CoRecursive: Coding Stories

CoRecursive: Coding Stories episodes:

• 04.02.2024

  Story: Code, Kickflips and Crunch Time - Mick West's Neversoft Journey

  Meet Mick West, whose career began in an unusual office setup — sandwiched between a kebab shop and a phone sex hotline. From there he worked all over Manchester, making computer games for Tiertex and Ocean.    Career opportunies brought...

  
• 03.04.2024

  Story: Leaving LinkedIn - Choosing Engineering Excellence Over Expediency

  What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company’s fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company...

  
• 02.02.2024

  Story: Beautiful Code - Inside Greg Wilson's Vision for Software Design

  Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to...

  
• 01.02.2024

  Story - Code as a Lifeline: Brain Injury Sparks Python Mastery

  What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt...

  
• 12.04.2023

  Story - From 486 to Vue.js: Evan You's Full-Time Gamble on Open Source

  From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation.    Evan started Vue.js while working...

  
• 11.02.2023

  Story: Platform Takes The Pain

  How did Spotify scale from 10 engineers to 100s to 1000s ...without slowing down? Without becoming corporate?  Facing an IPO deadline, Pia Nilsson worked with 300 teams to transform how Spotify built software. She spearheaded a movement that led them...

  
• 10.02.2023

  Story: Sloot Digital Coding System

  Lost treasure. Conspiracy theories. Impossible tech demos.  Jan Sloot claimed to have invented revolutionary data compression that could fit a full movie into a tiny smart card chip. Top executives and investors witnessed his demos and became true believers, ready...

  
• 09.01.2023

  Story: Configuring Identity: Adam Jacob and the Search for Self in Software

  Today, we go behind the scenes at Chef - the game changing infrastructure automation tool. Adam Jacob created Chef, and it became a massively popular DevOps tool. But despite Chef's success, Adam constantly battled self-doubt and finding his footing as...

  
• 08.02.2023

  The Science of Learning to Code

  Learning to code can feel impossible. Like facing a sheer rock wall with no ropes or harnesses. But what if there was a path up the mountain? A trail blazed smooth by master coders who went before?  In this episode,...

  
• 07.03.2023

  Story: A Dark Room

   Have you ever been frustrated with your job? Maybe not burnt out, but getting close to there? You used to love what you did, and it felt so creative and empowering, but then it starts to feel a bit more...

  
• 06.02.2023

  Story: Quitting (And Then Rejoining) Stack Overflow

  Today, we meet Ben Dumke-von der Ehe, one of the early developers on the Stack Overflow team.  He was on the front lines as the platform transformed how programmers worked. And he embodies the spirit of Stack Overflow:  Its transparency,...

  
• 05.02.2023

  Story: From Project Management to Data Compression Innovator

  How do you accomplish something massive over time? I've had the chance to meet with a number of exceptional software developers and it's something I always wonder about.  Today, I might have an answer with the incredible story of Yann...

  
• 04.03.2023

  Story: JSON vs XML

  Today's guest is Douglas Crockford. He's sharing the story of JSON, his discovery of JavaScript's good parts, and his approach to finding a simple way to build software. Also, his battles against XML, against complexity, his battles to say that...

  
• 03.02.2023

  Story: Sun's Mobile Blunders

  Shai Almog worked at Sun on Mobile JVMs just as phones started to turn from phones into something else.     Sun had deep expertise in mobile development, and amazing engineering driven culture and relationships with manufacturers and operators. And yet...

  
• 02.02.2023

  Story: Shipping Graphing Calculator

  I've been on many projects that get canceled. We're building cool stuff. We're going above and beyond, and we're excited. But the project encounters reality, shifting priorities, or budgeting constraints, and the work never goes anywhere. It always feels tragic,...

  
• 01.02.2023

  Story: The Unfulfilled Engineer

  Nothing good comes from being insecure about your worth, especially at your job. That's what today's episode is about. That's what today's guest is here to discuss.  It's a slow burn, but if you listen to the end, I think...

