In this episode of Dead Code, Jared explores the world of roguelike game development with guests Mark R. Johnson and Darren Grey from Roguelike Radio, discussing the history, appeal, and technical challenges of the genre. They dive into the upcoming Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge, where developers create a game in a week, emphasizing the importance of procedural generation, permadeath, and strategic mastery. The conversation covers how roguelikes have evolved from classic ASCII-based dungeon crawlers to modern iterations like FTL and The Binding of Isaac, attracting both players and programmers due to their complexity and emergent gameplay. Darren and Mark share advice for aspiring developers, urging them to keep their projects small and focused while embracing the creative possibilities of procedural content.

Links:

Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge (7DRL) on itch.io

Roguelike Radio Podcast

Roguelike Dev Community on Reddit

Roguelikes Community on Reddit

Mark R. Johnson’s Game (Ultima Ratio Regum)

Mark R. Johnson’s Twitter (X)

Mark R. Johnson’s Bluesky

Darren Grey’s Bluesky

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews Tim Riley about Hanami, an alternative Ruby web framework that prioritizes separation of concerns, modular components, and maintainability over Rails’ monolithic approach. Tim explains how Hanami’s repository pattern for database interactions reduces unintended ripple effects, while its built-in dependency injection improves testability and scalability. He shares the evolution of Hanami, its integration with dry-rb and ROM, and the project’s commitment to fostering an inclusive, sustainable community. With ongoing efforts to enhance accessibility and documentation, Hanami aims to offer Ruby developers a flexible, well-structured alternative for building applications while staying within the familiar Ruby ecosystem.

Links:

Hanami Website

Tim Riley’s Website

Tim Riley on Mastodon

Hanami GitHub Repository

dry-rb GitHub Repository

ROM-rb GitHub Repository

Tilt (Ruby template engine support)

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In this Dead Code podcast episode, Cyrus Omar and Andrew Blinn discuss Hazel, an innovative programming language and editor designed to handle incomplete programs by providing continuous feedback and partial code execution, similar to dynamic languages, while maintaining a robust type system. Hazel’s unique graphical editor allows domain-specific visual representations, such as sliders for integers and playing cards for data manipulation, making programming more intuitive and tactile. The team highlights collaborations with climate scientists for interactive data work and explores Hazel’s potential across various domains like hardware design and mathematics. Future developments include “probes” for live runtime data visualization within code, with the hope that Hazel’s novel approach will inspire broader adoption in the programming community.

Links:

Hazel Website

Andrew Blinn’s Website

Andrew’s Balatro Cards Demo

PROPL Workshop Paper

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews Ingy döt Net, co-creator of YAML, about its origins, unexpected rise in popularity—especially within the Ruby community—and its evolution into a widely used configuration language. Ingy shares insights into YAMLScript, a new programming language he developed to address YAML’s limitations, enabling more powerful configuration and data transformation through a Lisp-like approach. By leveraging Clojure and GraalVM, YAMLScript offers cross-language compatibility and improves YAML’s usability in environments like Kubernetes and Helm. The conversation explores broader industry trends in serialization, the challenges of maintaining a widely adopted format, and Ingy’s philosophy of acmeism, which promotes language-agnostic tooling. He also discusses YAMLScript’s warm reception at KubeCon and its inclusion in programming education platforms like Exercism.

Links:

YAMLScript Official Website

YAMLScript GitHub Repository

Exercism

Make a Lisp

KubeCon

Prism

Helm

GraalVM

MkDocs Material 

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews software engineer Joel Drapper about his open-source projects in the Ruby ecosystem. They discuss Phlex, a view framework that allows developers to build HTML components using pure Ruby, eliminating the need for templating languages like ERB. Joel also introduces Literal, a library for reducing boilerplate in object creation with built-in type validation, and Quickdraw, an experimental test runner optimized for multi-core execution. The conversation concludes with Yippee, a SQLite-centric full-stack Ruby framework designed for simplicity and performance, challenging conventional Rails architectures. Joel shares insights on how these projects streamline development while embracing SQLite’s growing viability in production applications.

