hour - 64.2 MBMiller Puckette created "The Patcher" Max (the precursor to Max/MSP), and later Pure Data, two of the most important tools in the history of visual programming and computer music. Max was designed by Miller in the mid-1980s as an aid to computer-music composers who wanted to build their own dynamic systems without needing write C code. Max had no facility for sound generation at first, but that would come eventually with the addition of MSP. A decade later, after some academic politics nonsen...
#46 - 2020 Community Survey
April 25, 2020 06:20 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBThis was originally meant to be a little mini-episode halfway through March, with the next full episode coming at the start of April. Would you believe me if I told you that some things happened in the world that caused me to change my plans? Shocker, I know. Well, it's finally here. In today's episode, I'll reflect and commentate on the results of the first ever Future of Coding Community Survey. The show notes for this episode are full of graphs of the survey results, so be sure to take a ...
2020 Community Survey
April 25, 2020 06:20 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBThis was originally meant to be a little mini-episode halfway through March, with the next full episode coming at the start of April. Would you believe me if I told you that some things happened in the world that caused me to change my plans? Shocker, I know. Well, it's finally here. In today's episode, I'll reflect and commentate on the results of the first ever Future of Coding Community Survey. The show notes for this episode are full of graphs of the survey results, so be sure to take a...
Orca: Devine Lu Linvega
March 01, 2020 16:11 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBOrca is a visual programming environment for making music. Except it's not graphical, it's just text arranged in a grid. Except it doesn't actually make music, it just silently emits digital events across time. When you first see it, it's utterly alien. When you start to learn how it works and why, the logic of it all snaps into place, and it becomes a thrilling case study for authors of live programming environments and interactive media tools. Devine Lu Linvega, Orca's creator, struck a w...
#45 - Orca: Devine Lu Linvega
March 01, 2020 16:11 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBOrca is a visual programming environment for making music. Except it's not graphical, it's just text arranged in a grid. Except it doesn't actually make music, it just silently emits digital events across time. When you first see it, it's utterly alien. When you start to learn how it works and why, the logic of it all snaps into place, and it becomes a thrilling case study for authors of live programming environments and interactive media tools. Devine Lu Linvega, Orca's creator, struck a wo...
Making Your Own Tools: Devine Lu Linvega
February 04, 2020 01:32 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBWe live in a world that is gradually becoming more closed off, more controlled, more regional. Our relationship with technology is now primarily one of consumption, buying new hardware on a regular cycle, using software conceptualized to meet a market need and fulfill promises made to venture capitalists. It's common to hear people talk about both computing hardware and software as though they were appliances, not meant to be user-serviced, not meant to be modified. The tools we use are bein...
#44 - Making Your Own Tools: Devine Lu Linvega
February 04, 2020 01:32 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBWe live in a world that is gradually becoming more closed off, more controlled, more regional. Our relationship with technology is now primarily one of consumption, buying new hardware on a regular cycle, using software conceptualized to meet a market need and fulfill promises made to venture capitalists. It's common to hear people talk about both computing hardware and software as though they were appliances, not meant to be user-serviced, not meant to be modified. The tools we use are being...
- Unveiling Dark: Ellen Chisa & Paul Biggar
September 25, 2019 19:30 - 2 hours - 135 MBLast Monday, Ellen Chisa and Paul Biggar unveiled Dark, a new web-based programming environment for creating backend web services. In these conversations, first with Ellen and then with Paul, we discuss how they met, conceived of the idea, iterated on the product, and what their long-term vision is for the product. Dark is a web-based, structured editor with a data store built-in. It's code has a functional programming feel to it, but it also embraces what they call "functional/imperative"....
Unveiling Dark: Ellen Chisa & Paul Biggar
September 25, 2019 19:30 - 2 hours - 135 MBLast Monday, Ellen Chisa and Paul Biggar unveiled Dark, a new web-based programming environment for creating backend web services. In these conversations, first with Ellen and then with Paul, we discuss how they met, conceived of the idea, iterated on the product, and what their long-term vision is for the product. Dark is a web-based, structured editor with a data store built-in. It's code has a functional programming feel to it, but it also embraces what they call "functional/imperative"....