  
• 12.02.2022

  Story: DOOMed to Fail

  Today Rebecca Burger Becky Heineman shares the tale of porting Doom to the 3DO console under extreme conditions. There is an engine to tweak, deadlines to hit, hardware acceleration to get working, and dramatic rock anthems to record. We also...

  
• 11.02.2022

  Story: Software World Tour

  Today story is from Son Luong Ngoc who shares what’s it was like for him to work and live in many different countries around the world, including working for AliBaba at the Xixi campus in Hangzhou, China. It’s a story...

  
• 10.03.2022

  Story: Android's Unlikely Success

  What could you accomplish if your teammates were all excited and determined to hit some project timelines? What is it like for a group of people to give it all they have? That's what today is about.     Chet...

  
• 09.02.2022

  Story: From Prison To Programming

   I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons.    Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in...

  
• 08.01.2022

  CPAN - This Day In History

  CPAN was the first open-source software module repository. And on this day, Aug 1st, in 1995, CPAN was first announced to a private group of PERL users. If you are building things today by pulling in various packages from various...

  
• 07.05.2022

  Story: The History and Mystery Of Eliza

  I recently got an email from Jeff Shrager, who said he'd been working hard to solve a mystery about some famous code. Eliza, the chatbot, was built in 1964, and she didn't answer questions like Alexa or Siri. She asked...

  
• 06.01.2022

  Chat: Why still 80 columns?

  On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news:  "Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width." You probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people...

  
• 05.02.2022

  Story: LISP in Space

  Have you ever had a unique approach to a problem and been excited to use it, but you're met with skepticism?   Today's story: what happens if you take someone who's passionate about LISP and put them in an...

  
• 04.01.2022

  Chat: April Fools' Is Cancelled

  On this day in 2014 "lame april fools' jokes" were banned from hacker news.    Today in our first This-Day-in-History segment, I want to share some of history not just of April Fools', but of tech pranks in general, all...

  
• 03.02.2022

  Story: The Story Graph with Nadia Odunayo

  Whenever I work on a side project, I can't help but daydream of it taking off in a big way. For today's guests, something like that did happen.    When Nadia started building her side project, she didn't know that...

  
• 02.01.2022

  Story: Serenity OS

  How would you build an operating system?     My answer is I wouldn't. First off, I don't know how. And the second thing is it seems like to large of a task. It took thousands of developers to build Windows...

  
• 01.02.2022

  Chat: The Internet Is Made of Duct Tape

  Today, I have two of my favorite guests together: Krystal Maughan and Don McKay. We are going to be sharing strange and interesting facts about computing. I'm super pumped about this because, sometimes, I learn something new, and I'm excited...

  
• 12.02.2021

  Story: Cocoa Culture

  The last episode, I said I wasn't sure there was such a thing as culture, but that's not the case. Every place I've worked has been a bit different, and often those differences had huge impacts on the software we...

  
• 11.02.2021

  Story: Leaving Debian

  Today’s story is an insider view of Debian. One of the oldest Linux distributions and probably one of the longest-running volunteer-based open-source projects. Joey Hess is my guest, and he dedicated significant parts of his adult life to working on...

  
• 10.04.2021

  Story: The Original Remote Developer

  Today's episode is about remote work. Well, sort of. I found someone with a different perspective on remote work and a fantastic story to share, Paul Lutus. I think that he might be the original remote software developer. ...

  
• 09.02.2021

  Chat: Quines, Polygot Code, and Other Fun Computations

  Today, previous guest and my neighbor Don Mckay and I will discuss items from the endless fascinating Cursed Computer Iceberg Meme. The Iceberg is a giant list of "the peculiarities and weirdness of computers." We each a few items from...

  
• 08.02.2021

  Story: Full-Time Open Source

  Today's show: How to Quit Your Job and Work on Open Source Full Time. This story has it all, balancing open source work and full-time employment, building up enough supporters and enough savings to leave your job. The hardest...

  
• 07.02.2021

  Story: The Untold Story of SQLite

  On today's show, I'm talking to Richard Hipp about surviving becoming core infrastructure for the world. SQLite is everywhere. It's in your web browser, it's in your phone, it's probably in your car, and it's definitely in commercial planes. It's...