Links:

Phlex

Literal

Stephen Margheim (@fractaledmind on Bluesky)

Joel Drapper (@joel.drapper.me on Bluesky)

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In this Dead Code episode, host Jared interviews Karl Oscar Weber about revitalizing Camping, a minimalist Ruby web framework originally created by “Why the Lucky Stiff.” Karl shares his 14-year programming journey, his passion for Ruby, and the challenges of modernizing Camping while preserving its compact, esoteric design under five kilobytes. He introduces updates like plugins (“Camping Gear”) and compatibility with newer Ruby features, emphasizing Camping’s educational value and simplicity. Beyond the technical, Karl discusses fostering inclusivity in the Ruby community, countering exclusionary attitudes, and creating spaces that welcome underrepresented developers. Jared commends Karl’s efforts to honor Ruby’s quirky, fun spirit while addressing cultural issues, highlighting the broader impact small projects can have on shaping tech communities.

Links:

Camping GitHub Repository

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Sequel Gem Documentation

Roda GitHub Repository

Cuba GitHub Repository

Andrew Tate Background (Wikipedia)

Metroid Series Overview (Wikipedia)

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared Norman hosts Ruby developer and consultant Ismael Celis to discuss event sourcing—a data storage model that records historical events to derive the current state of an application, offering benefits like accurate audit trails and reduced complexity. Ismael explains how event sourcing contrasts with traditional CRUD systems by focusing on a flat sequence of events rather than intricate relational models, making it particularly useful in e-commerce and microservices. He highlights his experimentation with event sourcing in Ruby, aiming to combine its simplicity with Ruby’s expressiveness, and mentions existing tools like Rails Event Store, Sequence, and Eventide. Offering practical advice, Ismael suggests starting small with simple Ruby scripts to grasp the concept before adopting established libraries. The episode underscores the potential for event sourcing to streamline debugging and enhance adaptability in dynamic systems.

Links:

Ismael Celis on Twitter

Ismael Celis on GitHub

Ismael’s Website

Rails Event Store

Eventide Documentation

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In this episode of Dead Code, Jared Norman interviews Felienne Hermans, creator of the Hedy programming language and author of “A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design.” Felienne discusses her experiences of alienation in the programming language design community and critiques its prioritization of mathematical rigor and technical difficulty over accessibility and inclusivity. Highlighting Hedy, a simplified, multilingual language designed for beginners and non-English speakers, she emphasizes the value of user-centered design in making programming more approachable and impactful. The conversation explores the exclusionary culture in programming, such as dismissing spreadsheets and front-end work as “not real coding,” and proposes reimagining programming languages to focus on collaboration, user experience, and joy rather than gatekeeping and status. Felienne calls for a cultural shift to prioritize inclusivity and creativity, showcasing how tools like Hedy can inspire and empower diverse communities.

Links:

The Hedy Programming Language

A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design

Felienne Hermans’s Personal Website

Programming Language Conference: SPLASH

Elm Programming Language

Edgar Dijkstra’s EWDs

Ruby Programming Language

Rust Programming Language

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In this Dead Code episode, host Jared Norman interviews JP Camara, Principal Software Engineer at Wealthbox, about Ruby concurrency. JP explains that Ruby applications are inherently multithreaded, even when developers assume otherwise, highlighting how background threads from libraries like Sidekiq or monitoring tools can introduce concurrency issues. He discusses the Ruby community's progress in thread safety, driven by tools like Puma and Sidekiq, and contrasts Ruby's "colorless" concurrency model with JavaScript's explicit async/await syntax, emphasizing Ruby's reduced cognitive overhead. JP also shares his experience contributing to Ruby's M:N thread scheduler for macOS, advocating for developers to rely on vetted concurrency tools like concurrent-ruby and async instead of manually managing threads. He concludes by stressing the importance of avoiding global state, breaking tasks into smaller pieces, and approaching concurrency with a thoughtful mindset.

Links:

Wealthbox

JP Camara's Blog

RubyConf

Sidekiq

Puma Web Server

Honeybadger

New Relic

JP's Ruby Concurrency Series

What Color is Your Function?

Async Gem

Concurrent Ruby

Meshuggah – Violent Sleep of Reason

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In this whimsical holiday-themed episode of the Dead Code podcast, Jared dives into the much-anticipated release of Ruby 3.4, framing the technical updates in a festive, poetic rendition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Listeners are treated to a charming narrative where Ruby's creator, "Saint Matz," embodies a coding Santa Claus, delivering these updates to the community with flair.

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