#43 - Unveiling Dark: Ellen Chisa & Paul Biggar
September 25, 2019 19:30 - 2 hours - 135 MBLast Monday, Ellen Chisa and Paul Biggar unveiled Dark, a new web-based programming environment for creating backend web services. In these conversations, first with Ellen and then with Paul, we discuss how they met, conceived of the idea, iterated on the product, and what their long-term vision is for the product. Dark is a web-based, structured editor with a data store built-in. It's code has a functional programming feel to it, but it also embraces what they call "functional/imperative". ...
#42 - Blurring the Line Between User and Programmer: Lane Shackleton
August 15, 2019 16:30 - 1 hour - 92 MB"The world's been divided into people who can make software, and the people who use software all day, and basically we think that that paradigm is not a good one. It feels kind of broken," says Lane Shackleton, Head of Product at Coda, where they are building a new kind of document that blurs the line between users and programmers. A Coda document starts out looking like a familiar online document, a lot like Google Docs. There's a blinking cursor, you can bold and italicize text, add image...
Blurring the Line Between User and Programmer: Lane Shackleton
August 15, 2019 16:30 - 1 hour - 92 MB"The world's been divided into people who can make software, and the people who use software all day, and basically we think that that paradigm is not a good one. It feels kind of broken," says Lane Shackleton, Head of Product at Coda, where they are building a new kind of document that blurs the line between users and programmers. A Coda document starts out looking like a familiar online document, a lot like Google Docs. There's a blinking cursor, you can bold and italicize text, add imag...
#41 - The Aesthetics of Programming Tools: Jack Rusher
July 26, 2019 16:13 - 1 hour - 92.4 MBIvan Reese guest hosts. I've been intimidated by Jack Rusher from the first blush. I mean, he's wearing a high-collared fur coat and black sunglasses in his Twitter pic, and his bio includes "Bell Labs Researcher". So when tasked with choosing a subject for my first interview, I immediately reached out to him, leaning in to my nervousness. His reply included the detail that he's "generally hostile to the form" of podcasting. Terrifying. When we talked, it was about Lisp — several flavours o...
The Aesthetics of Programming Tools: Jack Rusher
July 26, 2019 16:13 - 1 hour - 92.4 MBIvan Reese guest hosts. I've been intimidated by Jack Rusher from the first blush. I mean, he's wearing a high-collared fur coat and black sunglasses in his Twitter pic, and his bio includes "Bell Labs Researcher". So when tasked with choosing a subject for my first interview, I immediately reached out to him, leaning in to my nervousness. His reply included the detail that he's "generally hostile to the form" of podcasting. Terrifying. When we talked, it was about Lisp — several flavours ...
#40 - Joining Logic, Relational, and Functional Programming: Michael Arntzenius
June 13, 2019 14:52 - 1 hour - 104 MBThis episode explores the intersections between various flavors of math and programming, and the ways in which they can be mixed, matched, and combined. Michael Arntzenius, "rntz" for short, is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham building a programming language that combines some of the best features of logic, relational, and functional programming. The goal of the project is "to find a sweet spot of something that is more powerful than Datalog, but still constrained enough that we ...
Joining Logic, Relational, and Functional Programming: Michael Arntzenius
June 13, 2019 14:52 - 1 hour - 104 MBThis episode explores the intersections between various flavors of math and programming, and the ways in which they can be mixed, matched, and combined. Michael Arntzenius, "rntz" for short, is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham building a programming language that combines some of the best features of logic, relational, and functional programming. The goal of the project is "to find a sweet spot of something that is more powerful than Datalog, but still constrained enough that we...
#39 - Mathematical Foundations for the Activity of Programming: Cyrus Omar
June 07, 2019 13:41 - 2 hours - 122 MBUsually when we think of mathematics and programming languages, we think of tedious, didactic proofs that have nothing to do with our day to day experience of programming. And when we think of developer tools, we picture the practical, imperfect tools we use every day: text editors, build systems, libraries, etc. Cyrus Omar is new computer science professor at the University of Michigan bridging these disciplines by creating the foundations to precisely reason about the experience of programm...