  
• 06.02.2021

  Story: From Competitive Programming to APL

  Today on the show, we have solving algorithmic programming problems. You know when you interview for a job to write CSS and they ask you to reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard using C and in constant memory space?...

  
• 05.02.2021

  Story: Ethereum Rescue

  Today I talk to Dan Robinson about trying to get someone their money back on Ethereum. He's going to be battling this murky world of blockchain high-frequency bots. Along the way, we'll learn how trades are executed on Ethereum and...

  
• 04.03.2021

  Story: Apple 2001

  David Shayer worked at Apple for 14 years, and he has a wild experience to share. Apple has a unique culture, and David will give us an insider view of what it was like for him at Apple during the...

  
• 03.01.2021

  Story: Video Game Programming From Scratch

  I'm not really a big gamer, but lately, I've fallen down this rabbit hole into the world of Casey Muratori, and this project that he started on Twitch in 2014. He is building a video game from scratch and explaining...

  
• 02.01.2021

  Story: Reinforcement Learning At Facebook with Jason Gauci

  If you ever wanted to learn about machine learning you could do worse than have Jason Gauci teach you. Jason has worked on YouTube recommendations. He was an early contributor to TensorFlow the open-source machine learning platform. His thesis work...

  
• 01.01.2021

  Chat: 2020 Year End

  Welcome to the year-end episode. Today is all the bonus questions. Often times I have questions that I want to ask guests, but they don't quite fit the overall theme of the episode. So today we're going to do a...

  
• 12.01.2020

  Story: Frontiers of Performance with Daniel Lemire

  Did you ever meet somebody who seemed a little bit different than the rest of the world? Maybe they question things that others wouldn’t question or said things that others would never say. Daniel is a world-renowned...

  
• 11.01.2020

  Story: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

  As Brian Kernighan said “UNIX since the start has become a vehicle for creating and using programming languages.” Brian initiated work on what would become the UNIX system. He helped develop it to run on a minicomputer and would eventually...

  
• 10.01.2020

  Story: To The Assembly

  How do CPUs work? How do compilers work? How does high-level code get translated into machine code? Today's guest is Matt Godbolt and he knows the answers to these questions. How he became an expert in bare metal programming is...

  
• 09.01.2020

  Story: Memento Mori

  Preparing our minds for the inevitable - death is pressing. After facing terminal cancer, Kate Gregory reminded herself that this event can still become inspiring by focusing on the positive. In this episode, Kate is going to share her success...

  
• 08.03.2020

  Story: We are teaching Functional Programming Wrong

  Today Richard Feldman shares his story of going from javascript developer to elm developer to functional programming teacher.  Along the way, Richard finds that people are teaching functional programming wrong.  We are teaching it in a way that misses how...

  
• 07.01.2020

  Story: Software That Doesn't Suck With Jim Blandy

  Building Subversion Software is just the tool and it should get out of your way. In this episode, we will discuss Jim Blandy’s insights on how to build and recognize improvements for a great developer tool and find out how...

  
• 06.10.2020

  Story: Unproven Tech Case Study with Sean Allen

  Choosing The Right Tool For the Job Choosing the right programming language or framework for a project can be key to the success of the project. In today’s episode, Sean Allen Sean shares a story of picking the right tool...

  
• 05.18.2020

  Story: Krystal's Story

  Chasing Your Curiosity and Continuous Learning Things are easier to learn when you are passionate about something. A lot of great careers are built on curiosity and obsession including Krystal Maughan our guest for today's episode. Krystal will share her...

  
• 05.06.2020

  Story: Learning a new language with Bruce Tate

  There’s joy that can be found in language learning and pain as well. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, there are still some things you can only discover by picking up a new language.  Bruce Tate will tell us...

  
• 04.17.2020

  Story: Portal Abstractions with Sam Ritchie

  Buckle up, on today’s episode Adam interviews Sam about how the abstract algebra and probabilistic data structures helped solve fast versus big data issues that many are struggling with. Sam Ritchie is a machine learning researcher and a mechanical engineer by training....