Mathematical Foundations for the Activity of Programming: Cyrus Omar
June 07, 2019 13:41 - 2 hours - 122 MBUsually when we think of mathematics and programming languages, we think of tedious, didactic proofs that have nothing to do with our day to day experience of programming. And when we think of developer tools, we picture the practical, imperfect tools we use every day: text editors, build systems, libraries, etc. Cyrus Omar is new computer science professor at the University of Michigan bridging these disciplines by creating the foundations to precisely reason about the experience of program...
#38 - The Case for Formal Methods: Hillel Wayne
April 11, 2019 01:44 - 1 hour - 85.8 MBHillel Wayne is a technical writer and consultant on a variety of formal methods, including TLA+ and Alloy. In this episode, Hillel gives a whirlwind tour of the 4 main flavors of formal methods, and explains which are practical today and which we may have to wait patiently for. The episode begins with a very silly joke from Steve (about a radioactive Leslie Lamport) and if you make it to the end you're in store for a few fun tales from Twitter. https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/038
The Case for Formal Methods: Hillel Wayne
April 11, 2019 01:44 - 1 hour - 85.8 MBHillel Wayne is a technical writer and consultant on a variety of formal methods, including TLA+ and Alloy. In this episode, Hillel gives a whirlwind tour of the 4 main flavors of formal methods, and explains which are practical today and which we may have to wait patiently for. The episode begins with a very silly joke from Steve (about a radioactive Leslie Lamport) and if you make it to the end you're in store for a few fun tales from Twitter. https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/038 See ...
#37 - De-Nerding Programming: Jonathan Edwards
March 02, 2019 18:13 - 1 hour - 99.2 MBJonathan Edwards is an independent researcher working on drastically simplifying programming for beginners. He is known for his Subtext series of programming language experiments and his Alarming Development blog. He has been a researcher at MIT CSAIL and CDG/HARC. He tweets @jonathoda.
De-Nerding Programming: Jonathan Edwards
March 02, 2019 18:13 - 1 hour - 99.2 MBJonathan Edwards is an independent researcher working on drastically simplifying programming for beginners. He is known for his Subtext series of programming language experiments and his Alarming Development blog. He has been a researcher at MIT CSAIL and CDG/HARC. He tweets @jonathoda. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
#36 - Moldable Development: Tudor Girba
February 13, 2019 16:43 - 2 hours - 158 MBTudor Girba builds tools and techniques for improving the productivity and happiness of software teams. He currently works on the Glamorous Toolkit, a "moldable development environment" for Pharo, that developers can easily adopt to suit their needs. Tudor is a self-proclaimed "software environmentalist", sounding the alarm about how quickly we create code, and how slowly we recycle it. https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/036
Moldable Development: Tudor Girba
February 13, 2019 16:43 - 2 hours - 158 MBTudor Girba builds tools and techniques for improving the productivity and happiness of software teams. He currently works on the Glamorous Toolkit, a "moldable development environment" for Pharo, that developers can easily adopt to suit their needs. Tudor is a self-proclaimed "software environmentalist", sounding the alarm about how quickly we create code, and how slowly we recycle it. https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/036 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
#35 - Democratizing Web Design: Vlad Magdalin
January 06, 2019 16:53 - 1 hour - 84.9 MBVlad Magdalin is the CEO & co-founder of Webflow, a WYSIWYG website builder and CMS that's a thin layer of abstratction over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In this conversation we discussed Vlad's Bret Victor origin story, the differences between live programming and direct manipulation, and why web design has resisted direct manipulation pro tools for so long. You can find the transcript for this epsisode at futureofcoding.org/episodes/035#transcript
Democratizing Web Design: Vlad Magdalin
January 06, 2019 16:53 - 1 hour - 84.9 MBVlad Magdalin is the CEO & co-founder of Webflow, a WYSIWYG website builder and CMS that's a thin layer of abstratction over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In this conversation we discussed Vlad's Bret Victor origin story, the differences between live programming and direct manipulation, and why web design has resisted direct manipulation pro tools for so long. You can find the transcript for this epsisode at futureofcoding.org/episodes/035#transcript See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...